'Mad Men' reunion: Jon Hamm, John Slattery on fake cigarettes, finale, blackface episode

USA Today

01-06-2025

'Mad Men' reunion: Jon Hamm, John Slattery on fake cigarettes, finale, blackface episode
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AUSTIN, TX – Pour yourself an old fashioned or a Coca-Cola. We're traveling back to the time of 'Mad Men.'
Jon Hamm, who won an Emmy for his portrayal of the brilliant ad man Don Draper, and John Slattery − who played his boss Roger Sterling – reunited 10 years after the finale of the AMC series, created by Matthew Weiner, as part of the ATX TV Festival. On May 31, the actors took the stage at a packed Paramount Theatre and reminisced about their days filming seven seasons of the drama centered on a New York advertising agency in the 1960s. The series also starred Christina Hendricks, January Jones, Elisabeth Moss and Kiernan Shipka.
Hamm, 54, said that he had a broken hand while filming the scene when Moss' Peggy Olson is promoted to copywriter. So he asked Moss to be mindful and only softly squeeze it during a congratulatory handshake. But she forgot about the injury, Hamm said, and 'hits me with a handshake that is like a president handshake, and a lightning bolt goes all the way through me and I hit the floor so hard.'
Slattery, 62, shared his disdain for his Season 7 mustache and again revealed he had first auditioned for the role of Don, though they'd already cast Hamm in the part. Producers lured Slattery with the Draper role, hoping to convince him to apply for agency owner Roger Sterling, who had a smaller part in the pilot. Hamm says he auditioned for the enigmatic Don, aka Dick Whitman, about nine times.
The 'disgusting' prop booze and cigarettes
Hamm and Slattery dished on the tricks that helped viewers believe they were chain-smoking, booze-guzzling men of that era.
'I think somebody did a count,' Hamm said, 'and in the pilot alone I smoked 75 cigarettes or something.' They were fake, Slattery pointed out. 'That just means that there's no nicotine in them.' Hamm said. 'It doesn't mean you're not burning something and inhaling…'
Hamm said some of the younger actors in the pilot episode vowed to smoke real cigarettes to more authentically portray their characters. 'Within three days,' he said, 'they were yellow and sallow and like, 'This is a terrible idea.''
In place of vodka, the actors would sip water, garnished with onions.
'Pop another pearl onion in your glass of water and then you'd smoke 26 more fake cigarettes, and it was 9:30 in the morning," Slattery said. "It was disgusting.'
Jon Hamm on Don Draper's finale 'revelation'
During the Q&A portion of the panel, a fan asked about Hamm's interpretation of the finale. In the series' last moments, Don dreamed up the 'I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke' ad while meditating on a California cliff.
Weiner envisioned Don's end in Season 1, Hamm said. 'He reached the end of land as far away as he could from his life and realized that his life was creating advertising. That was his revelation, that this is what he is and what he does. He's not Dick Whitman. He's not Don Draper. He's some version of this, but he is an advertising man and that was, I think, positive.'
John Slattery addresses blackface in Season 3
Slattery told fans that when he was asked to sing "My Old Kentucky Home" in blackface in Season 3, he phoned Hamm, seeking his costar's thoughts. Ultimately, Slattery 'felt like, 'Well, this is probably something that occurred and it's probably something that this character would've done. So what leg do I have to stand on not to do it?'
After arriving on location in character, Slattery said, 'The first person I opened the van and saw was a very large African American Los Angeles motorcycle cop, who was helping me open the door.
'We're like face to face,' Slattery continued. 'I had to go and sing that thing in front of them and everybody.'
In 2020, 'Mad Men' added a title card to the episode (the series streams on AMC+ and Philo), prefacing it with a warning of 'disturbing images.'
'In its reliance on historical authenticity,' the card read, 'the series producers are committed to exposing the injustices and inequities within our society that continue to this day so we can examine even the most painful parts of our history in order to reflect on who we are today and who we want to become. We are therefore presenting the original episode in its entirety.'