TCAs: Critics Still Mad for Mad Men

• Jul 9, 2008 07:14 PM ET
• by Matt Roush

Jon Hamm, a Golden Globe winner and likely Emmy nominee, isn't taking the critical success of Mad Men for granted. "It's phenomenal. It's a wonderful experience. But the swirl that happens around the show exists outside the show." Still, as he quotes his co-star John Slattery, "It makes you feel like you're not crazy. Other people like good stuff too."

Critics certainly like good stuff, and AMC's session promoting Mad Men's upcoming second season was easily the biggest lovefest so far in the TCA press tour, currently in its first week devoted to cable presentations.

The group laughed when a critic challenged the show's famously tight-lipped creator Matthew Weiner to explain to fans why the mystery surrounding what happened to Peggy's illegitimate baby - the jaw-dropper of the Season 1 finale - remains unresolved by the end of the July 27 season opener. "I would say, trust me. I will give you the information as you need it in the most entertaining fashion." (The good news is that much is revealed on this front in Episode 2.)

We're not the only ones in the dark. The actors feel the same way, texting each other with excitement each time they get a new script. "It's an unbelievable surprise every week," says Slattery, who plays hard-drinking office boss Roger Sterling. "We don't know very much in advance at all. And I'm afraid to ask half the time because it's like your own death. Especially for me. I'm hanging by a thread," he laughs. (Roger had several serious heart attacks in season 1, but is looking pretty healthy as the new season opens, jumping ahead more than a year in time to Valentine's Day 1962.)

"We are sworn to secrecy. We have to burn our scripts. We can't talk to our wives or our loved ones or anybody about what's going on. We can barely talk to each other," jokes the cast's most veteran actor, Broadway legend Robert Morse. He brought down the house when asked to compare his character, the eccentric Bert Cooper, to his iconic role as Finch in the classic musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. "It's a strange thing coming in and looking at all the young secretaries and knowing that I'm the Rudy Valley part." Morse considers himself to be "profoundly lucky to be with all of these people. It's a tremendous experience at this time in my life." He says he comes to work even when he's not in the episode. "I don't belong to a senior club. So I feel this is my club. And I come down to the set sometimes just to get the free lunch."

At this point in the season, about all we can say without ruining anything is that Peggy Olson, the ambitious and single copy writer played by Elisabeth Moss, is looking her old self again- though behind her back, there's still plenty of gossip about her mysterious absence. No one knows about the baby, especially Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), the baby's father, who still can't conceive with his own wife. Moss says it's a relief to put the padding and prosthetics behind her. "It's nice to look like me again and not have to go through the three hours of extra makeup." To which Weiner teased, "For the first few episodes."

If anyone's feeling a downside to the show's cultural impact, it's the female stars, forced to inhibit their onw personal retro fashion sense. "I'm not wandering around in my vintage '60s dresses anymore," says January Jones, who plays Hamm's luscious wife Betty. "It's true. I don't really want to go vintage shopping, ever," says Moss.

As for Christina Hendricks, who plays the knockout head secretary Joan, "We like to dress vintage anyway, and now we feel like, oh, people are going to think I'm in costume and I can't wear that thing that I love." It doesn't help that there are now Mad Men-influenced lines of clothing. "That makes it even harder, because you go shopping now and so many designers have been influenced by it, and you're looking through the racks and it looks like you're looking through the costume rack on the set."

Hard to imagine they're actually surprised. Who wouldn't want to look like these fabulous people?

But, as Weiner cautions, despite the show's surface glamour, "I'm always interested in trying to make it look real. And the fact that it looks pretty is partially because of the faces you see here and because of the elegance of the way that the story is told and the speed at which that story is told and the attention that is paid to the details. But we are always trying to put a poison into it also. We are always trying to show the snagged material in the clothing and the wrinkles and the sweat stains."

If this is poison, bring it on.