The Graham Norton Show - Series 11, Episode 8 - Jon Hamm, Charlize Theron, Steve Coogan, Rumer - British Comedy Guide (original) (raw)

Jon Hamm talks about not being sexy enough for Mad Men, Charlize Theron says she has wanted motherhood for so long, Steve Coogan talks about Leveson and Rumer reveals she took biscuits to the White House for the President.

Charlize Theron admits she blossomed later in life, "I was a late developer. I was very sick as a baby, I had jaundice and was allergic to my mother's breast milk and they took a really long time to figure that out. So the sicker I got the more antibiotics they gave me and they just rotted my upper teeth and they had to cut them out. It was so hard - I was this lanky, skinny, tall girl with no teeth!"

Asked how she is coping with motherhood following the recent adoption of her son Jackson, Charlize says, "You just do. I have wanted this for so long. They say, when it rains it pours. I found out my son was coming into my life and three weeks later I was doing a promotional tour for Snow White. There has been a lot of travelling and stuff and he came with me on tour and did the whole of Europe and Japan. We were really spoilt and went everywhere by private jet. I want to keep him humble so I told this new born, 'this is not the norm' and he did great until we took the first commercial flight and he just freaked out!"

On paparazzi interest in her and Jackson she says, "It's not a comfortable subject for me and I realise I had it so good when it was just me. Every part of your body just wants to cover the child up - it's hard. I wish it was different - I am fair game, but it's hard when there are children involved."

Asked by Steve Coogan where she keeps her Oscar, she says, "For a while I had it in a room that was on the way to the bathroom, just so I could say, 'down that hallway until you run into the Oscar and make a left.' I had to stop doing that!"

Jon Hamm, on success coming later in life, says, "I landed in LA in 1994 or somewhere around then and proceeded not to work for a solid three or four years. I waited tables and bar tended and did that whole circuit. I gave myself to the age of 30 and if it didn't happen by then I guess the market had spoken and I would slink back to the Mid-West."

On his breakthrough role of Don Draper in Mad Men, he say, "I had to audition seven or eight times for it. It was the network's first foray into original programming and they obviously wanted someone incredibly famous and I was not that and they had to be convinced," adding, "It's only recently that I found out they didn't think I was sexy enough."

Charlize interjects, "Were they all blind?"

Steve Coogan jokes about the Leveson enquiry, describing it as, 'one of my funniest gigs,' before revealing, "When I took legal action two or three years ago, it was quite a lonely place to be. There wasn't all this brouhaha and in the public's view it was just seen as a few whinging celebrities. I thought then it would all fade away but it grew and grew."

Rumer performs P.F. Sloan live in the studio before joining Graham for a chat. Talking about performing for the Obamas, she says, "I thought I should take a present, it's polite and I was thinking about something interesting and exotic. But in the end I didn't have time so I went to Marks and Spencer and got a tin of biscuits. It was a nice tin - £6.99. I took the sticker off!"