‘Mad Men’ cast stingy on plot details as third season begins

Published 1:18 pm Monday, August 10, 2009

PASADENA, Calif. — As AMC’s “Mad Men” readies a new season, questions raised at the end of last season swirl: Will 1960s-era ad man Don Draper (Jon Hamm) be faithful to wife Betty (January Jones) now that she’s pregnant? How will the declaration by junior copywriter Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) to peevish Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) that she had his baby and gave it up for adoption affect their working relationship?

You won’t get answers to those questions from series creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner, who is notoriously nervous about giving away too much information, even a detail as trivial as what year the series has advanced to when its third season premieres at 10 p.m. Sunday on AMC.

“I try to have a theme when I start (a season), and it becomes more complicated as you go,” Weiner said in a staging area for an AMC cocktail party that, like a scene on “Mad Men,” was thick with actors’ cigarette smoke.

“(This season) started with dealing with change. It’s a cliche that people face change in their lives, but there is a reaction that people have. Some people are thrilled by it and some people are terrified by it.”

Jones said Betty and Don begin the new season less at odds with one another than they were last year.

“That last episode where they held hands and she said, ‘I’m having a baby,’ I think it’s been a rebirth for them,” she said. “They’re being very nice to each other, and they’re looking at this baby as a new beginning for them. The pregnancy is a very optimistic time for them.”

But with change in the wind, that may not last.

“That’s not just talking about the characters and stories, it’s about the culture as well,” Hamm said of societal shifts that will be felt by “Mad Men” characters. “We’re moving forward in time and the country is very much changing and people change along with it.”

But what about Don and Betty?

“Is Don going to be more faithful?” Hamm says, repeating a question he’s been asked. “Well, people change and people stay the same. I’ll leave you with that.”

At least viewers can count on ad man Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) to be content.

“This is a world where people are looking for happiness, and Ken seems to be someone who has found it or isn’t desperately searching for it,” Staton said. “He’s content on a day-to-day level and I think that’s much to the chagrin of his peers.”

For Kartheiser, playing a character who occasionally rants like a sullen child has its challenges, but he trusts the show’s producers to strike the right balance in editing. He’ll offer varying degrees of Pete’s petulance in multiple takes for a scene.

Despite comparatively low ratings, “Mad Men” has certainly entered the zeitgeist — it’s been parodied on “The Simpsons” and “Saturday Night Live.” Hamm, who hosted “SNL” this past season, has a pencil drawing from the “Simpsons” spoof framed and hanging on a wall in his home.

For Jones, the show’s success means she can’t go to vintage stores and buy ‘50s and ‘60s clothes anymore. But she’s evidently free to expand her diet.

“If anything, they want us to gain weight because they want a soft, voluptuous woman,” she said. “I got told a couple days ago I looked too skinny and I was in trouble.”