The Saturday Evening Post sat down with series creator Matt Weiner, Jon Hamm and five other key cast members to celebrate the final season of Mad Men. Below are some excerpts from the piece.
John Hamm on Don Draper
“Don Draper is a guy that looks good in all appearances and yet is essentially a disaster.”
January Jones (Betty) on fans’ reactions to her character
“People come up to me, and they straight up say that they dislike me.”
Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell) on his wildest post-fame purchase
“The wildest thing I’ve bought is a Japanese toilet, a Toto, a fancy and expensive toilet … The Ferrari of toilets.”
John Slattery (Roger Sterling) on seeing his audition tape recently
“You watch yourself on the audition tape and flashback, ‘Oh my God, I started out and my kid was six years old, and he’s in high school now.’ You change, especially physically. I feel like I’m 100 years older than when we started.”
Elizabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) on character judgments
“The only time I heard a problem was people questioning my character’s choices in dating. Which I have in real life as well. But I’m always like, ‘Really? You never made a mistake in who you dated?’ And that’s Peggy’s story. She keeps making her mistakes over and over unfortunately.”
Christina Hendricks (Joan Harris) on the new attention focused on her
“I’ve had days of anxiety or panic about being looked at or being talked about, and that’s made me just want to stay home.”
Executive Producer and series creator Matt Weiner on fans’ investment in the show
“It’s been an education for me to realize that what a lot of people find entertaining is feeling superior to the activity that’s going on on the screen. They want to have their values reaffirmed; they want to have this sort of narcissistic gratification of ‘I know what’s going to happen.’ ‘I know how this world is going to work out.’ Or, ‘Thank God I’m not like that.’”
Hamm on the secret to the show’s success
“There are so many variables. At any point in the development of the show, somebody could have made a decision that ruined it. They could have put a flaw in it and magnified over time, but it didn’t happen. Instead, everybody made the right decisions, because everybody is in it for the right reasons.”
