While we’ll never know what really happened between Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt, Hamm left enough bread crumbs along the way to indicate that he was the one who never wanted to get married. He used to say he didn’t believe in marriage, that it was all a sham. Hamm and Westfeldt spent 19 years together – she was with him when he was nobody, when he had no power and no job and she was the one supporting him. Then, just as Mad Men was coming to a close, they fell apart. He quickly moved on with Anna Osceola and they got married in Big Sur last weekend after dating for maybe five years? While everybody is allowed to change their minds and grow and become different people, I still f–king loathe when men do this – bitch about marriage for years and then suddenly get married and they act like they invented it. Well, Hamm had a lot to say about the beauty of marriage on a podcast recorded just before his wedding:
Jon Hamm, 52, appeared on Tuesday’s episode of iHeartRadio’s Table for Two podcast with host Bruce Bozzi, and the actor referred to his marriage to Osceola, 35, as “the exciting part of life and it’s a signpost and a signifier of the next chapter and phase [of life]. Ideally, it gives you and your partner a sense of stability and comfort and an identifying capacity that is better, deeper, richer, than ‘it’s my girlfriend’ or ‘my boyfriend’ or what have you.”
“It’s exciting, it’s exciting because it’s all potential, it’s all possibility, and it’s all positive,” Hamm said on the podcast episode, which was recorded in the days leading up to his wedding.
“I suppose there’s two ways to look at anything like that, which is like ‘oh, what if it’s terrible, but the other way is like ‘this is meant to be something wonderful.’ So you lean into that aspect of it, which I have been,” he continued during the interview. “It’s the reason why I really wanted to do it and really leaned into it and [marriage] is the thing that leads to the next thing of life and that’s what I hope – and it’s the journey and it’s exciting.”
While Hamm noted that “all of the minutiae of planning [a wedding] and dealing with it can be mind-numbing,” he said he felt “a sort of calm [that] settled over me” in the days leading up to the ceremony as he began to reflect on what the ceremony would signify for his life.
“At the end of the day, the important thing is… I’m gonna look out and I’m gonna see this whole group of people – and it’s not a very big group of people. It’s well, under 100 people – but a group of people that are all there because they’re supporting me and Anna,” he said during the podcast. “And that’s great. I think the last time that happened to me was high school graduation.”
Again, people are allowed to change their minds, but damn, I feel so sorry for Jennifer Westfeldt. She wasted so many years on this loser. Oh, and to make matters even more cliche, Us Weekly reports that Hamm and Osceola are “thinking of having kids soon, Jon feels like this is the beginning.” Beginning a marriage and a family at 52 years old… that’s something women are rarely able to do.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Jon Hamm and Anna Osceola attends the 2022 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones celebrating the 94th annual Academy Awards at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 27, 2022 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 673516037, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jon Hamm and Anna Osceola, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, USA – MAY 04: Jon Hamm and Anna Osceola arrive at the World Premiere Of Paramount Pictures’ ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ held at the USS Midway Museum on May 4, 2022 in San Diego, California, United States.,Image: 688800390, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – JULY 20: American actor Jon Hamm and girlfriend/American actress Anna Osceola arrive at the 2022 ESPY Awards held at the Dolby Theatre on July 20, 2022 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 708815165, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola, Credit line: Xavier Collin / Image Press Agency / Avalon
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- Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola attends the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Celebrating the 95th Annual Academy Awards Hosted By Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California,Image: 762328867, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola, Credit line: – / JPI Studios / Avalon
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- BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 12: (L-R) Jon Hamm and Anna Osceola attend the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscar Party hosted by Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on March 12, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California.,Image: 763053994, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Jon Hamm, Anna Osceola, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer / Avalon
Honestly his comments kind of sound like he had to convince himself that he was happy to be getting married.
That’s how it read to me, too.
“It’s exciting, it’s exciting because it’s all potential, it’s all possibility, and it’s all positive,”
Sorry but this is a f*cking weird way to talk about getting married. As you said, REALLY screams of someone trying to convince himself.
Exactly my thoughts too!
And it is more important to him to look out into a small crown of people and that they support him and Anna (like they need that to get married), instead of looking into the crowd and seeing HER.
It’s just the comparing his wedding to a high school graduation…it feels like he got married for the wrong reasons honestly.
My thought as well, like…who’s he trying to sell it to?
Again, WHY do we assume the woman is mad or sad or “poor Jennifer”?
Maybe he changed so much she didn’t want him anymore.
Maybe SHE didn’t want to get married.
Not every woman feels pathetic because their ex got married.
Jesus. Feeling sorry for a woman just because a man got married without even thinking that maybe she’s happier without him
Thank you!
