January Jones trolls tabloid over ‘desperate bikini pictures’ claim

Actor’s Instagram feed has been a funny and surreal highlight of quarantine

January Jones has trolled the US tabloid The National Enquirer over their apparent plans to declare her a “desperate attention-seeker” in a forthcoming story.

The Mad Men star has become a breakout star of the Covid-19 pandemic, thanks to her funny and often surreal Instagram feed lamenting life in quarantine.

Highlights have included a video in which she dances while wearing a light-up therapy mask and drinking beer from a can. 

Another involved a staged fight between action figures of Jones’s Mad Men character Betty Draper and Emma Frost, her character in X-Men: First Class.

On Wednesday (9 December), Jones posted a screenshot of an email which declares that the National Enquirer is planning to write a story about her Instagram feed, and how it has “worried” her friends.

“The National Enquirer is preparing to publish a story which reports January Jones has worried friends with her series of attention-grabbing bikini pictures and social media posts,” the email reads. 

“Sources claim her content smacks of a ‘desperate cry for attention’ and note how her acting work appears to have dried up before then [sic] pandemic took hold.”

The email added that Jones could contact the editor of The National Enquirer with comment if she wished.

In a caption of the screenshot, Jones joked: “S***. They’ve discovered my secret. Consider this my public apology to my ‘friends’.”

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In a second Instagram photo, Jones posted a selfie of herself in a bikini, along with the caption: “Had to do it. #DESPERATE”

Jones’s posts were met with joyous reaction from her friends and co-stars.

“It was me. I’m worried!!!!!!!” wrote Chrissy Teigen. “F*** yeah!!!” commented Jones’s former Mad Men co-star Alison Brie.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina star Kiernan Shipka, who played Jones’s on-screen daughter Sally Draper on Mad Men, added: “We love to see it”, alongside a middle-finger emoji.