On May 17, 2015, the series finale of acclaimed drama Mad Men aired, and after seven seasons and almost eight years, Jon Hamm bid farewell to his troubled ad executive alter ego, Don Draper.
“Mad Men is, was and will always be a high-water mark in my life and my career,” Hamm said in January while accepting Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Man of the Year Award.
“It’s fading in the rearview, but it’s still very prevalent in my life.”
Instead of trying to replicate such an iconic role, Hamm, 54, who during his career has received 18 Emmy nominations across five different television shows, has spent the past decade working steadily in supporting roles in projects that have run the gamut, including Emmy-nominated turns in Fargo and Morning Wars, as well as a part in TV’s Landman, a role in 2024’s Mean Girls musical remake, and cameos in comedies Curb Your Enthusiasm and Barry.
“My life had been defined by this one track, and it was a lot,” he told The Hollywood Reporter of his post-Mad Men moment. “It was nice to be able to take the Etch a Sketch and just shake it and start over. It was also hard, but I needed to go reboot the system.”
Now, Hamm is ready to helm a stylish drama once again, starring as a hedge fund manager-turned-house thief in Apple TV+’s Your Friends & Neighbours.
Writer Jonathan Tropper pitched Hamm the idea in early 2020. “We sat down and he said, ‘I have an idea for a show. It’s about this guy who lives in this incredibly wealthy community and falls on hard times,’” Hamm told his 30 Rock co-star Tina Fey during a chat for Interview Magazine.
“To make ends meet, he realises that his neighbours have all this superficial extra stuff, and what if he just relieved them of some of that?’ I said, ‘It sounds great.’ And then the pandemic hit, and it was like, ‘Well, we’ll talk in five years.’”
It didn’t take quite that long, and the series, co-starring Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn, has already been picked up for a second season.
Things are looking up for Hamm, who hit a personal rough patch right as Mad Men ended. In February 2015, he spent 30 days in a rehab facility.
“It has all these connotations, but it’s just an extended period of talking about yourself,” Hamm reflected on the experience in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2016.
“People go for all sorts of reasons, not all of which are chemically related. There’s something to be said for pulling yourself out of the grind for a period of time and concentrating on recalibrating the system,” the actor continued. “And it works. It’s great.”
A few months later, he split with his girlfriend of 18 years, filmmaker and actress Jennifer Westfeldt.
Hamm, who lost his mother at age 10 to colon cancer and whose father died when he was 20, has been open about his struggles with mental health and the importance of being able to ask for help.
“It’s got the most interesting stigma. You know, people think if you break your ankle, you’re not expected to just walk it off,” he said on the In Depth with Graham Bensinger podcast in 2018.
“But if your brain chemistry is a little tweaked, you’re somehow just expected to deal with it. But it’s like, ‘Well, there’s medicine that fixes it.’”
Hamm met his wife, actress Anna Osceola, 37, when she had a small role in Mad Men’s final episode, however, they didn’t start dating until 2020.
The pair were engaged in February 2023 and married on June 24, 2023, at the site where the Mad Men finale was filmed in Big Sur, California. Guests included celebrity pals like Fey, Billy Crudup, Paul Rudd and Brooke Shields.
“My wedding day was perfect. Everybody I love was there. It was so emotional, and it felt right. I was like, ‘OK, I guess this is a thing,’” Hamm told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was like a reset, a reboot, a reframe, a reimagining … It’s been great. And I hope it turns into kids … I will be the old dad, but so it goes. It could be a good thing. We’ll see.”
Professionally, the sky’s the limit. “He is such a good actor,” his Your Friends & Neighbours co-star Lena Hall told Us Weekly.
“He’s our lead. Not only is he the face of the show, but he’s also an executive producer so there’s a lot going on there and he is just fantastic. I absolutely adored Jon.”
Hamm’s Morning Wars co-star Jennifer Aniston concurs. “Jon’s one of those rare combinations of a gorgeous face and extreme talent both dramatically and comedically,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s a ridiculously smart goofball.”
Stream Your Friends & Neighbours now on Apple TV+ from $12.99/month with a 7-day free trial. Subscribe here.
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