Jon Hamm: Mad Men's Rising Star

AMC's first foray into original programming proved to be a critical blockbuster. Mad Men, a period piece set in the '60s advertising industry, catapulted star Jon Hamm to awards like the Golden Globe, and gave The Sopranos' producer Matthew Weiner a new phenomenon.

Last week the series received a 16 Emmy Nominations, including one for Hamm as Best Actor in a Drama and one for the show itself, the first time a basic cable series received a nod for Best Drama Series.

The series returns for a second season, with Hamm continuing his role as Don Draper, the leading ad man at Sterling Cooper. Set two years after the Season One finale, the characters still face similar issues.

"The themes of the second season are not dissimilar to the themes from the first," said Hamm. "It's people dealing with the relationships in their lives and managing their lives. Whether it's Don or Peggy or Pete or Roger or Joan, these people have a lot of baggage in their lives and they have to manage that or manipulate. It's set in this wonderful sandbox that we get to play around in. The more you think you know about these people, the more they surprise you I guess."

"Mad Men" has a built-in shock factor with its accurate portrayal of sexual dynamics in the '60s. Pre-sexual harassment legislation, the men make advances towards their female colleagues that are condoned, even expected.

"I guess the surprising part is it's a bluntness, sort of leavened with politeness. There was certainly an ethic of politesse or politeness that people had and yet, they were often very blunt or very direct with their feelings. They were very outward. It wasn't hidden underneath a layer of political correctness or that kind of thing so I think that's the really tricky part of it is, and I think most challenging to sort of see and be like whoa, okay, right out there with it, huh?"

'60s culture is still readily available enough that immersion into that world was not too sharp a shock, but Hamm still had some brushing up to do. "I knew I would say a fairly average amount. I wasn't alive during that period of time but I did have an affinity. As Matt talks about, there were an awful lot of interesting cultural and artistic and political and economic things happening at that time so to be a student of history at all, you would certainly be aware of certain massive upheavals, whether it's Vietnam or the Kennedys or Martin Luther King or whoever it was that were happening at that period. Then digging a little deeper, you find the artistic movements of that time and the literary movements of that time, film and all of that stuff. I find it fascinating so I knew a fair amount about it. I wasn't obsessive about it in the way that someone like, oh, Matt is but I knew my fair share."

The show has also turned Hamm into an overnight sex symbol. Clothed in flattering suits and hair styles, GQ would need only to reproduce a publicity still to put Hamm on the cover. The actor himself remains modest about the S word.

"I think it's generally regarded as a compliment so I'll take it that way. I don't think so. I think it is what it is. Whatever turns you on. We have attractive people in an attractive time. Matt set this in an advertising agency because that's basically what they do is they define what is attractive and what is desirable, so I think that that's obviously not a mistake."

The period garb actually helps Hamm maintain a private life. "I don't get recognized that much. It's fortunate in many ways because I'm able to blend in. That's nice."

Or maybe he just doesn't go out as much. Even though the cable series runs for a shorter series, Hamm now has a steady job for at least half the year.

"You have a lot less time but one of the fortunate things about being on a cable schedule is you get, we only do 13. We only do them in seven days an episode. We're not on a 22-episode schedule. We're not going from May to September. It's more of a concentrated sort of sprint and then you finish and you chill out for two weeks and just veg out."

Hamm says he sleeps as much as possible during his off weeks, but he does have some more active interests. "I play golf, I play tennis, I try to play sports, I try to go up in the hills with my dog and my girlfriend. We go to the theater, we go to New York. It's just a very basic life and it's a great life to live in LA because it's sunny all the time and you can do it."

With "Mad Men" a success, it is likely to tie Hamm up for four more years. Weiner has a five-year plan. Hamm will take his work scene by scene.

"I think it's kind of tricky to try to look that far ahead because again, we're playing people that don't necessarily know what's going to happen from day to day. As soon as you start making plans, that's when things tend to blow up in your face. It doesn't help me or hinder me in any way. I'm just happy to be working on whatever's in front of me."

Don has issues to work out that will easily take the rest of the decade (at a pace of two years per season). "I think a lot of us know what's wrong with us and I think we find that it's harder to fix than we may want to endeavor to try to fix. This is again a man who has compartmentalized a significant portion of his life. Once those walls are erected, they're kind of hard to break through hand break down. So whether he knows or not is a completely different question to whether he's going to do anything about it or not."

Already Season One revealed that Don Draper is an assumed identity that he stole from a war buddy. "We revealed a significant portion of it last season, but there are still quite a few grey areas and gaps to fill in. There's a lot of questions that still remained unanswered and I think, I know we start to find those out a little more."

Any further details are on a need to know basis, and the only ones who need to know are the writers and actors. "There's a lot of power in saying no and there's a lot of power in not saying anything. I think that whets people's appetite. Again, I think part of the culture we live in where everybody's so exposed all the time and people want to do a reality show about their whatever, it's a little coarse and crass to be that available. I think part of the attraction of our show is it reveals itself at its own pace. I think that's what has attracted people to it."

Perhaps he was destined to play an ad man. Hamm recalls an obsession with advertising at a young age. "As a kid, I was that annoying little kid that would run around and sing commercials and television commercials and radio ads and all of that stuff. I was a very big fan of that."

Mad Men premieres July 27 on AMC.