The TCA ‘Mad Men’ Set Visit: No, I Didn’t Steal Any Ashtrays

I’m not sure if Mad Men executive producer Matt Weiner was tongue-in-cheek joking or not when he asked TV critics touring the show’s set Tuesday not to walk off with any souvenirs.

“Please be respectful of the set, and we say this to everyone who comes to visit: Don’t take anything,” Weiner told several busloads of writers assembled for the set visit. “This is like Pompeii. You see the bones in the walls, they are irreplaceable. Some of this stuff has really been hard to find.”

But then Weiner enthusiastically escorted writers around the set he so obviously loves, located at the LA Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles.

AMC’s Mad Men—a period piece about an enigmatic crew working at the Sterling Cooper ad agency in the early 1960s on Madison Avenue, is the critics’ darling right now. And it could be making even big news Thursday if it walks off with a lot of Emmy nominations.

In the meantime—during this field trip at the Television Critics Association summer tour—Weiner (pictured), the show’s cast and its production and costume executives were on hand to describe how the drama’s authentic 1960’s look is achieved, hunting down vintage items and creating props for the show.

The first stop was the set of Sterling Cooper, the New York ad agency where we’re thrown back to the old-school world of martinis at lunch, smoking in the office and sexist and racist remarks galore.

Weiner talked about an authentic Xerox machine from the period, and noted that Xerox “sent us sound from the original one running,” which is used on the show.

It’s obvious that Weiner has a say in every detail of the show. For example, he helped sign off on the headboard—which is tufted velvet, in aqua, not traditional wood—that is used in the bedroom of Don and Betty Draper, Mad Men’s lead characters.

“I do know that I want to have sex with the headboard,” Weiner joked, then explained the decision to use the padded headboard: “We’ll be shooting a lot in here (the bedroom). Betty Draper cares about the headboard. It’s a very important part of their lives together. Let’s go for it.”

Weiner also pointed out that in Mad Men’s second season, the Drapers now have a phone in their bedroom.

“Matt has a very specific idea of what he wants in almost everything, as you guys probably found out by now,” actor Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper, tells reporters.

On the Sterling Cooper set, Hamm and January Jones, who portrays his wife in Mad Men, are both in costume, shooting that day. Hamm is in one of his requisite tight suits, while Jones is in a shirtwaist dress with a huge full skirt and polka dots.

“It’s been a lot of work…and kind of desperate attempts to recharge,” Hamm tells reporters of Mad Men’s first season.

But he make no bones about the fact he’s thrilled with the show’s success, and that Mad Men in fact resonates with him personally.

“My father was a businessman. My mother was a secretary,” Hamm said.

We also tour the set of the Draper home, their kitchen, living room and aforementioned bedroom, and then stop by the costume department.

Cast members Vincent Kartheiser, who plays scheming snake Pete Campbell, and Elisabeth Moss, who portrays Peggy Olson—and had Campbell’s illicit baby in the shocking finale of the first season—are busy defending their characters.

“He’s a very human and normal character, and I think he’s all of us,” Kartheiser tells a scrum of reporters. “We’re all a little bit of Pete Campbell. We all have that whiny little brat in us.”

Kartheiser argued that Hamm’s Draper, who has quite a checkered past, is no angel.

“Draper is not exactly noble, he’s just attractive and understated…He’s just more naturally likable,” Kartheiser said.

Moss (no relation) said that Weiner told her before shooting on the first season even started that she would give birth in the finale. According to Moss, her character was in denial about her pregnancy, even as she gained more and more weight.

The Mad Men sets, the ad agency office and Draper home, are littered with ashtrays and cigarettes, props that illustrate a habit that seems to shock people today. But Weiner said it was only fairly recently—decades after 1960—that smoking was no longer the norm for America.

“I remember people smoking a lot in 1980, 1985, 1990,” he said. “To live through history like that, and to meet people who are 18 years old and they’re like, ‘And people smoked on planes?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. You ever been to a casino? That’s what it was like going in an airplane.’”