‘I'm glad I'm still alive': Jon Hamm and John Slattery on ‘Mad Men,' 10 years later

It has been 10 years since Don Draper bought the world a Coke — but the legacy of Mad Men lives on, in (somewhat) good health.
"I'm glad I'm still alive, basically, because of the amount of cigarettes I smoked," joked Jon Hamm. "But the amount of work we put into it feels commensurate with the amount of love we're feeling as well. So that's pretty awesome."
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Hamm reunited with his Mad Men costar John Slattery to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the finale of Mad Men, the multiple Emmy-winning drama, at the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas. At the panel, which was moderated by Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley, the two actors about their experiences making the groundbreaking series.
Slattery recounted that he'd originally auditioned the role for Don Draper. "I called them back and said, 'Are you sure that's the part they want me to read?'" he said. He went ahead with it, and did all of his homework. "And then they said, 'Here's the thing, we already have that guy.'" (Turns out they thought he wouldn't have come in if they knew they only wanted him for Roger Sterling.)
Quipped Hamm, "I'm glad I told you that I had the part because they didn't tell me I had the part." Hamm recalled that he had about nine auditions, and only got confirmation that he'd landed the iconic role when someone made an off-handed comment during an elevator ride.
The show's impact was near-instantaneous. "It rang a bell pretty quick," said Hamm. "It was almost immediately kind of recognized as something. Now that doesn't mean anybody saw it, but people heard about it."
Mad Men, which was created and executive produced by Matthew Weiner, won the Emmy Award for Best Drama Series its first season — it would go on to win that trophy a total of four times during its seven-season run, earning 16 Emmys overall — but while that early success was exciting, it was also 'intimidating,' Hamm acknowledged. 'I just remember looking over at Matt and going like, 'My God. This guy has to do all of this again, from a blank page.' And I thought, 'I wouldn't want to trade with him.' But you just have to enjoy the terror.'
And while the pilot made an impact, the show only improved from there. Recalled Slattery "I remember walking in early on with Lizzie Moss to a table read of the second or third episode, and I said, is it me, or is it are these things getting better?" he said. Given the amount work that goes into a pilot, he said, "sometimes the quality drops off. And this didn't."
Weiner always had a clear vision for the finale, said Hamm. 'Matt had the end scene during season one. He knew he wanted Don to end up somewhere on the West Coast and dreaming up that Coca-Cola commercial,' said Hamm. 'He didn't know how many episodes he would have between here and there, he didn't know how many seasons, he didn't know any of that. But he knew that he wanted this guy to end up there. The rest of it was very murky. ... But I trusted him as the caretaker of all of these characters to not bang on a key that comes out with a false note.'
That said, he admitted to being initially disappointed in the final season, which saw Don off on his own journey, removed from his colleagues — and Hamm, separated from the co-stars he'd grown close to.
'I really had a hard time with that,' he said. 'And now, of course, in retrospect, I thought, well, that's perfect. What better way to feel the ambiance and the loneliness of this character's journey than to be like, 'You've got nobody left, and you're on the road by yourself. In retrospect, good job, man.''
The actors reminisced about Weiner's infamous meticulous attention to detail, shooting in L.A. for New York ('We never went outside,' said Hamm), the martinis ('The vodka was fake, but the onions were real,' said Slattery). and all those fake cigarettes ('Somebody did a count and in the pilot alone, I smoked 75 cigarettes,' said Hamm).
'I remember at some point having a conversation with the executives at AMC, the network that aired the series, when they said, 'Do they have to smoke?'" said Hamm. "And I was like, 'Are you f--king kidding me? Yes, they literally have to. They're addicted. Kinda why they're sold.'
Asked about the now-infamous blackface episode, Slattery recalled his initial hesitation when he got the script. 'I felt like, well, this is probably something that occurred, and it's probably something that this character would have done,' he said. 'And then I got all dressed up in the outfit and got in the van and rolled to the set. And the first person I saw when I got to the set was a very large African-American Los Angeles motorcycle cop who was helping me open the door.'
Hamm acknowledged the show dealt with issues that are 'problematic,' adding 'That's how we learn,' he said. 'It's a wonderful thing to learn. ... We had to lean into the good, the bad, and the ugly of all of it, and understand that in this lens of the now, and part of it was representation of Black people in the '60s. Why aren't there any black people in here? There are you just don't see them because they were not seen. That's not great. But the versatility of it is there. And the show ended up dealing with all of those issues as uncomfortable as they made those characters.'
Hawley asked the actors about the feeling of the show being about "we don't understand this world anymore," as the '50s transitioned abruptly into the '60s. ("I wonder what that's like," quipped Hamm.)
"There's a moment when Don puts on a Beatles album and just is like, 'This is garbage. I don't get this, what is this nonsense?'" said Hamm. "People have to understand, Frank Sinatra was still on the top 10 list when the Beatles were selling records. It was very much a a crash of the Eisenhower era and the new era." He pointed to the 1966 Best Picture nominees, which included The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, Camelot — and Dr. Dolittle.
Having worked with Hamm on Fargo, Hawley asked him about his creative process with Weiner, and what conversations they had about the inconsistencies in Don Draper, 'At a certain point, he's this person because at the very base of him, as we find out over the course of seven seasons, he is not the person who he says he is,' he said. 'His foundation is profoundly fake.'
Hamm revealed that the first-season episode '4G,' where we meet Dick Whitman's brother, was written in response to a note from AMC asking for more understanding of Don's behavior. 'There is certainly that mercurial nature to Don. And he's searching, as he is over the course the of the of the 92 episodes for what is the truth? Who is he at the end of it? He ends up on a cliff at the end of the things — but on a cliff in a good way.'
As for Roger Sterling, 'Those scripts were so well-crafted that there weren't a lot of questions as to how to play those scenes,' said Slattery.
Slattery said they often learned what was coming up in table reads, calling them 'electric.' He recounted the season three episode with the schoolteacher. 'There's like 35 people with scripts, and everybody turns the page at the same time. 'Exterior, and the schoolteacher's still sitting in the car,' and everybody's like, 'Oh my God!' Everybody had forgotten that the schoolteacher was still sitting outside. It was incredible. So that's how we would find stuff out.'
The actors also praised their costars at length, including Christina Hendricks (Joan), January Jones (Betty), and Elisabeth Moss (Peggy), and the characters they embodied. 'It was an amazing thing to watch Peggy's ascendancy and confidence and place in the world, not just of the agency, but in the world of the business, in the world of the culture, in the world of New York City — the comfort level from being a bridge-and-tunnel kid to fully owning being a Manhattanite was amazing,' said Hamm.
'It was so definitely handled, and those actresses especially just f--king crushed it in every in every possible way.'
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