Jon Hamm learned an important lesson after letting slip on the “Doug Loves Movies” podcast that Mad Men will return March 25: Best let creator and executive producer Matt Weiner do the talking. And so at the show’s cocktail party for the Television Association’s press tour this weekend, Hamm only agreed to talk season five after Weiner himself offered up this nugget: A theme of the season is “Every man for himself.” When we relayed this to Hamm, he said, “Good to know. Yeah, I guess I can get onboard with that as a theme for the show. Why don’t I get these awesome quotes? The funny thing about Matt is that he’s a very good keeper of secrets, until he opens his mouth.”
Weiner wouldn’t elaborate on what’s next for Hamm’s Don Draper, but he did comment on the backlash to Don Draper’s season-four proposal to his comely young secretary, Megan: “The immediate reaction was a big shock to the audience and then everyone was like, ‘Oh, right.’ Megan was saying to him, ‘I don’t care who you are, you can be anyone you want to be.’ She’s 25 years old and he gets to go back to being married to a person who sees him as he wants to be.”
Hamm also spoke to Vulture about directing the season’s second episode. “Part of the fun or the wonder of it for me was pulling back the curtain and seeing a different part of television production I hadn’t been privy to. To see the insane amount of work done by the 250 people who work on the crew and were setting up shots and sets that haven’t been built yet — and then in two days, the magical elves have come in and there’s a room, and it’s wallpapered and decorated and beautiful and it’s astounding. To see the inner workings of that was impressive and exciting and enervating.”
Just like watching the episode will be for the rest of us: By the time it airs, we’ll have waited 532 days for it.
