Jon Hamm is not Don Draper, but Don Draper is Jon Hamm. Meaning that if Don Draper is the alcoholic, unreliable and double-dealing main character of Mad Men, Jon Hamm – the actor is nothing like all those bad traits which are associated with the ad man, who wouldn’t have ever existed without mad man Jon Hamm. With the second part of the last season rapidly approaching, the mere mentioning of Mad Men becomes more and more melancholic for both the audience and cast of the television series.
In the light of that both literal and metaphoric End of an Era, Variety met with Mad Men Jon Hamm in order to discover interesting facts about the long-lasting show and about Jon Hamm – the actor behind Don Draper. In a short video of almost 3 minutes and a half, Jon Hamm was made to reveal 7 of his dark little secrets, acting wise and Mad Men-wise.
Firstly, we find out about Jon Hamm’s first acting job, at about five years-old. Then, he was made to play the honey-loving Winnie the Pooh: ‘’I put a pillow on my stomach and tied it there with a belt and put my little bear costume on and… and was Winnie the Pooh.’’ The first movie of Jon Hamm was Early Bird Special in 2001, in which he played the part of Red Headed Cop, ‘’(…) and I did not have red hair.’’ He then says ironically ‘’So that’s how good I was.’’ The third secret reaches the theme of Mad Men and role as Don Draper or actually, retraces the steps of Jon Hamm as he became Mr. Draper, starting with the prolonged audition processes. And Jon Hamm’s favorite Mad Men episode is… you will find out at point number four. Does ‘’What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons’’ ring a bell?
Secret number five is based on an undebatable statement, which is: Don Draper comes with a hat. But the real question is: Did Jon Hamm keep the hat? It seems that no matter how attached he became to that item of clothing, Hamm could not keep The Hat as a token of all ‘’those many years’’. Number six: Finale spoiler. Do you really want to read the last page of the book? Last but not least, secret number seven is a moving, but real story of a collaboration which seemed to last for a life-time. The End of an Era is getting nearer and nearer, after all.