Ten years ago, Mad Men ended after seven seasons. It was my favorite TV show for years, and while I prefer the earlier seasons, the quality of the show did not drop off (in retrospect). The storylines were realistic, the characters were nuanced and it was all so well-written. Well, to celebrate/commemorate a decade since the end of Mad Men, the ATX Festival invited Jon Hamm and John Slattery to a forum to talk about the show and how it changed their lives. It would have been great to see Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks there too, but maybe they were busy. Hamm and Slattery ended up revealing some of the tricks with all of the “cigarettes” they had to smoke and all of the “cocktails” they had to drink on-camera.
Ten years after “Mad Men” wrapped, stars Jon Hamm and John Slattery still have fond memories of the landmark AMC drama. Well, perhaps except for the smoking. And the onion water. Reuniting Saturday at Austin’s ATX TV Festival. Hamm and Slattery spoke to moderator Noah Hawley (who worked with Hamm on the most recent season of “Fargo”) about the legacy of the show, how it still resonates with both them and their fans — and yes, all those cigarettes.
That couldn’t have been good for you, Hawley said. Replied Hamm: “Oh, it was not. Yeah, I think somebody did a count, and in the pilot alone, I spoke 75 cigarettes… They are fake cigarettes, but that just means that there’s no nicotine in them. It doesn’t mean you’re not burning something.”
Because “Mad Men” was shot in Los Angeles but took place in New York, much of the filming was done indoors. “We didn’t go outside, which was awesome and not awesome,” Hamm said. “The whole thing, the whole stage is full of fake cigarette smoke.”
Slattery noted that the fake cigarettes meant that they were smoking rose petals and marshmallow. While that may sound nice, it wasn’t. Then, add to that what was used to replicate a vodka martini: A glass of water with onion in it. “Oh, the breath was lovely,” quipped Hamm. Slattery pointed out that the “vodka” was fake, but the onion was very real. “Pop another pearl onion in your glass of water, and then smoke 26 more fake cigarettes and it’s 9:30 in the morning!” he said.
At least it was slightly better than smoking real cigarettes — something that Hamm said “some of the younger actors” tried to do while shooting the “Mad Men” pilot. “They were like, ‘We’re gonna smoke real cigarettes. We really want to, feel it and do it,’ “ Hamm recalled. “And I was like, ‘let me know how that goes.’ And within three days, they were yellow and sallow. This is a terrible idea.”
Hawley pointed out that it’s similar to another trick that actors soon learn: Take very small bites when eating food on camera, since you’ll be doing it over and over again. “And move [the food] around the plate,” Hamm added. “We can’t all be Brad Pitt. Would that we could!”
Cigarettes, of course, were an important part of setting the scene for what it was like to be an advertising exec on Madison Avenue in the early 1960s. “I remember at some point, having a conversation with the executives at AMC,” Hamm said. “They said, ‘Do they have to smoke?’ That was like, Are you f–king kidding me? Yes, they literally have to. They’re addicted to cigarettes. It’s kind of why they’re sold. They’re super popular!”
During the panel, Hamm reminisced about how much “Mad Men” changed his life. “I started that when I was 35 years old. Went right through to the age of 45,” he said. “So it’s kind of a transitional moment in life and time. Our real lives happen, relationships started and ended, and people had babies, got married and got divorced, and all this sh-t happened in the real world. It almost seemed displaced from that in a lot, in a weird way, because so much of working on the show was stepping into a time capsule for real.
The thing about AMC wondering if they really had to “smoke” on camera is so funny, because Lucky Strike cigarettes were such a huge plot point across multiple seasons of Mad Men. Like, Don even wrote a letter to the New York Times after they lost the Lucky Strike account! Anyway, I go back and forth on Jon Hamm – I’m pretty sure he’s a massive douche in real life, but I also think he gave one of the greatest acting performances of all time as Don Draper. I kept wanting Hamm to back it up with his post-Mad Men roles, but I think he realized pretty quickly that he would never find that kind of meaty role and writing again.
Photos courtesy of WENN.com/Wenn/Avalon, Kevin Perkins, PacificCoastNews.com/Avalon, Avalon Red.
