January Jones stars alongside Ethan Hawke and Zoe Kravitz in Andrew Niccol’s new film Good Kill, which takes a look behind the scenes of the United States’ drone program.

January Jones On ‘Good Kill’

Jones plays Molly Egan in Good Kill, the wife of Hawke’s Major Tommy Egan, a disenchanted remote drone pilot who desperately wants to get back to flying in a cockpit in the Middle East. “While happy that her husband is at home now instead of away, there is very little to no communication between the two,” Jones explained to uInterview exclusively. “So my story, my character’s story, is just that struggle to gain any sort of information from him and try to make the home life a happier place.”

At the start of Good Kill, the Egans’ marriage is frayed. But as the story moves forward, with Tommy taking orders from the CIA that see him committing morally questionable murders from the safety of a trailer in the Nevada desert, the emotional chasm between them grows wider. The job leaves Tommy an alcoholic shell of the once present and loving husband and father, and Molly no longer able to clean up the pieces from his messes.

Prior to taking on the part in Good Kill, Jones knew little about the drone program, let alone the effects it can have on the soldiers called on to be a part of it, and their families by extension. Jones believes that the film has the ability to start a conversation about the issue, but that it doesn’t make an effort to mold people’s opinions.

“I was aware that there was [a drone program], but I knew very little about it and that was what was very intriguing to me about doing the project was just that I thought it was a story that needed to be told and it was going to open up a lot of conversation about it that was necessary,” Jones said. “What the movie does really well, what Andrew did really well, was just to give you information and give you the pros and the cons and not force a certain opinion down your throat. I think that by the end of the movie, you’re able to form your own opinion about it and that’s what it did for me too.”

Jones was grateful to be a part of a project in Good Kill that opened her eyes to something she’d previously not been particularly familiar with – as well as the chance to work opposite her longtime idol Ethan Hawke.

“I mean, he’s a fantastic person and an incredible actor and I feel like it was sort of a wish fulfillment,” Jones told uInterview. “I’ve been a fan of his since I was a little girl and he just puts you completely at ease and a place where you can trust him and feel safe and we had a lot of heavy stuff to do together. So it was really fun.”

“We goofed off a lot,” Jones added. “Whenever you do something that’s so serious and heavy you have to make it lighter on the side.”

Good Kill hits theaters May 15.