CONTENDER Q&A

Is Jon Hamm Emmy's main man?

Secrets of smoking ad man Don Draper revealed.

Susan King

Contender Q&A

July 9, 2008

Matinee-idol handsome Jon Hamm, 37, has been a working actor for the last eight years appearing on TV series such as "Providence," "The Division" and "The Unit" and in such films as "Kissing Jessica Stein" and "We Were Soldiers."

But "overnight" stardom hit the St. Louis-native last summer when cable's AMC premiered its acclaimed series "Mad Men," the sophisticated, stylized drama set in the early 1960s on Madison Avenue that follows the lives of the ambitious men and women who work in the cutthroat world of advertising. The hour-long series, which recently won the Peabody and is among the semifinalists for a dramatic series Emmy, was created by executive producer Matthew Weiner ("The Sopranos").

Hamm has already won the Golden Globe and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for his sexy, complex turn as Don Draper, the successful creative director and subsequent junior partner in a large Madison Avenue ad company who has a beautiful wife, two darling children and the house in the 'burbs. He also is a flagrant womanizer who has numerous secrets including the fact that he was born Dick Whitman, the illegitimate child of a prostitute. But he switched dog tags with an officer named Don Draper who was killed while the two men were posted at an isolated base during the Korean War.

The former teacher chatted recently about his life on "Mad Men" and the awards season whirl.

So you're calling from New York?

I am in fact in New York.

Are you on Madison Avenue?

A little south! I'm on Lexington Avenue and Gramercy Park.

"Mad Men" just made the Top 10 finalists for the best dramatic series Emmy. I bet there will be multi-Emmy nominations, including one for yourself, for the series.

You're lips to God's ears.

Well, you got the Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. With the Emmys, if there is no strike, we'll actually see you on stage.

If everything works out as planned, I'll get all my awards without ever having to go on the stage again.... No. No. No. It's actually been amazing to even [think about the Emmys]. Not unlike the Golden Globes, when you look at the other people being mentioned [as nominees] including me, it's just an incredible honor.

It's nearly been a year since "Mad Men" premiered. Did you have any idea at this time last year, the series would become the success it has?

No, of course not. Nobody gets into this business to kind of work their way into the middle. So you hope to be involved with good projects. I think from the beginning that I, along with everybody from AMC and everybody who worked on the show, thought this was a really good project. But the overwhelming response -- and almost universal response -- has been nothing short of breathtaking. We are in New York because we won a Peabody Award -- it just feels great.

You don't think, at least I don't, "I am going to do this to get an Emmy or a Golden Globe," but when other people decide for you that they want to award those things to you it just feels great.

When you got the part did you know that Don Draper had taken the identity of a dead soldier in Korea or was that revealed to you as the scripts were written?

It is a little bit of both. Matthew [Weiner] pretty clearly had it set in his mind, and he kind of let us know in broad strokes how our characters would be developed as the show went on.

And even though he's very successful at his job, Don's not a very happy person.

No, he's not. I think that is one of the larger questions the show tries to ask about American people, American men, American society. Here is a guy who has everything literally and he doesn't seem very happy. So what does that mean? What do we take away from all of that? This country was founded on the pursuit of happiness but it wasn't founded on the pursuit of Cadillacs and country homes and perfect children.

So if you have all of those things that advertising men have told you will make you happy and yet you are not happy, what does that tell you about advertisers? What does that tell you about yourself? I think that's one of the more resonant themes of the show.

And of course he always lives in fear that his past will be uncovered.

I think that is the big part of what informs his daily life. He has got a lot of secrets, and he has to make sure people don't find out about them. Someone was saying Don Draper doesn't need a face-lift because he's wound tight already. That is kind of a big part of his daily existence.

The new season starts...

July 27. Sunday at 9 p.m.

And it's set a couple years in the future?

We don't pick up right where we left off. I am not sure of the exact time line. You will be able to tell that pretty immediately because our characters are in fairly different places from where we last saw them. Over the new 13 episodes we find out what transpired from when we left off to where we are now.

How many cigarettes are smoked on the series in a single episode?

They are all fake cigarettes but you are lighting something and inhaling it. So there's no nicotine and there's no tar. But you are still inhaling a burning something. I think we're single-handedly keeping this fake cigarette company in business.