MR: I know we can’t really talk specifics about the season premiere, but I would just say the season premier is eventful.
JH: I agree. I would follow up that up and say that what I’ve seen in the third season is eventful.
MR: Really?
JH: I think, that both our of seasons have been eventful in many ways. But I think that as we move forward in the timeline, obviously what ends up happening is the events of the culture and of the country and of the time start to ramp up significantly and it obviously has an effect.
MR: Is it a factor of the times themselves become faster and faster and the pace of change speeds up?
JH: I think that’s a big part of it. I think we started to see a little bit of that in Season 2 when the incredible technology of the Xerox machine was brought in. And you start getting this sort of Moore’s Law sort of thing where everything keeps [progressing] exponentially. And that’s the way of the world. Don had a little bit of experience in that when he went out to California and saw what was happening with the defense industry and the military-industrial complex and where that was headed.
MR: Yeah. It seems like part of the theme of the show has been that Don and his cronies and people at the agency are perhaps going to be left behind. When I watched the season premiere, I had the thought — not for the first time — “Wow, maybe Don will be able to reassure the clients and still do all that, but as an ad man, is he actually going to be able to fit in and be at the top of his game?”
JH: I think that that’s the way of everybody. And obviously that’s a big fear that Don has and I think that’s a big fear that Roger has and I think that’s a big fear that Pete has. I think everybody has a little bit of that. And how do you manage that fear with still being creative and still being good at your job?
And a lot of that is politics. A lot of that is keeping people on your side and, so I think that, again, there are some new situations and new waters that he has to navigate in almost every aspect of his life. And the [poster for Season 3, which shows Don] sitting at his office while the water rises up around him is not coincidental. I haven’t read the whole rest of the season [on the day of the interview, "Mad Men" was in the midst of shooting Episode 10], but those waters are rising in every possible way.
MR: Well, I thought it was a really clever thing to introduce the Brits, because for us as viewers, it’s kind of seeing the agency in a new light and for everyone at Sterling Cooper, there are new players in the game, if you will. It’s like there’s a new person at the table and they have no allegiance to any previous faction or party and they don’t care what happened before.
JH: Exactly. They don’t care, they’re interested in making money. And that’s obviously the trade-off that you get when you sell your company and you sell your independence. That’s been kind of a hallmark of Don’s character — he’s never wanted to give up that independence. Even to the point of lying to his wife.
I mean, he is a very solitary man in many ways. And that is a big part of his character and when the company gets sold, part of that is taken away. He has the bargaining power of, “I don’t have a contract.” Which is how he was able to get out from under Duck [in Season 2]. But it presents a lot of challenges when that is taken away. And I think all of our guys are starting to feel that.
MR: Well, there are huge forces at work, changing the how the world works — like now.
JH: Absolutely. What does the future hold, you know?
MR: Yeah. Only good things.
JH: Only things.
MR: Only things, exactly.
JH: It’s weird how when we started this show and we were coming out of Bush v. Gore and all this other stuff and paralleling that with Nixon versus Kennedy. Now we’re in this sort of era of hope and excitement and renewed interest, but yet it’s still completely divided along the crazy partisans lines and there are still people that believe that the president wasn’t born in the country.
It’s just that we have reached a ridiculous level of “Everything is subjective” and “Well, I don’t have to believe that.” To the point where you could say, “Well, I don’t have to believe that this table exists.” Because it’s America and we can believe whatever we want and say.
Well, no. there is actually fundamental truth and you have to find that. And we all have to agree at some point. But when everything is spin and everything is opinion essentially, then there is none of that.
So I think that’s a big part of what Don is dealing with as well, is basically finding out, what is his fundamental truth. As it relates to life and love and work and kind of everything. Does he love Betty? Does he love his kids, does he love his life? He’s not this person that he says he is, but he is so committed to it.
MR: We saw this last season with him — sort of an ennui, this feeling of, “Oh, another affair, another beautiful woman.” It’s almost like it’s too easy for him to kind of ride along on that wave.
JH: Well, you have to remember that, especially with Bobbie Barrett, he didn’t choose her, she chose him. She was very much the aggressor in that situation and he was, for all intents and purposes, trying to be good. And not necessarily succeeding.
