Entertainment

How Jessica Paré drove Don ‘Mad’ last year then had to change her number

SHORE FIRE: Jessica Paré, Jon Hamm film the new season of “Mad Men.” (Apollo/Zeus/FAMEFLYNET PICTURES)

Jessica Paré is the woman who was supposed to save Don Draper from himself.

It’s a tall order as the boozing, womanizing playboy is pretty much a lost cause. But, as Megan Draper, Paré gave it her all in a sensational Season 5 premiere performance.

Megan threw Don a surprise 40th birthday party, the highlight of which was her performance of Gillian Hills’ 1960 pop record “Zou Bisou Bisou,” slinkily performed in a black leotard.

“To have to return to the cast and do a song-and-dance routine in front of all these people, it was very intimidating,” says Paré, 32.

“But it was one of those things you’re lucky enough to do once in your career, and I worked with an incredible choreographer, Mary Ann Kellogg. And even though I got to record in this incredible recording studio, I was terrified.”

The effect was sensational, and Paré says that at the “Mad Men” LA premiere last year, three men — creator Matthew Weiner and cast members John Slattery and Jared Harris — all told her she was going to have to change her phone number.

“I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ They all said, ‘You’ll see.’ ”

In person, Paré is striking and tall, 5-feet-11 in heels, with an open face that easily conveys her character’s innocence and optimism.

With Season 6 of “Mad Men” premiering Sunday night, she acknowledges that Megan’s purity may not have been enough to keep Don Draper from sliding back to the dark side.

“People want to see the Bad Don come back. As an audience member, I get it. As the woman who plays Megan Draper, I’m terrified,” she says.

“We dream of being the total center of our world and being so ruthless. There’s something so darkly satisfying about that, when Don’s acting that way.”

Paré was born in Montreal and worked often enough there as an actress not to have to supplement her income by waitressing. That skill set would have come in handy after she moved to the US and saw her first American series, “Jack & Bobby,” go belly up in 2005, after only one season.

She couldn’t find work, and problems with her citizenship didn’t help.

“I had to get either a really big job or go home,” she says. “Then I got my green card, but I felt the steam evaporated from ‘Jack & Bobby.’ I was starting over.”

Now that she has a really big job, Paré says she doesn’t want to “f- – k it up.”

She’s become the fashion plate for the show, wearing the Pucci-inspired ’60s fashions that were so popular at the end of that decade — as well as falls, the hairpieces that predate the weaves and extensions of today.

One day on the set, the hairstylist who usually attended to Megan’s coiffure had to go home suddenly because of an emergency, and Paré had no one to help her with her wig.

Enter her gallant co-star, Jon Hamm.

“Jon was taking off his makeup, and I told him I couldn’t get my wig off. He said, ‘Don’t worry, we can figure this out. It’s just pinned to your head, right?’ And Jon Hamm and Lana Horochowski, the makeup artist, took off my wig after work one night,” she says. “Otherwise, I would have slept in it.”

Paré is divorced from writer and producer Joe Smith and says that no proposals have come her way since she became so prominent on the show.

But she has met plenty of famous “Mad Men” fans, some at the many events and music festivals she travels to.

Her top three? “Iggy Pop, who watches the show in Miami with his wife, Nina; Mick Jagger and Daniel Day-Lewis.”

She met Day-Lewis at this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, through Harris, who was one of the character actors who co-starred with him in “Lincoln.”

“He turned to me and said, ‘How nice to meet you.’ He actually recognized me, which made me lose my s- – t.’”