Jon Hamm and cast discuss final episodes of Mad Men

Jon Hamm remembers vividly the day when he came in to read for the role of Don Draper, a complex 1960s Madison Avenue advertising executive with a mysterious past.

“It was in Santa Monica in February of 2005 or 2006,” he says. “I had to drive from Los Feliz to Santa Monica in the rain, which anyone who lives in L.A. knows that it’s a disaster to get from Santa Monica to Los Feliz in the best of conditions. … It was literally me and this 17-year-old who was in the same place to audition for a commercial. It was a very strange experience and that was the first audition I had, which was only with the casting director. That was the first of seven auditions it took me to get this part.”

A monumental part that now forever ensconces him in an elite class of actors whose characters have defined television as well as a network. And a part that would consume almost 10 years of his life.

finale-episodes-of-Mad_Med“There’s no version of this ending that is not super painful for me,” Hamm says. “And mostly it’s because of these people [he points to fellow cast members] and this person [writer/creator Matthew Weiner], because they’ve been the single constant in my creative life for the last decade.”

The creative genius behind the multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning series is Weiner, who shares that the final seven episodes — which begin on AMC Sunday, April 5 — will each feel like a finale. “We always committed to the story, and the audience is rewarded for knowing that entire story. But in these last seven, it just organically became a thing where every one of these episodes was the end of the show. … I’m extremely interested in what the audience thinks, so much so that I’m trying to delight them and confound them and not frustrate and irritate them. I don’t want them to walk away angry.”

For the actors, walking away from this show has simply been heart-wrenching. January Jones, who plays the enigma Betty Draper (a.k.a. Betty Francis) and originally signed on for just three lines, says she’s been “a mess.”

“It’s a beautiful story,” tells Jones of the ending. “It’s perfect in a way, and I read it over and over. I didn’t want it to be the last time.”

Elisabeth Moss, who has become the show’s heroine Peggy Olson by ascending the corporate ladder with class and brains, says she was surprised by the ending. “I was definitely surprised. … I’ve been constantly surprised by things that really I should probably have seen coming. But I was surprised in the best way, like just really, really happy with it.”

Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan Harris, agrees. “I was very, very pleased and I guess I was surprised.”

Vincent Kartheiser — as the stoic Pete Campbell — didn’t stray far from how his character most likely would have reacted, telling us: “I try not to get too sentimental. I don’t necessarily subscribe to that emotion, it’s not something that comes easily to me. … January said that she was a mess the last couple weeks but I wasn’t really a mess. I kind of approached it the same way I approached lots of things in my life, which is I’m glad for the opportunity that I had, and I’m glad for the people I got to meet and the story we got to tell. I’m not sentimental. … For the entire making of this project I was always satisfied with what they had Pete do. There was never a moment in the 10 or nine years that we worked on this that I was like ‘I don’t get this’ or ‘I don’t like this,’ so that’s remarkable because that’s a lot of pages to write without a false note.”

As for Hamm’s final thoughts, he says, “It wasn’t so much of being surprised, it’s just being pleased. … It just means so much to me. These people mean so much to me. These characters mean so much to me, so it was pleasing to have a satisfying ending, and to have an ending. It’s a story. It needs to have an end. If there’s no end to a story, you never get to go to bed. It’s nice to go to bed.”

And to that, we say thank you, Mad Men, and good night.