IR Print Interview: Jon Hamm For "Mad Men" [AMC/Cable TCA]
Don Draper, as a functionality of modern man set within the structure of a 60s era world, has become a focal point and personification of ambition and cool within the modern TV landscape even as his own personal demons threaten to bring him down. Jon Hamm, embodying Draper in full costume with a tumbler of Scotch at the AMC "Mad Men" Cocktail Party at the Winter Cable TCAs, discusses with The Inside Reel's Tim Wassberg the notion of ambition and the changing face of this titular character.
Tim Wassberg: Can you talk in terms of the new season of the aspect of ambition versus life experience in Don Draper?
Jon Hamm: I think they are very closely related. I think sometimes your life experience can inform your ambition and very often ambition can inform your life experience. And I think that Don has a crazy life experience. He has a double life. He comes from nothing. His ambition has certainly got him where he is. Often the problem with people who are incredibly ambitious is what happens when you get there? Then what?
TW: What questions does Don Draper ask himself?
JH: Is this it? Are we done? What's next? That kind of stuff. If your ambition is to rise to the top and you get there and there is another mountain, you go "Oh Shit!" Or if you look around and there ain't no more mountains, then what?
TW: Can speak on the evolution of Don's psychology both in his physicality and emotionally as he puts up more and more masks.
JH: I think what happens is that everybody gets old. None of us are immune to that particularity. Some age faster than others and other age, psychologically, not at all. What ends up happening is that your life happens, and you get older. And sometimes what happens when you get older is the things you did in your past, which seemed so big and so hard to deal with, kind of don't matter anymore or matter less. I think Don is in a place in his life where that is beginning to happen.
TW: Does that mean Don is more prone to second guessing himself?
JH: I think he is just getting older and realizing the old saying: "Don't sweat the small stuff". And, by the way, it's all "small stuff".