As she reaches the end of "a beautiful journey," the actress looks back at its start

She’s so not a Peggy. She’s totally a Betty.

But January Jones says that when she initially auditioned for a part on Mad Men, she actually read for the part of Peggy several times for show creator Matthew Weiner.

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“Matt [then] wrote a couple of scenes for me to read for Betty because she wasn’t a character yet. She was at the end of the pilot, but there weren’t any scenes for her,” Jones says.

She obviously got the part, while Elisabeth Moss snagged the role of assistant-turned-ad-exec Peggy.

Jones says that being a part of the beloved drama has long been an exercise in patience, first from waiting to see if it would get picked up [which it did, a full year after shooting the pilot] to the breaking up of the seasons. “There’s been a lot of time in between seasons,” she says. “I almost can’t even remember my life before [Mad Men].

As the show draws to a close later this spring, Jones will also say goodbye to being Betty, Don Draper’s complex ex-wife. “It’s been a beautiful journey,” she says.