“He’s not looking forward to it”: Mad Men Creator Knows Don Draper’s Biggest Fear

Jon Hamm has been in the acting business for several decades now. Currently, the actor is among the top performers in the industry, but even he had to go through a tough phase early on in his career. He was down on his luck, with only a few supporting roles to his name. That’s when the American period drama Mad Men changed everything for Hamm, and he became an overnight sensation for his portrayal of Don Draper.

The show ran successfully for seven seasons from 2007 to 2015. Draper himself is quite a complex character, but there’s one thing that even he fears the most.

Matthew Weiner Revealed What Terrified Jon Hamm’s Don Draper in Mad Men

Just after college, the creative visionary behind Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, moved to New York with dreams of working as a writer. But soon he faced several challenges, which prompted him to return to Los Angeles for film school.

After which he began his screenwriting career with Party Girl, released all the way back in 1996. It was working on this project that the director gained the confidence to create what he believed in.

Likely so, his hard work was the main reason he was brought onto The Sopranos as a writer and executive producer. It was this show that set the stage for Mad Men, which is still considered one of the biggest hits on television. In a past interview with Indie Wire, Weiner gave the audience a behind-the-scenes snippet of his life as well as Mad Men.

He starts by adding how much he loved the television genre, as it gives him the opportunity to combine both the elements of movies and theater. On the topic of Mad Men, he explained how he created Jon Hamm‘s Don Draper. Weiner added that while penning the character, he was the same age as Draper.

Though the character was born in some really tough circumstances, the pilot detailed Weiner’s own emotions of having achieved his goals but still questioned if it was enough.

After this, the host asked Weiner what Don Draper’s biggest fear in the show was. He added:

Death. The cruelty of the idea that you will die and the consciousness of it. (Further) but I think he’s not looking forward to it, and he does a lot of things to avoid thinking about it. Don lives in a state of denial.

On the topic of his favorite character from the show, he mentioned that he enjoys writing for all of his characters. Further, if one role bores him, he simply switches over to another. However, he did mention that out of the lot, he has a special fondness for Betty Draper. He also added that he loves how she exists “in this whole other universe,” and yet she feels very familiar to him.

Jon Hamm Talked About Why His Man Men Character Is Celebrated for All the Wrong Reasons

Playing a character for seven long seasons is not an easy task. The same goes for Jon Hamm as well, who has often talked about the complexities he felt after playing the character of Don Draper in Mad Men. Draper, despite his quirks, can easily be one of the biggest anti-heroes of television, alongside hit shows like Breaking Bad and The Sopranos.

Adding on the same, in an interview with Indie Wire, the actor talked about his character and how he felt while playing the chain-smoker ad-man on the screen. He added:

Jimmy Gandolfini, whom I knew a little bit, had a similar relationship to Tony Soprano, and Bryan Cranston had it with Walter White. The character got celebrated for the wrong reasons. People thought that Don was this paragon of masculinity or whatever. There were so many think-pieces, and you go, ‘Wait, he was pretty f*cked up.’ And I was very happy with how Matt ended the story, but it was also hard.

Interestingly, despite all the flaws the character had in the series, showrunner Matthew Weiner decided to end his story arc on a somewhat good note. The conclusion of Mad Men showcased Don Draper smiling on a mountaintop with the famous “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” line.

This was in complete contrast to The Sopranos and Breaking Bad, with a more hopeful ending for Don Draper.

You can watch Mad Men on AMC+.