Jon Hamm to smoke too many false cigarettes for “crazy men”

Ten years after “Mad Men”Wrapped, the stars Jon Hamm And John Slattery still has good memories of the AMC drama. Well, perhaps with the exception of smoking. And onion water.

Meeting Saturday at Austin Atx TV Festival. Hamm and Slatyry spoke to the Noah Hawley moderator (who worked with Hamm in the last season of “Fargo”) of the heritage of the show, how it always resonates with them and their fans – and yes, all these cigarettes.

It couldn’t have been good for you, said Hawley. Replied Hamm: “Oh, that was not the case. Yes, I think someone made a count, and in the pilot alone, I spoke 75 cigarettes … These are false cigarettes, but that simply means that there is no nicotine. It does not mean that you do not burn something.”

Because “Mad Men” was filmed in Los Angeles but took place in New York, a large part of the shooting was carried out inside. “We didn’t get out, which was great and not great,” said Hamm. “All, the whole scene is full of false cigarette smoke.”

Slatery noted that the false cigarettes meant that they smoked petals of rose and marshmallow. Although it could seem good, that was not the case. Then add to that what was used to reproduce a martini of vodka: a glass of water with onion.

“Oh, the breath was charming,” joked Hamm.

Slatery pointed out that the “vodka” was false, but the onion was very real. “Wear another pearl onion in your glass of water, then smoke 26 more false cigarettes and it is 9:30 am!” He said.

At least, it was a little better than smoking real cigarettes – something Hamm said “some of the youngest actors” tried to do by pilot “Mad Men”.

“They said to themselves:” We are going to smoke real cigarettes. We really want to feel it and do it, ”recalls Hamm. “And I said to myself,” Let me know how it goes “. And in three days, they were yellow and sallow.

Hawley pointed out that it is similar to another tip that the actors will learn soon: take very small bites when you eat food on the camera, because you will do it again and again.

“And move (food) around the plate,” added Hamm. “We cannot all be Brad Pitt.

Cigarettes, of course, were an important part of the staging of what it was to be an advertising manager on Madison Avenue in the early 1960s.

“I remember at some point, having had a conversation with the leaders of the AMC,” said Hamm. “They said,” Who are they smoking? ” It was like, do you mock me?

During the panel, Hamm remembers the amount of “crazy” that changed his life. “I started this at the age of 35. I went to the age of 45, “he said. “It is therefore a kind of transition from life and time. Our real life occurs, relationships have started and finished, and people had babies, got married and divorced themselves, and all this shit occurred in the real world. It seemed almost moved from that in a lot, in a strange way, because a large part of the work on the show was real in a capsule of time.

“If you could jump over time and visit the set, it was literally perfect,” he added. “When you are by train and smoke cigarettes and look through the false window, the false suspended part of Midtown was credible. Obviously, it is an immense honor, and it is a wonderful thing on which I worked and contribute to something that lasted so long. Awesome.

Slatery had a similar reflection on his experience of “Mad Men”. “It looked like a parallel life,” he said. “There were about six months a year, we would do it, then we will leave. For a few years there, we were almost sure that we were going to do it again. And to be in the hands of these writers and these designers and these other actors, you had this incredibly intimate relationship with these people who were not your real life. But we have just as real and just as demanded and complicated. For roughly a person, we immediately timed.