Jon Hamm knows what would’ve happened to his charismatic advertising anti-hero, Don Draper, after the ending of Mad Men.
“What is the last act of Don’s life?” Amy Poehler asked the Emmy winner 11 years after Mad Men aired its final episode.
“Lung cancer,” the Emmy winner quipped on a new episode of Good Hang, suggesting—spoiler alert!—that the iconic advertising executive’s fate would’ve been the same as his ex-wife, Betty, who died of lung cancer in the show’s penultimate episode.
Hamm added that he might soon face the same fate as Draper. Though Mad Men’s cast smoked non-carcinogenic “fake herbal cigarettes,” a fan’s investigation into his smoking habits elicited fear.
“I think somebody watched the pilot just to watch how many cigarettes I smoke,” Hamm remarked. “And I think it was something like 80 in a one-hour pilot.”
Hamm then shared his real answer to Poehler’s question.
“I think he goes back,” Hamm, 55, said earnestly. “He is a successful advertising executive, and I think he finds happiness and peace. I think he connects with his children.”
In the final scene of the iconic show, Draper leaves New York City’s Maddison Avenue to attend a spiritual retreat in California because he’d “lost this connection with his job, his family, his everything.” Instead of using his newfound peace to begin life anew, Hamm believes Draper would’ve returned to his true calling as an “ad man” with renewed passion.
While in California, Draper becomes inspired to create the crowning achievement of his advertising career, Coca-Cola’s “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” campaign.
Even a decade after the show’s end, Hamm recalled the burden of nailing Mad Men’s ending.
“I very much felt the weight of the end of the show and the responsibility of, like, ‘Don’t f--- this up,’ Hamm explained of his time filming in Big Sur.
He told Poehler that the weight of the show’s finale increased as he spent much of its production separated from the main cast. He was primarily filming with extras for the California-set scenes after having already made tearful goodbyes to his New York-based colleagues.
“This is the end of a very, very, very long story, and if you s--t the bed on this, that will be what you are known for,” he remembered thinking at the time.
Hamm would finally win his first Emmy for his performance in the final season of Mad Men, having been nominated and losing the award in each of the previous six seasons.