MR: Yeah, at least there was an attempt.
JH: And then with Joy in, the aptly-named Joy, in Palm Springs, that was a decision. That was a decision directly based on seeing the presentation of what would happen if we all launched all of our [nukes] and they launched all of theirs.
MR: Yeah, that was terrifying.
JH: And Joy has a line that says, “Why would you deny yourself something you really want?” And obviously that resonates with somebody like Don.
MR: Do you think Don wants to be that guy who is like, “OK, I’m fully committed to my wife, I love her, and I’m not going to think about other women and I’m just going to do my job and go home,” or does that terrify him at the same time? I mean, I think we all sort of face those dual feelings at times.
JH: Sure. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, and what I think is important to understand about Don is that this guy is pretty significantly damaged goods. You know, [he had] an unbelievably bad family upbringing, very little education. Completely surviving on his wiles, his street smarts, whatever, and kind of manipulating people — that’s the bad spin. Being very politic, I guess — that would be the good spin.
So he’s kind of, in blunt terms, he’s [expletived] up. And that comes out in his dealings with people that try to get close to him. So this is not a guy who’s big on being vulnerable. And that is a big part of loving relationships — being comfortable enough to be vulnerable. And I think that this guy might not have the capacity for that. He might. But it’s going to take a lot more work than he seems to be willing to give and I think that’s where he keeps running up against the wall with Betty. “I’m going to give you this much, and if you want more than that, I’m not going to do it.”
And that’s where a lot of his bad behavior, comes out. Because the new girl doesn’t ask for that. They just want [Don] to be handsome, charming and exciting and new.
So, when all that comes back on top of him, at the end of Season 2, he realizes that, as he says in his letter, “I know that if I lose you, you’ll find somebody else, but I’ll be alone.”
MR: It’s interesting, I think the most powerful moments of the show are when Don is vulnerable, are when he opens up with Rachel [in Season 1], and when he visits the real Mrs. Draper in California [in Season 2]. And it’s amazing to watch your work in those scenes because you have a different physical presence. You seem very vulnerable and open and childlike almost, as opposed to how Don is, with the mask — you know, with the armor.
JH: Well, [Don's] very much armored up. And these times you talk about are times when he’s essentially been [Dick Whitman]. He’s not been this person that he has made up. And he’s never been that person with his wife. Ever.
MR: Does he think she’d be disappointed by that? If she were to know everything or just even see that side of him, that she would just turn away and say, “But I wanted the prom king.”
JH: Maybe. Only one way to find out. And I think the prospect of explaining that kind of thing, telling her that, is obviously terrifying. I think that on a certain level, he wants to confess, but the shame and the consequences of that are terrifying to him.
MR: He could lose everything.
JH: He could lose everything. He could be hauled out as a fraud and a liar and a terrible person. He would certainly lose his standing. And this person who is perceived as this paragon of whatever would be significantly diminished.
MR: And that’s what he relies on to survive — he has to have the upper hand.
JH: He needs people to need him.
MR: Yeah. But a lot of Season 2 was Betty kind of growing up, essentially, from being a child to being a woman and that dynamic has changed their relationship a lot. It seems to me that it’s a brilliantly structured relationship, because it seems like, intrinsically, it cannot work. But then again, if you examine any relationship, give it enough scrutiny, maybe that’s just how all relationships eventually seem.
JH: It’s totally true, you just think, why are they together? And I think that they are together because at some level, they love each other. But that love is resting on that foundation of lies, of untruth. And that’s why it’s so shaky. Neither one of them are really equipped. Betty is still living as if she was her father’s daughter in many ways. Childlike and petulant.
MR: Wanting to be catered to.
JH: Wanting to be catered to and paid attention to. Like a kid.
MR: “I’m the princess.”
JH: Right. Don is sort of trying to play at this role of the father and caregiver and husband that he has no role model for. He literally has no skills in this and he’s learning them as he goes along and he knows what not to do, because that’s how he was raised. — terribly. You see that in Season 2 when Betty’s like, “You need to hit the kid. Teach him discipline.” And he’s like, “That’s not how it works.”
