While Don Draper's son Bobby was played by four different young actors throughout the course of Mad Men, his daughter Sally Draper was always embodied by Kiernan Shipka. She was only eight years old when the period drama premiered on AMC in 2007, and Sally was only a recurring character. By Season 4, Shipka was a pre-teen, and Sally was taking on a much bigger role in the show as a main cast member, her relationship with her mysterious ad man father (Jon Hamm) making up a considerable portion of those last few seasons. Shipka earned considerable acclaim for her performance and won two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Ensemble alongside the rest of the Mad Men cast in 2008 and 2009. And after growing up onscreen, the actor is still there at 22. Read on to learn about her life now and how she stays close with her former co-stars.
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Sally wasn't her only childhood role.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for AFI)Mad Men was Shipka's breakout project, but it wasn't her first. Prior to booking the part of Sally, she played small roles in shows including Monk, Cory in the House, and Heroes. Then, in between filming seasons of her hit AMC drama, Shipka took on other jobs, including voicing animated characters in The Legend of Korra and Sofia the First and starring in the TV movie Flowers in the Attic.
She's continued acting into adulthood.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Tory BurchAfter Mad Men came to an end in 2015, Shipka hit the ground running. Then a teenager, she popped up in the FX series Feud: Bette and Joan as Bette Davis' daughter B.D. Hyman and in episodes of American Dad and Family Guy before landing her first series lead. The young actor was cast as the titular magical adolescent in Netflix's Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, based on the Archie comics. The show lasted for two seasons; after its cancellation, Shipka reprised the role of Sabrina in the CW supernatural teen drama, Riverdale. This year, she starred with Diane Kruger in the Roku Channel series Swimming With Sharks. She's also acted in movies including the horror flick, The Silence, and the holiday rom-com Let It Snow.
Shipka has a handful of projects upcoming, including the HBO series The White House Plumbers and the movies Wildflower and Berlin Nobody.
Her boyfriend is from a famous Hollywood family.
Shipka is reportedly dating Christian Coppola, a 29-year-old filmmaker who makes frequent appearances on her Instagram. In an interview with Variety in 2018, he clarified that, though he is related to the more famous Coppolas (Francis Ford and Sofia to name a few), he's not getting any doors opened for him. “I’m not close enough to get invited for Thanksgiving dinner," he said. "There’s no real direct connection. I really see myself as my own entity and I want to tell my stories.
It's unclear how serious Shipka and Coppola are or exactly how long they've been dating. (Outlets began linking them in 2019.) That's because Shipka keeps her love life quiet and hasn't directly commented about her supposed boyfriend in any interviews. She did, however, talk about one early instance in which a possible love connection was thwarted by her bringing along a famous family friend as a third wheel. In an April 2022 interview with Seth Meyers, Shipka explained that she has been close with Timothée Chalamet since they did the 2015 movie One & Two together, and that she once had him tag along to a lunch she had with a boy.
"I didn't necessarily know what the vibe was and I wanted to bring a friend," she said. "And Timmy was the only person around, so I brought him, which in hindsight is maybe not the most polite thing to do because I do think the other boy might have liked me a little bit."
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She has a bond with her Mad Men parents.
Cindy Ord/Getty ImagesHer days of putting on Sally's saddle shoes are far behind her, but Shipka has remained close with both Hamm and January Jones, who played unhappy housewife, Betty Draper. Though she told Andy Cohen during a recent episode of Watch What Happens Live that it was "more intimidating" acting with Jones, since Betty was always "meaner" to Sally, the actors themselves have a way healthier relationship. In 2019, Jones and Shipka reunited to model in a Rodarte campaign together. And last year, Jones posted a photo of herself, Shipka, and Christina Hendricks (Joan on Mad Men) having a "girls night."
Shipka told Cohen that Hamm was the most "protective" of her on the set, and their father-daughter relationship has persisted. Hamm was in attendance at Shipka's 20th birthday party in 2019, and she captioned a shot of the two of them in the photo booth, "Dad showed up!" They reunited again this year, posing together at Vanity Fair's Oscar party. And Shipka didn't let this Father's Day pass without posting a tribute to her onscreen dad on her Instagram Story.
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