Christina Hendricks is heading back to television with SundanceTV's Hap and Leonard . An adaptation of the characters created by novelist Joe R. Lansdale, Hap and Leonard follows its two titular heroes (played by James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams) as they try to track down missing loot in East Texas and end up in over their head.

Christina Hendricks and James Purefoy on Hap and Leonard

Hendricks plays Trudy, Hap's ex-wife and the "femme fatale" of the story. Sitting down with IGN, she talked about why she couldn't say no to the role, plus opened up about saying goodbye to Mad Men and why she's so excited for her upcoming involvement with the "so depraved" Bad Santa 2.

Christina Hendricks on Hap and Leonard

Christina Hendricks, Jimmi Simpson and Pollyanna McIntosh on Hap and Leonard

Christina Hendricks, James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams on Hap and Leonard

It was weird, because I really didn't want to do anything. [laughs] I thought I could use a little break, and I went straight from Mad Men to doing another period, which was super fun, and just wasn't ready to go into another series. I took two or three months off and relaxed and read a bunch of things. They brought this script to me, and it came from my AMC family, which was nice that they thought of me so soon. My manager was like, "You're going to kill me, but you've got to read this." [laughs] I read it, and I just loved it. I wanted to be Trudy. I wanted to play Trudy. I couldn't pass it up, and I went, "Oh, God, here we go." Next, I was in Louisiana -- for months!You know, I think falling into a southern accent was kind of easy for me. My grandmother and my aunts and my cousins all have southern accents, but from Georgia. So what was tricky for me was to not fall back on the ear that I know and make sure that it was southern Texas and a specific area. So that was something I really worked on hard, to make sure that it was the right southern accent, the right character. But it's fun. It took me awhile to drop it after I left.That's certainly how it was presented to me, especially because it comes from these pulp fiction novels. I think there are sort of stereotypical characters that you want to be like. You know, when you look at a pulp fiction novel, there's the woman with a half-torn dress on, and we did want her to have an element of that. But I don't think as an actor you can approach a character with a label next to it. You really have to read what's on the page. I think the thing that's cool about her is that quite immediately you realize, if she is a femme fatale, she's one in a very interesting and quirky package, because this isn't -- she's not like, [sings] "The minute you walked in the room..." [laughs] It's not like that. She works at Family Burger, and she's a hippie, so it's all these things that confuse your brain a little bit, which I liked.Aw, I just love them. I haven't even had a chance to hang out with them. Well, they were already great friends.Yeah, they had worked on a project I think nine years before. So they had this great camaraderie, already got along great. I was really the new kid in the bunch. ... But they were really welcoming to me. I think me coming straight from Mad Men, where the set was so regimented -- I mean, I was the person on set who was like, "These lines were not here," like doing continuity and being like, "I'm sorry, but this is a newspaper from 1994. Come on, guys!" And they were like, "OK, Miss Priss!"Exactly! But you know, you get trained after nine years, and it's a quality I'm actually happy that I have now. But I think I came in with maybe a bit of a rigid way that I work, and that got broken down very quickly. We just had fun. They're just very easy to have a banter in the pretend history that you have to come up with for these characters. It was easy to get them.Or not! Or take it and be so happy that you got this gift of the technicalities of things. Because if you have the technicalities, then you can have them in the back of your head, and then you can lose them. I just happen to be sort of a technical person anyway, so I'm going to grab onto those things maybe more than others do.Honestly, I would have to say, in almost every regard, it was school for me working with those actors, who are some of the best actors in the world. Every scene that I did with them I felt like I got better as an actor, better at listening, better at being in the moment with them. Also, like I said, everyone on the show was meticulous about what they did: writing, the set decoration, the props, the costumes, the hair and makeup. So now I don't put up with any less. [laughs] I sort of expect it. I know it can be done, so why not do it?Get it right!"And these lines ain't gonna cut it, lady!"I was thrilled. I didn't know if I could be. I mean, some people didn't think [it was happy].I think it depends on where your priorities are.I think it was a happy ending, but bittersweet in some ways. But some people were like, "Oh, it's so horrible she didn't get the guy!" And I was like, "But she got the business and the confidence and the future with her son." I remember an interviewer was like, "Oh... yeah." I was like, "Clearly you want a boyfriend!" [laughs]I learned early on to not have theories. Matt was constantly coming up with something so creative and new that I would not have imagined, I didn't bother doing that. However, he did throw me in the final season. The final season was one of the first seasons that I really didn't know what was going to happen. Most of the time he would pretty much tell me. So this whole romance threw me. From script to script I was like, "Does she end up with this guy?" So I was on the same rollercoaster that the audience was on, until the very end.It was! Because it really did look like she was going to end up with him.Yeah, it's raunchy. The script is so depraved. [laughs] To me it just makes me laugh, and I actually hadn't seen the first one. Everyone I knew had seen it, and I'd heard such great things about it. So I watched the first one over the holidays, and I laughed my ass off. And this script is just as good, if not better.Yeah! I'm looking for anything. Between my manager and my agent and I, we just read everything that comes across the table, and the things that we respond to we respond to. We were just like, "This is hilarious." So that just seemed to be the right time for it.

Hap and Leonard airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on SundanceTV.Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Follow her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz