Jon Hamm says working on pornographic films early in his career was “soul-crushing”.

In the late 1990s, the Mad Men actor worked as a set dresser on softcore pornographic films, which he describes as one of the worst jobs he’d ever done.

He said, in response to a recently resurfaced episode of The Big Date on which he featured in 1996: “I was actually at that time working as a set dresser for Cinemax soft-core-porn movies. It was soul-crushing.”

Obviously, the struggle was worthwhile. This summer, Hamm will play the protagonist in Disney’s sports drama “Million Dollar Arm.”

Hamm also acknowledges that playing Draper is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“This is the best job I’ve ever had, and possibly ever will have,” he says, adding, “it’s so much fun to play all of this.”

“It can be relentlessly dark. It can be terribly sexually inappropriate, is a way to say it. But who else gets a chance to do any of that stuff? There’s so much there.”

Jon is also highly engaged in the drama’s plotlines, with show creator Matthew Weiner saying that he knows “everything” that will happen, and the writers frequently seek Jon’s advice when they get “stuck.”

Weiner stated, “He knows everything. He’s the first, outside the writers’ room. I try stuff out on him. When we get stuck in the writers’ room, I go down there and have a conversation with him.”

Jon Hamm has previously discussed working in that industry with Elle in August 2009, stating, ““It was soul-crushingly depressing. There was no actual f******, but it was so sad; the actors were dead but they were trying their best. I was like, man, this can’t f****** be it.”

He went on the Late Show a few months later, in October 2009, to inform David Letterman that he didn’t enjoy that experience.

In September of 2010, Hamm explained to The Guardian why porn needs set dressers in the first place. “You gotta move cameras around, and ashtrays; and continuity is apparently an issue,” he remarked.