Source: Columbia Tribune
Date: August 2009
By: Ellen Gray

Jon Hamm is on a roll.

The show the University of Missouri grad stars in, AMC’s “Mad Men,” returns for a much-anticipated third season on Aug. 16. Earlier last month, he was nominated for two Emmys, one for leading actor in a drama series, one of 16 nods for “Mad Men,” the other for guest-starring on NBC’s “30 Rock.”

And last season, he got to host NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” a show he claims to have watched since he was 7 years old.

“I was actually sitting in my dressing room at ‘Saturday Night Live’ ” when the call asking him to appear on “30 Rock” came, Hamm recalled this week at an AMC cocktail party.

“I don’t know what I did first. I think I said yes and then jumped around the room and then threw the phone against the wall and opened the door and made sure I was breathing, but I’ve loved that show since its inception. I think Tina” Fey, the show’s producer and star, “is a remarkable talent,” he said.

“Everybody on that show is note-perfect, and I love watching that show, and it never fails to make me laugh.”

Hamm doesn’t see much difference between playing comedy and drama.

“It comes down to the writing,” he said. “I think I’ve proven that pretty much anyone could make that stuff sing. So I did all right.”

As for the new season of “Mad Men,” “I don’t know what I can tell you,” Hamm said. “I think what happens in Season 3 … is change. And that’s not just talking about the characters and the stories and the arcs of all these people, it’s about the culture as well.”

Asked whether Don is going to be “more faithful” this season, Hamm smiled. “Well, people change, and people stay the same,” he said.

In what was literally a departure for the show, Don traveled to California toward the end of Season 2.

“I thought it was an interesting and kind of important trip for Don,” Hamm said. “You know, this was a man who had gone out to California and seen what maybe could have been the end of the world in these NASA presentations, and … he’s essentially charged with going to find business” from “people that are in charge of blowing up the planet. And I think that kind of resonated with the guy, who isn’t too sure about his past or his future.”

Though “Mad Men” continues to resonate in pop culture — the most recent shout-out came from HBO’s “Entourage” — “we are telling a very specific story, and the source of pride that I have with it is telling the story of these people,” Hamm said.

Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t get a kick out of the attention.

Of “The Simpsons’ ” spoof of the show’s opening credits, he said, “I loved it. I absolutely loved it.” A friend of his is an animator on the show, “and he snuck me a” pencil “drawing of Homer as Don falling. I have that in my house, and it’s framed.”