MR: Yeah. I have to say that some of the most disturbing things for me to watch is when Betty is dismissive or contemptuous of her children. She’s kind of not a great parent, you know?
JH: She’s a terrible parent.
MR: Yeah. And it breaks my heart because — you know, it’s just hard to watch.
JH: Well, the saving grace is that’s the only reason why I think people are even giving Don a half a pass, because Don’s at least with good with kids.
MR: Exactly. “Well, he wouldn’t hit the kid and he shows up and he tries.”
JH: There is a very active dynamic of two people playing at something in that relationship. Neither one of them are really willing to be emotional or be vulnerable to the other one. And I don’t know if it’s possible to fix. I just don’t know. And obviously the horrible tragedy of it all is that there are children caught in the crossfire.
MR: It’s interesting because, just as I’m sitting here thinking about it, Matt really did structure that relationship with some echos of “The Sopranos.” In the sense that — Tony Soprano was a guy who, if he got mentally well and really did the work with his therapist, if she got him to a really more wholesome place —
JH: A place where he was okay with his fear and anxiety.
MR: Right, if he gets there, then he can’t do his job. And I think Matt’s actually expanded that idea, because with both Don and Betty, if they become more fully realized people, adults who are in touch with their fears and true to themselves, that makes it almost less likely that they will be able to stay together.
JH: It is a bit of a Catch-22.
MR: Yeah. It’s funny, because, even where I live in the Midwest now, of course everyone knows people who get divorced, but it’s still not as common as the media makes it seem. You hear that statistics about the number marriages that end in divorce, and I’m like — with no judgment either way, of course — “Well, half the people on my block are not divorced.”
JH: Yeah. Well, when I grew up in St. Louis, I was the only kid in my class that came from divorced parents. In grade school.
MR: Oh.
JH: You know, that’s obviously changed.
MR: But I often think about, in terms of this suburban world that Don and Betty travel in, how much has really changed?
JH: We touch on it a little bit with the neighbor, Helen Bishop, who’s castigated because she’s divorced. And the coterie of [women in the neighborhood] get together and [rip] on her, like, “You’re going to try to steal our husbands, you’re a terrible woman. You’re a failure as a woman.” Betty does not want to be taken out of that group.
MR: That’s the thing that unites them in a way — they both reached a status level that they will do anything to hang on to.
We touched on this a little bit just now — those scenes where Don is more vulnerable and more open. I mean, I’m just mystified by acting, I don’t know how people do it and I’ll never really understand it. But in those Dick Whitman scenes, in the Korean War flashback, you just have a different look about you and your hair was somehow different, but it was something else — your energy was so different in those scenes.
JH: I think it comes down to very subtle choices that I hope play, but it’s a very conscious decision. When I’m Don Draper mode I have very erect posture, I have an almost aggressive walk — very, very confident.
And so when you start stripping those things away and then you’re not in this impeccably tailored suit and your hair’s maybe a little bit more messed up, people are a little more able to be like, “Oh, what’s going on with this guy?” And so then you can fill in the blanks. And when I was younger, they put more makeup on me and then I had to shave and my hair was a little shorter.
MR: Yeah. There was that time Betty woke up Don on the couch and he seemed very open and vulnerable — maybe there was a crack in the facade.
JH: That was a big choice that Matt and the production [team] played. They wanted both of us to be sort of scrubbed clean. Betty had just gotten out of the shower and had no makeup on and I had been sleeping on the couch and was in a white T-shirt and she was in a white robe.
Everything was very specifically chosen [to produce that feeling] of like, “Is this scene really happening?” Like, “Is this a dream? Is one of these two people dreaming this?” They’re incredibly honest.
MR: Yes.
JH: Even though I’m totally lying [in the scene], I seem very honest.
MR: Did you study with an acting teacher here in LA? You did acting in college and also…
JH: High school even. I did plays in high school and then when I studied in college–I graduated from the University of Missouri. I went to three colleges in four years, I was on the Sarah Palin program. [Actually] mine was a little more of — I majored in partying and then I majored in depression and then I majored in theater.
