As advertiser Don Draper, Jon Hamm was the model of a successful businessman in America in the sixties. Tight in the suit, unbreakable and always with a steaming cigarette in your hand. Hamm, however, never smoked tobacco like his character.
Fopsigarettes in Mad Men
It was one of the many revelations that Hamm did together with co-actor John Slattery during the ATX TV Festival in Austin, Texas. The production ordered for the series of fops cigarettes with smoke of rose petals and marshmallow root.
A lot less addictive, but still far from healthy. And also particularly unpleasant, says Hamm, who made countless packages of soldiers in seven seasons.
Olivia Munn had to bite John Hamm during recordings series
“There is no nicotine in it, but otherwise you still breathe in smoke from something on fire.” After long shooting days, actors regularly complained about sore throat. Hamms Co star Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) described the herb smoke as “disgusting but effective.”
John Slattery em Jon Hamm. Credit ANP/HH
‘Whole set was blue’
Because the series took place in New York but was admitted to Los Angeles, most of the recordings took place inside. “The whole set was blue with smoke,” says Hamm. And then there was the glass of water with a pearl outing in it, which had to go on for a Vodka Martini. Slattery summarizes it dry: “26 of those cigarettes, an outing in your water, and then it is only 9:30 in the morning.”
According to creator Matthew Weiner, it was crucial that smoking had no negative influence on the state of mind of the cast. Yet some young actors tried to paffle real cigarettes during the pilot. “I told them: let us know how that works,” said Hamm. “Within three days they looked yellow and faded.”
Jon Hamm. Credit ANP/HH
Until the 1990s, actors in films often smoked real cigarettes. Due to stricter health regulations, social pressure and new rules of film studios and trade unions, various alternatives appeared. For example, for Liam Neeson, even special ‘chamomile tea cigarettes’ were rolled in non-stop.
Cillian Murphy once told that there are sometimes considerable quantities, Birmingham Live. “I asked the props boys of Peaky Blinders To count how much we use during one season. That would have been an estimated 3,000. “
Hamm did take the bottle in his private life
In Mad Men Were the cigarettes and the alcohol or fake, outside the set, Hamm grabbed more and more often to the bottle. After the breaking of his long -term relationship with Jennifer Westfeldt and when the series stopped in 2015, he got into a downward spiral. He was voluntarily admitted to a very expensive addiction clinic to get a grip on his drinking a month and almost 100,000 euros later. In the meantime he has been married to actress Anna Osceola for almost two years, whom he met on the set of Mad Men.
“Fortunately I survived,” he jokes, referring to the recordings. But above all he is proud that he cooperated in something that still resonates. Even now that the smoke has been raised for more than ten years Mad Men hang.