Christina Hendricks

The following is an excerpt of an article from the September 16, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. This issue is available tomorrow on newsstands, and Friday, September 3rd online via Rolling Stone’s premium subscription plan.

In the opening scene of the new season of Mad Men, an interviewer asks Draper, "Who is Don Draper?" Rather than confess the truth — that he’s a flimflam man who fabricated his whole identity from a dead Korean War officer and built his entire life on a lie en route to a Madison Avenue advertising career — Draper merely takes a drag on his cigarette. "I’m from the Midwest," he says. "We were taught it’s not polite to talk about yourself."

In a sense, Mad Men is Weiner’s attempt to figure out this question for himself. He has created an elaborate pageant of American fantasies — guys and dolls who look like they have it all, even when their private worlds are complete frauds. The advertising wizards of Mad Men swagger through the office, knock back cocktails, knock back lovers. They live out JFK-era America’s tawdriest dreams, almost as if it’s a professional code — to sell these dreams to America, they have to experience them from the inside, with all their inherent betrayal and manipulation. After three seasons on AMC, a basic-cable network previously known for endless reruns of second-rate movies, Mad Men established a hold on America’s fantasy life like no show since The Sopranos. "The big question the show is trying to answer through Don has to do with identity," Weiner says. "Who am I? — It’s only the biggest theme in all of Western literature."

To make it happen, Weiner assembled a cast he could relate to — veteran actors who had spent their careers toiling in relative obscurity. Jon Hamm, who plays Draper, had a few scenes in We Were Soldiers. January Jones, who plays his brittle and ethereal ex-wife, Betty, showed up in the third American Pie movie as Stifler’s love interest. Christina Hendricks, who rules the offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce as Joan, appeared in a video for the Nineties rock band Everclear. Nobody wanted them. Today, everybody knows their names, everybody covets their careers, everybody wants to get next to them.

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