MR: Aren’t those all inter-related? Let’s face it.
JH: There was no math involved in the theater commitment, so that was nice [laughs]. But actually I graduated with an English degree. But I randomly picked up the paper one day at Mizzou and there was an audition for a Shakespeare play that some company from Chicago actually was doing and they needed to cast the young parts with students. And so I was like, you know what? I’m going to audition for this thing, why not? I had been in some plays in high school and I was just like, oh, it might be fun.
And it was fun and then the head of the department at that time had come to see it and he said, “You should really do this. Why don’t you enroll in a couple of classes in the theater department and see if it’s something you like?” And I said, “All right, why not?” So then I started taking classes and ended up getting a scholarship through the theater department and doing two years of summer repertory theater with the theater department and doing about 15 plays in two years.
So that’s kind of where I really got — I don’t want to say trained, but at least experienced in doing it. And then once I came out here, which was [around] 1995, I went to a few acting classes around town and just kind of started working more and building up a network of people and feeling more comfortable in the environment.
MR: Overnight success story.
JH: Right, right.
MR: I was reading some pieces on you — they were saying that after you arrived in LA, you went three years without getting a single acting job.
JH: Yeah. I got out here, I’m friends with Paul Rudd. Paul was college roommates with my high school girlfriend’s older brother. So the older brother used to come back for Christmas break, or whatever, and they were the cool, older guys, and that’s how I met him. So I’ve known him since I was 18 years old.
So through college and through all this other stuff, I’d come out LA and I’d hang out with them. And Paul was kind of rising through the [acting] ranks. And so when I finally moved out to LA, I called him and I think he had done “Clueless,” he was doing “Romeo + Juliet” or something like that. And I said, “I’m only going to bug you once. Is there any phone call you can make? I don’t know anybody out here. I don’t know where to begin.”
And he was working with a talent manager at the time and he said, “Yeah, I’ll call my manager, he’d love to meet you, why not?” [I said,] “Great, thanks, I won’t bother you again.” And I didn’t. But I met this guy and he was like, “All right, well, let me try to set up some meetings.”
I was 24 years old, but I didn’t look like I was 18. I looked like — kind of like this, actually. Weirdly. Except I had long hair. And basically he set up a meeting with the William Morris Agency and I met the entire television department and I pitched my whole story and background or whatever, and they signed me. So I got an agent right off the bat.
MR: That’s huge, right?
JH: Yeah, totally great. But then I didn’t work for three years, and it wasn’t for lack of trying, I auditioned for everything. Movies and TV and pilots and this and that and the other and I tested and got really close and got down to the end on huge projects that would’ve been career-changing for me. But for whatever reason, they didn’t happen.
I guess the worst part of the business is that you can go to five great auditions and have one terrible one and that’s the one [that is the deciding factor]. And there were so many variables, there were so many factors that can just contribute. Some guy’s checking his Blackberry in the back row of the audition and it’s distracting.
And that was why I was kind of terrified going through this whole “Mad Men” process. Because it took me forever to get the job and I was just like, “Man, I’ve been good at all these auditions, I hope I’m good at the last audition.”
MR: Well, by that point, you’ve been doing this for a while and so you knew what to do.
JH: Yeah, I was much more confident and much more comfortable. And honestly, I’d been validated by the industry. I had been a lead of a show, I had been cast in 100 television shows. I had been in movies, I had been in whatever. It’s different when it’s your first time.
The television schedule is a [butt] kicker. And getting somebody green in there who doesn’t really know what they’re doing is, I think, terrifying to a lot of producers and that’s why the same people tend to get cast a lot. Because [the producers] know they can do it.
MR: Just from the work that I can see on the show, it seems that you have to have a tremendous amount of focus because these scenes and these scripts are coming at you and I’m sure you’ve got a lot of other demands on your time. It seems as though one of the things you’ve learned in your time out here is to be disciplined and focused.
JH: Kind of. It does take a lot of focus. I’m [at "Mad Men's" studios] the most out of anybody, with the exception and hair and makeup and Matt and [executive producer] Scott [Hornbacher]. And there is a lot of down time, but it’s down time where you’re learning your lines for the next scene. Or you’re figuring out what you’re going to do– there’s never [true] down time. At least for me. I can’t go take a two-hour nap and then jump up and be ready to go to work. I just can’t.