To me she wasn’t into the marriage thing, I have found an old interview,and she said she wasn’t.
I think she is fine.
https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/jon-hamm-jennifer-westfeldt-arent-thinking-marriage-1.1039804
Yes exactly. It was Jennifer who said she didn’t want marriage or kids. No need to feel sorry for her ”wasting her time” waiting for a ring.
Can we please move on, it’s not 1952.
Yep!!!!
1000% all of this.
Agree. From what I’ve read elsewhere, it sounds like Jennifer never wanted marriage and kids. So she’s probably fine! Seem like life worked out for the both of them and they each got what they wanted in the end.
I mean, you can be fully over someone and still get a pang of sadness when you see that person getting engaged and potentially starting a family with a new partner. It doesn’t mean that you’re not happy for them or that you haven’t moved on–it’s natural to be a bit nostalgic/wistful after 18 years.
+1000. so demeaning. He might have stayed hoping to change her mind and left when he didn’t. otherwise Jennifer could have been married to someone by now. will we ever drop this “oh-poor-woman-she-has-wasted-so-much-time-on-a-guy-who-whatever”. it was her choice.
Exactly…. having a long term relationship does not have to mean until the bitter end. The one galling thing is just that men like Hamm go a lot younger….17 years. He is not in creep territory but this whole late “settle down” shtick is just always sort of unsavoury.
I’m not sure how unsavory it is here? He’s been pretty open about doing a lot of work on himself in therapy. He may just now have started to feel like he’s able to be a good and present parent.
Lol, it’s always “better, deeper, richer” when a man decides to do it.
I think it’s more that (middle-aged) men get dumped because “marriage is a sham” and they don’t want to get married and then when an anniversary with their next partner comes, they panic and propose. That probably explains the whole beginning a family, too… She’s the one wanting to get married and have children and he’s scrambling to do what she wants so that she doesn’t leave him as well. But come on, this feels like a beginning? He’s over half a century old!
Your last sentence lmao
Laniey gossip had a very interesting article about this, positioning Hamm as the one who wanted to get married and Jennifer the one that didnt. She was more successful before him, even writing and acting in the movie Friends with Kids about partners that raise kids without a relationship. I honestly think Hamm was a different person with Jenn too, before he got sober, so it wouldn’t have been something either of them wanted at the time.
I read that article too! I really recommend it to everyone here. It lays out that Jon Hamm always got tagged with “never wants to get married” in headlines, but his actual quotes in those articles were more along the lines of stating he didn’t have a role model for marriage growing up, but he’s open to it along with kids. And it laid out a lot more evidence showing how vocal Jennifer Westfeldt was about not wanting to get married and not wanting kids ever.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with 1. not wanting kids or marriage and continuing to not want kids or marriage, OR 2. not wanting kids or marriage and changing your mind on one or both. People grow and change, and I think Jon Hamm has been respectful of his prior relationship. He’s not out here trashing Jennifer Westfeldt, and all of the poor Jennifer headlines are pretty disrespectful to her and her choices.
This is what I was thinking, too. It’s always assumed that the woman is the one who wants marriage and kids, but his actual quotes over the years suggest he was the one open to it. His comments about marriage were more about not having a model to go from his experience as a kid, not that he was against it altogether. Whereas she was never certain enough to make that leap. It’s incredibly unfair to Jennifer to make such assumptions.
People’s views on commitment and relationships changing after becoming sober shouldn’t be treated as hypocrisy. And people walk away from fairly solid relationships in the process, too. Part of rehab is treating everything in your old life as broken. It really sucks to be on the receiving end of that. So few relationships survive it.
Really? I’m no expert on this topic, but does having an addiction so severe it requires rehab really mean that everything in your life is broken? I can understand telling people to examine relationships and other choices carefully, to question them, but not to simply reject them out of hand.
If someone who has never had a problem with drugs or alcohol before gets injured, is prescribed a strong pain medicine and then becomes addicted to it and goes to rehab, do they really suggest that what might have been a perfectly solid and happy marriage before the addiction is something “broken?” I just don’t see how that makes sense.
Valid points, both of you. I went into rehab one broken person and came out as someone painfully aware of all the mechanics in my body and mind. My value system shifted entirely, because it had to. My old one would have killed me. I went in married and never wanting kids. Today, I am married to that same person and working on kiddo #2, never ever ever happier. Amazing. Sobriety allows hurt people to open up to loving in ways they couldn’t before, for survival.
I hate speaking on one-size-fits-all when it comes to sobriety, but I consider it requiring a sea change in how you interact with the world. It doesn’t mean you lose everything in it, but you have to reconsider your approach to everything.
