Mad Men’s Jon Hamm

This interview originally appeared in the MIPTV 2011 issue of World Screen.

 

It’s slick, it’s sexy, it’s stylish and oh so well written and acted. It’s Mad Men, the first basic-cable drama to win a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama—and it did so back to back for three years—and the only show to win the Golden Globe Award for best drama three years in a row. Created and executive produced by Matthew Weiner, Mad Men looks at the ruthlessly competitive world of Madison Avenue advertising firms in the ’60s. It gained tons of critical acclaim, became an international hit, catapulted AMC from relative obscurity to being a top player in the scripted drama genre, and has women around the world drooling over Don Draper. Jon Hamm, who plays Draper, talks about the complexity of his character and the success of the show.

 

WS: What appealed to you about the show and the character you play?

HAMM: Five years ago, when we started making the first episode of Mad Men, it was for a very tiny network in the U.S. that no one had really ever heard of and that did not have a history of making original programming. We all took a risk as actors signing on for this. But what the script had going for it was that it was tremendously well written by Matthew Weiner, who was coming off one of the greatest shows in the history of television, The Sopranos. So we all decided we love this show. We don’t care that it’s not on some huge network, that it’s not got some huge studio behind it. We all were basically these little engines that could. And we decided that this is such a different show, and such an interesting piece of television that we wanted to be a part of it. And we created something that we were very proud of.

 

The fact that it’s now four seasons in and it’s found this worldwide audience is baffling to us, and yet also incredibly gratifying. So, yes, for me it was just that I was tremendously attracted to the script and the character and how different it was. It was something to really be proud of as an actor.

 

WS: And the fact that the characters are so flawed must be fantastic for you as an actor.

HAMM: The fact that these characters are tremendously flawed is really a compliment to Matt’s writing. He’s created these incredibly flawed characters that make so many bad decisions, that make so many mistakes, and yet are so eminently relatable and you can identify with them, and you can actually hope that some day they’ll have redemption. That’s what people identify with. I think that’s why the show has reached out beyond just a Stateside audience, and has really resonated with people in South America and Scandinavia and Mexico and Germany. People are finding that’s the human condition. And that, nestled into this show, is what I think made it resonate worldwide.

WS: Your character began as the man that every man would want to be: good looking, with a beautiful wife, a fantastic job, respected in his profession—and in the fourth season he was falling apart. What are the challenges in dealing with the changes in Don Draper’s life?

HAMM: One of the tenets in Matt’s philosophy of storytelling is that actions have consequences. The fourth season for Don has been the result of many of those actions that he had undertaken in the first three seasons. Everything’s kind of coming home to roost at this point. This lifetime of bad decisions and mistakes [is] finally landing. And he’s getting older, and he’s finding that he doesn’t have the ability to pull out of these terrible situations as easily as he once did. Drinking and smoking and trying to manage all of these relationships is harder and harder.

 

The more you start telling lies, the harder it is to get out of them. And he’s realizing that’s not really a way to live a life. Obviously, the wonderful irony of Don Draper is that from the exterior it looks like he has it all. He at one point had the beautiful wife, and the two kids, and the great car, and the great job, and the house in the country and everything else—but, inside, the man was a wreck. And I think that that interior is now becoming exterior for Don and he’s got to figure out a way to handle that.

 

WS: Do you give Matt ideas for story lines?

HAMM: Yes and no. We have a very open line of communication to Matt. He’s on the set a lot and he’s wide open for questions. And the good thing about Matt is that he has answers. And he has very strong opinions. He has very particular opinions about why things are the way they are. If you disagree with him, it’s a conversation. And if your way makes sense, or is better, eventually he’ll come around to that. But it’s a conversation. The thing about Matt is, we’ve sat with our own characters for five years now. He’s sat with all of them for five years and essentially created all of them, so he knows a lot about them as well, but from a far, far different perspective. He’s writing this entire show, conducting this entire orchestra. And he knows, far better than we do, where the end of that is going to be and why we need to do what we need to do to get where we need to go.

 

So, a lot of it is just taking it on faith that we’re going to get to that end point, but I think that our faith has certainly been rewarded. In my opinion, we’ve had such a wonderful four seasons of story that has really come and turned in ways that we—that I—certainly never would have been able to guess. And that’s all thanks to Matt. This is a man who created these stories out of thin air.

 

WS: How much do you know in advance?

HAMM: We don’t know anything in advance! I usually sit with Matt before he starts writing the show. We sit down to lunch for two or three hours and we talk about possibilities of where the next season is going. I’ve done that now at the beginning of the first, second, third and fourth season. It’s a great, very loose, very unstructured conversation. We don’t sit down to map anything out or write anything down, although he does take notes sometimes. It’s great because I get to have some kind of input, and it just feels like a very familiar conversation.

 

But I don’t think many of us get to see where we’re going. In fact, if we go into the writer’s room, they generally cover things up and don’t want us to see—and I don’t want to see, either. I don’t want to play the end of the story. You want to just come across things, as you would in life.

WS: Is there a moral compass on this show? Some might think Cooper is, because he’s older.

HAMM:No one on our show is evil. Cooper, I think, has the most Zen approach to it. Being this sort of elder statesman of the group, he has the best perspective on things. But also he has his own flaws and issues. So, again, it’s a story about people trying to do the best they can with what they have, which is, in many ways, the American dream. Using what you have to get what you want. But it’s the wonderful irony of the whole thing—these are people whose job is to define and sell happiness. And the fact that they are, for the most part, unclear as to their own happiness is the beautiful irony. That’s what I love about the show—the fact that it really explores that irony.