Jon Hamm Recalls Fake Cigarettes And Onion Water On Mad Men

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2 days ago

There's a lot of glitz and glamour in the life of a Hollywood actor. But there can be a lot of grossness, too. Just ask the cast of Mad Men.
Mad Men — which aired on AMC from 2007 to 2015 — tracks the personal and professional lives of advertising executives working on Madison Avenue in 1960s NYC. And in case you've never seen it, the show involves a lot of drinking and smoking. Like, a lot. Even the kids are smoking.
Reuniting for a panel at Austin's ATX TV Festival over the weekend, Jon Hamm and John Slattery, who starred as Don Draper and Roger Sterling, looked back on the highs of the Emmy-winning show, as well as some of its downsides.
'I think somebody did a count, and in the pilot alone, I smoked 75 cigarettes,' Jon said, confirming that it was definitely not good for his health at the time. 'They are fake cigarettes, but that just means that there's no nicotine in them. It doesn't mean you're not burning something.'
For context, there are 92 episodes of Mad Men...92 x 75…You do the math.
Mad Men is primarily set in New York, but was filmed on soundstages in Los Angeles. This, according to Jon, made the excessive smoking situation even worse. 'We didn't go outside,' he said. 'The whole thing, the whole stage, is full of fake cigarette smoke.' Hilariously, some of the show's 'younger' and more hardcore cast members initially had the idea to smoke real cigarettes. 'I was like, 'Let me know how that goes,'' Jon recalled. 'And within three days, they were yellow and sallow.'
And if that didn't sound disgusting enough, just wait until you hear how they replicated vodka martinis — a glass of water with a very real onion in it. 'Oh, the breath was lovely,' Jon said, to which his co-star added: 'Pop another pearl onion in your glass of water, and then smoke 26 more fake cigarettes and it's 9:30 in the morning.' Ew.
Well, as potentially harmful to their health as it may have been, the grossness was all necessary to do justice to the time period and setting. 'I remember at some point having a conversation with the executives at AMC. They said, 'Do they have to smoke?'' Jon remembered. 'That was like, 'Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, they literally have to.' They're addicted to cigarettes. It's kind of why they're sold. They're super popular!'
Towards the end of the panel, Jon joked: 'I'm glad I'm still alive, basically, because of the amount of cigarettes I smoked.' That's what it takes to be an Emmy winner, folks!