But I love it, I mean, I love going to work. It’s a good job and I love doing it and I will take the stress and the hours and all that stuff.
Yeah, it is hard, there are a lot of distractions as the season goes on and the show goes on, whether it’s the press or whether it’s awards or whether it’s who did get nominated or who didn’t get nominated. It becomes a lot more political as time goes on, and that’s just all part of it.
Again, I love going to work, I love the people that I work with. We’ve been very fortunate to have a lot of our crew come back from year to year so there’s a nice shorthand that goes on and everybody knows everybody’s name. And it feels very comfortable and it feels very, kind of familial, which is, it’s sort of a cliché, but it really does feel that way.
MR: If you say the cast is like a big family, I’m going to punch you in the arm. I’m kidding! But honestly, if it’s a very unhappy set, then, I don’t know, you guys are hiding it pretty well.
JH: No. It’s not a very unhappy set. I mean, there’s always drama, but …
MR: Well, it is a bunch of actors.
JH: When you get 300 people in enclosed spaces, there’s going to be [some of that].
MR: So how do you go from being not famous to being famous without going crazy?
JH: I think Ben Stiller said, “As soon as you get famous, you get 10 years to be crazy and then after that, you’re just being a [jerk].” Or something like that. I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve gone crazy, but I’ve also, the success and the recognition that I’ve gotten has been tempered by the fact that the show was largely seen as Matt’s baby.
And it’s not watched by that many people. If I was on “American Idol,” if I was Adam Lambert, for example, and I was walking through a mall in suburban Minnesota, there would be riot. But I can do that and be totally fine. So, yeah, I get recognized, but not that much.
MR: Really?
JH: Mm-hmm. And I also don’t really seek it out.
MR: You’re not doing the club scene?
MR: No, I’m too damned old for that.
MR: Well, it’s funny about the whole “people not watching the show” thing. Obviously AMC threw a ton of money at promotion last season, and for all I know, they’re doing it again, but I’ve been living in hotels the last few weeks so I don’t know what’s happening in the real world. So, the viewership increased overall last season but it still doesn’t get that many people, you know, compared to other cable hits.
I have a working theory and tell me if you disagree — maybe the people that identify most strongly with this show are the people who feel like they’re faking. And maybe the vast majority of Americans don’t feel like they’re faking, they’re just living their lives. Whereas I feel like, “One day soon, I will be found out as a fraud,” you know what I mean?
JH: I think that says a lot to me. And to expand on your point, the show is not meant to be attractive to 18 million people a week. To be appealing to that many people, you have to have broad appeal. So there’s got to be [a certain kind of sexual appeal] or a mystery to be solved. Or jazzy camera angles or explosions or big jokes — preferably all of them. I mean, that’s “Transformers” — there’s hot girls, fast cars, explosions and the good guys win. And that’s not our show, at all. I mean, we have hot girls, but that’s about it.
It’s a little more demure than all that. So the larger version of your point is that it’s not meant for everybody. The show takes its time, the show is very deliberate and intelligent in its storytelling, and I think because of that it’s incredibly rewarding. But I think at this point in American history, there are people who don’t care for that.
They want a very simple story told very simply because they don’t want to have to work. They’ve worked all day, they want to sit down and watch like, the guy that can change things with his mind or whatever. You know what I mean?
MR: Yeah. And sometimes that’s what I want.
JH: Listen, I watch [that stuff] on the plane. But I think there is that segment of the planet that just has no interest. And that’s fine. The good thing about having an AMC or a HBO or a whatever is that you don’t necessarily need that.
MR: I think what troubles me is the perception that it’s not accessible, like it’s some completely unconventional form of TV. I mean, if you talk to Matt, Matt is an elliptical speaker. He will start at one place and go here and here and here and here but he knows where he’s going and he does get back to the point. I mean, it’s fascinating to listen to his mind work, and that’s how the show can be also. It kind of goes around the block or takes the long way around sometimes — but then it really surprises me, it goes somewhere interesting.
