Interview

PR: What was the working title of the show?

JH: They went with the working title, The Division, which I didn't really understand. I thought mine was a lot more descriptive.

PR: How did Mad Men come about?

JH: It was amazing. I read the script, and it was for AMC, and I thought, "They've never done anything that's remotely like a TV show, so what's that going to be like?" I read the script for Mad Men and I loved it. Then I realized that a guy who wrote for The Sopranos, Matt Weiner, created it, so I thought, "Okay, that's pretty cool." But I never thought they'd cast me-I mean, I thought they'd go with one of the five guys who look like me but are movie stars. Obviously, they didn't. I literally had to go through six or seven auditions. They flew me to New York to meet all the people at AMC. My final audition was at that bar on the roof of the Hotel Gansevoort. When we were riding down on the elevator, the woman in charge of whatever the decision-making process was told me, "You got the job."

PR: I would imagine you were fairly elated.

JH: Yeah. Hugely.

PR: So now you're shooting the second season.

JH: We're halfway through. It's a pretty tough schedule. It's like making a movie every week. But the good thing about it is that there are only 13 episodes a season, so it's condensed into this five- or six-month period. And then you get time off. You've been working like a dog, too, recently-you've done back-to-back-to-back movies.

PR: I have. But I want to know about Jon Hamm.

JH: Fine. I am an open book.

PR: You are. You're naked.

JH: I kind of thought that's how we were supposed to do these interviews.

PR: When I said, "Jon, I hope you're ready to get naked in this interview," I didn't anticipate that you would actually be physically naked.

JH: Well, it helps me to be emotionally naked if I'm physically naked.

PR: I see.

JH: Thank you, by the way, for also being naked.

PR: Well, look, it just didn't seem right-

JH: It's great to be naked. Just a couple naked dudes at the Grove.