The actor talks about how he interpreted the show's finale.
If you haven’t seen
the Mad Men series finale, which aired
Sunday, May 17, then stop reading or risk spoiling yourself!
After seven seasons, Mad
Men drew to a close the only way it could, with an ominous “Ohmmmmm” and
grin on Don Draper’s face.
The final moments came as Draper (Jon Hamm) found clarity
after spending time at a rehabilitation center masking as a hippie commune.
Then the screen immediately cuts to Coca-Cola’s legendary ad, “I Would Like to
Buy the World a Coke,” which was a real-life hit for the beverage company.
'Mad Men': 5 Things You Need to Know About That Coca-Cola Ad
The immediate implication, at least according to fans, was
that Draper himself went back to McCann Erikson, the ad firm he shunned earlier
in the show, to produce the historic commercial.
But what did Hamm, who has played Draper for the past seven
seasons, think of the final moments?
“My take is that, the next day, [Don] wakes up in this
beautiful place, and has this serene moment of understanding, and realizes who
he is. And who he is, is an advertising man. And so, this thing comes to him,”
he told The New York Times, agreeing with fans’ belief that Draper went on to
create the ad.
“There's a way to see it in a completely cynical way, and
say, ‘Wow, that's awful,’” the 44-year-old actor added. “But I think that for
Don, it represents some kind of understanding and comfort in this incredibly
unquiet, uncomfortable life that he has led.”
'Mad Men': Find Out What Happened to Your Favorites in the End!
Hamm also revealed a hint that creator Matt Weiner dropped
earlier in the season in a conversation between Draper and Ted Chaough.
“There was a little bit of a crumb dropped earlier in the
season when Ted says there are three women in every man's life, and Don says, ‘You've
been sitting on that for a while, huh?’” Hamm explained. “There are, not
coincidentally, three person to person phone calls that Don makes in this
episode, to three women who are important to him for different reasons. You see
the slow degeneration of his relationships with those women over the course of
those phone calls.”
Those phone calls were to his ex-wife, Betty Draper,
daughter Sally, and former colleague, Peggy Olson.
So what do you think? Did Draper create the iconic Coke
commercial? Watch more about the end of the hit AMC series below: