“Mad Men” Creator On Don Draper‘s Losses And The End Of The Road

NPR interviews Matthew Weiner on the end of Mad Men, Don Draper’s drama, and what’s next

With only two episodes remaining, AMC’s excellent series Mad Men is coming to an end. Series creator Matthew Weiner sat down for an interview with NPR that you can listen to above. Now that the 1970s are beginning the show, at its end, is showing our favorite characters at pivotal moments. Don has lost everything, including direction, and it’s actually pretty up in the air as to where this will end up. Does he just become part of the McCann-Erickson machine? Does he disappear? Is he D.B. Cooper or someone else? Imagine if he does just disappear and this somehow endangers the other characters’ payouts from McCann. That would make Joan the only real winner in all of this, which would be awesome, outside of that I have no idea what is going to happen. It was interesting to hear Jim Hobart say the “axe will fall” after Don fails to show up to his meetings.

Here are some quotes from NPR’s interview about Mad Men, Don Draper, Christina Hendricks as Joan:

Don losing it all:

There is a harvest going on in a weird way. There are things that are being taken away from him or that he’s given away that are hopefully turning him towards other avenues. A lot of times running away is a response to a crisis. This is a big moment in his life. … It is forcing him to make choices; it is forcing him to evaluate; it is forcing him to keep looking. And what is he looking for? He definitely is not finding it.

Christina Hendricks as the amazing Joan:

When Christina Hendricks came in and read for it, I just thought, first of all, she’s so beautiful and so poised and conveys such confidence and comfort with who she is that I just thought, “This is someone who if they were a man, they would be running the world.” Well, guess what? Maybe she is running the world. Maybe she is doing it in the traditional Greek tragedy way, or Lady Macbeth way. She’s behind the scenes; she’s grabbing power the way only a woman can. … Her power was immediately apparent in the audition. It had nothing to do with her physique, quite honestly. It never has.

The significance of fur coats in the Mad Men series:

My grandfather, my mother’s father, worked at … a fur dressing company and they were in the fur business in Russia and I grew up with a lot of fur in my house. And my grandfather used to watch the nature shows with us when he lived with us and he would, for all the wrong reasons, be like, “Oh yeah, Hudson seal, it was a beautiful animal. I must’ve handled 40,000 of those.” I’d be like, “Grandpa, that’s an endangered animal.” And he would pet people’s dogs and you’d see him rubbing the fur the wrong way on the dog. He was an expert on that. It was a big part of the period. Janie [Bryant] and I, my costume designer, we both love that. So I felt that Don worked in a fur company [before he was in advertising] because I love the fur business and it’s something that’s completely politically incorrect now and was a gigantic business and was something that you would give one fur to your wife and another to your mistress. It was literally like buying someone a home, so it is the ultimate symbol of luxury.

Here are some more Mad Men articles for you to check out:
Mad Men Season 7 – The McCann-Erickson Villain Plotline
John Slattery’s Post-Mad Men Life
Diana – Don Draper’s Mysterious Paramour in Mad Men

[NPR]