Character
Elizabeth "Betty" Draper Francis is a fictional character played by January Jones on AMC's television series Mad Men. She begins the show married to protagonist Don Draper ; follo…
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Elizabeth "Betty" Draper Francis (formerly Draper, née Hofstadt) is a fictional character played by January Jones on AMC's television series Mad Men. She begins the show married to protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm); following a separation in the third season, the two remain divorced for the remainder of the series, but continue to share custody of their three children.
Elizabeth "Betty" Draper Francis is a fictional character played by January Jones on AMC's television series Mad Men. She begins the show married to protagonist Don Draper ; following a separation in the third season, the two remain divorced for the remainder of the series, but continue to share custody of their three children.
Elizabeth "Betty" Draper Francis (formerly Draper, née Hofstadt) is a fictional character played by January Jones on AMC's television series Mad Men. She begins the show married to protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm); following a separation in the third season, the two remain divorced for the remainder of the series, but continue to share custody of their three children.
Blonde, beautiful, emotionally distant and immature, Betty spends the bulk of Mad Men slowly growing as a person amid the social and political turmoil of the 1960s. The character's appearance is often compared to that of Grace Kelly, with the similarities between the two also drawn during the first season of the series.
Jones received two Golden Globe nominations and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for her performance. She also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series twice along with the cast of Mad Men.
The character of Betty Draper was not originally part of the pilot, though she did ultimately appear in the broadcast episode. The script established that lead character Don Draper (Jon Hamm) was married, but only through dialogue, with no intention to show his home life. January Jones was instead initially considered, along with Elisabeth Moss, for the character Peggy Olson; Moss was ultimately cast as Peggy. Show creator Matthew Weiner then wrote two scenes featuring Betty, and Jones successfully auditioned for the part two days later. Although there were no full scripts or even plot ideas involving the character at the time, Weiner promised Jones that the character would be developed.
Weiner has attributed Mad Men's visual style to the influence of film director Alfred Hitchcock, who featured a signature "icy blonde" female character in many of his films. Betty Draper's character has also been compared to that of Peyton Place's Constance MacKenzie: "cold, remote, and emotionally unavailable."
Source: Betty Draper (CC BY-SA)
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Betty and Don Draper live in a large house in suburban Ossining, New York, with their children Sally and Bobby (Maxwell Huckabee). In the second episode, set in the spring of 1960, Betty starts to see a psychiatrist to address repeated spells of numbness in her hands, which medical doctors have indicated are psychosomatic. It was during these meetings that, after having discovered the psychiatrist was giving reports of her sessions to Don, she voiced her suspicion that her husband was unfaithful. By the start of the second season, set in February 1962, she had discontinued the consultations.
During the second-season episode "A Night to Remember", Betty and Don seem to have reached an agreement, but after a dinner party where Betty is embarrassed to be considered a "demographic" by Don and his associates, she confronts her husband for the first time about his adultery, specifically with Bobbie Barrett (Melinda McGraw). Don, however, denies having an affair. The next day, with a glass of wine in hand, Betty searches through Don's belongings for proof of his indiscretions but does not find any. Betty awakens Don - who is sleeping on the couch - that night and explains that she doesn't want things to "be like this." He repeats that he did not do anything, and when she asks if he hates her, he insists that he loves her and doesn't want to "lose this." When preparing dinner the next day, an Utz commercial featuring Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) airs on television, reminding Betty of Don's infidelity. After seeing this, Betty calls Don at work and tells him she doesn't want him to come home.
Betty does turn to Don when she learns her father has suffered a stroke. She and Don leave the children with a neighbor and drive to visit Gene. Betty is visibly impatient with Gloria and William, but she and Don are careful to present a united front. At the end of a stressful day, Betty makes Don sleep on the floor of the guestroom, but later joins him on the floor, where they have sex. The next morning, Gene mistakes Betty for her late mother Ruth, suggesting they "go upstairs." Betty is shocked and frightened, but tries to pretend that everything is all right. When she and Don return to New York, Betty surprises Don by asking him to leave again.
In the Season 2 finale, Betty discovers she is pregnant. Although she brings up the subject of abortion with her doctor and has sex with a random man she picks
