Jon Hamm Believes Don Draper Was ‘Celebrated for the Wrong Reasons’

For seven glorious seasons, Jon Hamm graced our television screens as chain-smoking, booze-guzzling, frequent-philandering ad-man Don Draper in the AMC series “Mad Men.” He was a part of a golden era of anti-hero television, running next-to or alongside other hit shows like “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad,” all of which have fans who continue to greatly misconstrue the lessons provided by these great narrative works. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Hamm is opening up about the complicated relationship he shares with his most famous character.

“Jimmy Gandolfini, whom I knew a little bit, had a similar relationship to Tony Soprano, and Bryan Cranston had it with Walter White. The character got celebrated for the wrong reasons,” said Hamm. “People thought that Don was this paragon of masculinity or whatever. There were so many think-pieces, and you go, ‘Wait, he was pretty fucked up.’ And I was very happy with how Matt ended the story, but it was also hard.”

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For all the bad Don put out into the world, by the end of the series, the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, decided to leave him on a somewhat positive high-note with the character famously smiling on top of a mountain as he conceives the “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” ad of 1971. Tony Soprano and Walter White didn’t exactly receive the same treatment and when asked if he ever got the opportunity to speak to James Gandolfini or Bryan Cranston about it, Hamm said unfortunately not.

“Jimmy and I have a very interesting connection because when he passed away, his son, Mikey, reached out to me, and I’ve been a bit of a mentor to him,” Hamm said to The Hollywood Reporter. “He said, ‘My dad told me that you were a good guy.’ I literally was like, (pantomimes bawling), ‘OK, let’s be friends.’ And he is. He’s my buddy.”

Remembering an experience he also shared with Cranston, Hamm said,  “Bryan, we did one of our first photo shoots together for AMC’s new lineup. He’s in his tighty-whities and a chemical apron and I’m in a suit with a cigarette. He’s like, ‘You got the better deal on this.’ Turns out he got a pretty good deal, too. But yeah, he’s been a great friend and a good source of wisdom. You go through things like that, and there are very few people you can commiserate with.”

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