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John Hamm on Mad Men
By Fred Topel | Image property of AMC
Mad Men
Mad Men returned for its third season on August 16 with Don Draper (Jon Hamm) returning from his trip to California, only to go away on another business trip. Eventually this season, he’s going to have to deal with his wife and family.
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“Don's a damaged guy, there's no two ways around it,” Hamm said. “He's got issues, and not a little bit of it comes from his childhood, and not a little of it comes from his choices, but he's definitely living with the consequences of his actions. When an opportunity like that presents itself, with like, ‘I’ll take you out of all that. Get out of all that. Go away. Just go away.’ But Don going away is a pretty enticing offer. He’s done it a lot in his life.”
Staying put may be the theme of this season. “I think he realizes that going away isn't the answer all the time. I think what he really needed was to be grounded and to really stay and to really be who he is. I think that's what he had with Anna. When he went back to Anna Draper and said, 'Anna, I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing. Help me.' And I think she did.”
If you’re new to Mad Men, two seasons can be a lot to catch up on. Maybe you can just step in now and catch up if you like what you see.
“I watched The Wire completely out of order. I watched Season 5 first, then I watched seasons 1 through 4, and I watched 1 through 4 in about a span of a week and a half, because I was consuming it, because it's an excellent television program. I felt the same way about The Sopranos. The Sopranos was my last appointment television, like I must watch the show! If I don't watch the show, I am going to be bummed out until I watch the show. And I what David did on The Sopranos and Matt and Alan and Phil, and all the people that we know that worked on the show, it was so perfect, and I loved the way it ended. I loved the way that this whole thing was this story. It felt like closing the cover on a great book, and going, 'Ah man, that was a great story that I am going to think about for the rest of my life.' I hope we can do that.”
Still, Hamm understands if you don’t jump right into Mad Men. “Certainly, I think you can get a vibe off the show from any one episode but I think that so much of what we do is told in very long character arcs that it's hard to get a larger sense of the show. So I'm afraid that someone who watched only one episode of the show will just say, 'It's boring, I don't care. I don't know what's going on.' But not unlike The Wire, if you come in the middle of season three, you are going to go, 'I dont give a sh*t, I don’t care, who is that guy? Why is that person talking?' And, yet, if you watch it, you watch it, you realize the reason that guy is talking is because it's so great.”
Mad Men airs Sundays at 10 on AMC.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of AMC
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