What bothers me is the idea that people might think there aren’t payoffs within the 47 minutes. I mean, it is storytelling as I recognize it.
JH: It absolutely is. And you know, Matt went to school on that, he knows how to do that. He’s not being deliberately opaque or difficult.
He does pay things off and he subscribes to a classic story structure. I mean, there is a build up and then there is a payoff. And what’s different about our show is not that it’s a bunch of little bumps. It’s not a set-up where everything adds up. It sort of becomes this series of steps up to what usually is Episode 12. And then [Episode] 13 is the denouement.
I watched that happen on “The Sopranos,” where the second-to last episode was always the one where everything went to [hell]. And you’re like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe that happened! How can they do that?” And then the next one was like, “This is a taste of what’s going to happen, this is where we’re going to next year.”
MR: Switching gears a little, you were great on “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live.” Did you have a lot of input into that “SNL”? Because what I loved is that it was, start to finish, really solid.
JH: You do [have input]. [Condensing part of the interview, Hamm said that the writers come up with 40-50 sketches and with input from the writers and executive producer Lorne Michaels, he helped winnow it down to the 10 or so sketches that ended up on the air]. It’s an incredibly complicated and well-oiled machine that they have there and I was terrified going into it because I didn’t — I’m not a comedy guy. I’m a huge fan, but it’s not generally not my strength and what I get cast as, you know? There are other people who are quite a bit better at that than I am.
MR: And what was it like doing the live show?
JH: It’s amazing, because I barely remember it. You are pushed and pulled in every direction because it is a live show. And you have to get your wig on and changed on and this and that and they’re constant screaming out seconds and time.
And our situation was a little more challenging the week I did it, because Amy [Poehler] had her baby [that week].
MR: Oh, right.
JH: So she was [supposed to be] in every sketch. She was originally playing Peggy in the “Mad Men” thing. And then Seth came up to me and said, “You think Elisabeth [Moss, who plays Peggy on the show] would like come and do that?” And I was like, “Totally, she’s on Broadway right now, her show ends at 9:30.”
MR: Well, you killed, and I’m not even listening to this crazy talk about “You’re not the comedy guy,” because you did the Funny Or Die skit, you’ve done “30 Rock,” and you did the “Sarah Silverman Show” as well.
JH: Yeah, but I generally rely on other people to be funny when I’m doing those things. So I just sit there and smile generally.
MR: Will you be doing more stuff like that?
JH: Yeah. I would host “SNL” again in a minute if they asked. It’s just fun. I’m in awe of comedians and comics and comedy writers because the idea of creating funny out of thin air is mystifying to me. I have a very particular sense of humor as well—
MR: It’s that St. Louis sense of humor, right?
JH: Kind of. [laughs]
MR: I don’t know if there’s a different thing, a Midwestern thing, but I sort of think of Midwestern humor as totally drenched in sarcasm but not really vicious.
JH: No, no. I’m not a mean guy. A lot of comics have a real mean streak. And I’m not that guy. I can sort of put up with it to a point but eventually, my Midwestern kicks in and I just want to be polite.
MR: Right, exactly. “It’s uncomfortable to make people feel uncomfortable.”
JH: Yeah. And I think that’s a big part of what comics do. Zach Galifianakis who’s a pretty good friend of mine, I was talking to him the other night. He’s from North Carolina, and has kind of the Southerner thing that he has to sort of suppress as well, because he’s an incredibly nice, shy, polite person. But this persona that he adopts on stage is this incredibly prickly, weird, inaccessible, non-sequitur machine. It’s this sort of chaos.
MR: When I met Tina Fey, she reminded me of, or I guess she had the vibe of, a serious person who works very hard. You know, the high school student who was up till 2 a.m. studying and knows the material cold.
JH: My experience with Tina was, when I did my first “30 Rock,” it was right after the election and so I was just like, “Wow, you must be thrilled right now because you don’t have to do Sarah Palin any more for the rest of your life.” And she said, “Yeah, yeah.” And then I said, “How are you even standing upright, much less know your lines, much less everything else?” Obviously she has a staff and she has people to help her. But she’s got a 3-year-old at home. It’s like, wait, what?