Not commenting on the dynamics/inner workings of their relationship because I have no idea about that but I absolutely do think there’s merit in cutting off old relationships going into rehab or as a result of rehab. Staying sober requires avoiding triggers and if certain relationships facilitate old habits, then it’s best to end them entirely. For instance, if Jon’s relationship with Jennifer revolved around drinking or even if that was a big part of how they connected, then it might be best for him to move on. Staying sober is so difficult and addicts really have to do everything they can to set themselves up for success. Sometimes, that means moving on.
I wish Mr. Draper well on his third marriage.
Seriously though, he’s just now thinking of starting a family at the youthful age of 52. Midlife crisis?
I feel like many men are infantilized and allowed to act like children well into adulthood and only come around to the idea of marriage/family when gray hairs begin to appear. All of a sudden, they’re “ready”.
Whereas I feel women are in many ways forced to mature quickly because of societal expectations. Also, the whole “biological clock” aspect.
Maybe I’m just rambling.
This also why so many women are frustrated in their relationships. They somehow have to “mother” their partner which leads to losing respect for them. And then men are “blindsided” when 80% of the divorces are initiated by women….
I don’t judge anyone for not getting married until he or she is absolutely ready for marriage, and if someone is upfront about that, little sympathy for their partner. I gave my boyfriend an ultimatum after 3 years of dating, and we’ve been married 43 years; otherwise I would have moved on, because I knew I wanted marriage. In my long experience, TIMING is as important as finding the perfect partner! Yes, men have more options than women, but not much sense griping about another way Mother Nature has skewed things. And y’all are assuming she WANTED marriage. I said if my hubby ever dumped me for a younger woman, I’d buy a snazzy sports car and wave gaily as I drove past his bleary-eyed ass pushing a baby stroller!
Oh, absolutely. The only thing I find strange about his comments is that a 19-year relationship isn’t “dating” or “girlfriend” and it can be just as deep and rich as any marriage.
And he’s said that before – that it’s deeper than that.
definitely. Yet we shouldn’t forget that the tone is set by both parties. If the woman in the relationship is very clear about her goals ( or the absence of them) the man will tow the line, at least, for a while, but afterwards probably frame it as something less deep and meaningful as the conventional marriage/kids story – if it wasn’t his idea from the beginning.
Maybe Jen didn’t want to get married. I do recall an interview where they shared he’d broken up with her way back when they first started dating. Then they got together after he’d dealt with whatever. I hope Jen is happy regardless. She seems like a good one.
i find it interesting how so many people find it difficult to accept that it might be the woman who doesn’t want any of it. In my relationships I’ve always been very clear from the very start that i might be open to a marriage, but don’t want to have kids: i knew from the early age that it wasn’t for me. Still, the number of people who accepted it at first, but tried to convince me to change my mind just for the sake of it is staggering.
I think of how many people I know said they never wanted kids only to change their minds when they met the right person or even because they felt pressured by their partner and didn’t want to lose them. Even though they should take what you say at face value, that’s probably why folks thought they could change your mind or maybe even that you’d change your mind on your own. Because so many people do.
@Kitten so, what you are trying to tell me in so many words is that I’ve never had luck to find the right person, otherwise i would have changed my opinion on the matter. well, thanks for proving my point.
Um no actually, I made no mention of YOU beyond saying that people should take what YOU say at face value. But I DID speak generally about my anecdotal experience that most people change their minds so it’s not unexpected that people might assume you would too.
By the way I’m 44 and no kids and we don’t plan on having any but I’m also not defensive about my choice at all. Plenty of people assumed I’d change my mind, especially when I met my husb. Who cares???? It doesn’t matter to me because I’m secure in my decision.
Actually ample interviews in which Jennifer said she wanted an artistic career, not marriage & kids.
Didn’t they *just* get married? Has it been long enough for him to form a real opinion of “this is what marriage is like” vs “this is what long-term dating is like”? (Maybe they got married and we only found out about it recently; I don’t remember.)
He was a violent guy with sociopathic tendencies as a young adult. Has he ever apologized or taken any accountability for the hazing/assaults he led?
I’ll miss him on the deep thoughts about marriage and relationships!!
Will ya look at this guy?
Oh, yes, he is deep thinking and has found The One.
Get Outta Here, Jon.
We know about the hazing.
Not going to forget that either.
These things often reveal to me how much men are influenced by their partners because of their own lack of strong, internal emotional stability. My guess is Jenna didn’t care about marriage, so he didn’t care about marriage, but now he’s with a woman who does, so now he’s flipped the story to match hers. You’ll meet women like this occasionally, but…not quite as often or as much as men, IMO. We don’t raise them to develop that internal emotional world as well.
He only likes the beginnings of things.