She’s living the dream, I think. That’s her thing, she is excited to be that person. And she is incredibly hard worker, she has an incredible work ethic, she does not suffer fools. And I had a blast working with her, she was incredibly nice and very sweet.
It seems to me, the more I learn and the more I see what happens in this industry, there are people for whom success is a means to this existence that they thought of as “celebrity” or “star” or whatever. And then there are people for whom success and celebrity is a means to just live their life more comfortably.
MR: Right. And being able to do the work that they want to do.
JH: Yeah. It’s a difficult balance to strike, because you have a lot of people that tend to start demanding more of you once you become a commodity. And you find yourself having to say no a lot. And a lot of people hate doing that. Especially polite people.
MR: But if you want to stay focused on your goals and not become “the celebrity,” you kind of have to, right?
JH: Absolutely. Or else you’ll drive yourself crazy. And you’ll snap and then people will be like, “Oh, God, what a [jerk].”
MR: Perhaps I’m assuming too much, but I’m assuming you’ll stick with “Mad Men” till the show’s over.
JH: I don’t know.
MR: You don’t know?
JH: Yes, absolutely, I will stay with “Mad Men” as long as they want me on the show.
MR: “Jon Hamm wants off the show.” [laughs]
JH: [I'll be there] as long as they want me on the show.
MR: How long does your contract run?
JH: Oh, it’s for a million years.
MR: OK. Good to know.
JH: It’s for a million years. All the actors are locked up for a million years. Matt, however, is not.
MR: As we learned.
JH: But, you know, I certainly think there could be a “Mad Men” without me.
MR: Oh, come on! Really?
JH: Absolutely. I’m not saying that I’m not indispensable, or I am indispensable, whatever, I’m not saying that the show couldn’t go on without me. But that said, I love being on the show and I love to find out what happens to this guy and how he gets through this time in his life and this time in history.
MR: And so you’re going to stack up as many movie roles as you can between seasons?
JH: Well, one of the incredible perks of this whole thing is that it’s certainly increased my exposure in [the film] world. And the good part of how exhausting our schedule is, is that we have pretty long hiatuses.
[His longtime girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt] and I put together a production company, we’re trying to get a couple movies off the ground. We’re trying to develop other material and she’s working on a play right now and I’m working on a couple movies during the hiatus. You get more opportunities to do stuff. Jen is not unlike Miss Fey — incredibly hardworking, forthright, fearless, committed to her work. And the opportunity that this is giving both of us to kind of move forward after this, it’s great.
I’m not a snob [about doing TV]. I think TV is where a lot of incredibly good work is being explored. I started my career in TV. I’m not shy about it. It doesn’t have the stigma that it used to have — “You’re either a TV guy or a movie guy.”
MR: But sometimes I get that sense from actors. “OK, my time on TV is over.” You know, they get some success or some exposure and suddenly, “The clock is ticking, I’m going to move on to pictures.”
JH: Yeah. And I don’t understand that really. I get the idea of playing the same character week in and week out can be a little boring, but that’s just bad TV. So don’t do bad TV, do good TV and you’ll be fine.
Obviously the one thing that the movies have over television is that you can be in a comedy one time and you can be in a drama another time, and you can play a basketball player one day and you can play a priest another day. Your range is incredibly increased. But most people don’t. Most people are, “You’re that fat guy.”
MR: Right, “You’re always the friend.” Well, anyway, that’s good, I’m glad that you’re not like, “Oh, now, I must move on.”
JH: No. That’s kind of just my default attitude towards almost everything. I don’t think really far down the road.
MR: Really?
JH: I try to kind of stay in the now and appreciate what I’m doing now and let other people worry about what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t kind of waste my time with it. I just doesn’t appeal to me.
Part of it is, I don’t have kids and I don’t have to worry about that. But yeah, it’s also just kind of the way I grew up — basically growing up without parents. It’s sort of, every day is new. Like, what’s today going to bring? And I’ve slept in my car and I’ve slept in other people’s houses and basements enough to where I’m very fast on my feet.
MR: Not unlike Don Draper.
JH: Yes.
