Jon Hamm Weighs In on Interpretation of 'Mad Men' Final Scenes
TV

On Hamm's own take, Don wakes up after his group therapy session and 'has this serene moment of understanding, and realizes who he is. ... And so, this thing comes to him.'

AceShowbiz - At the final moments of "Mad Men", Jon Hamm's Don Draper was seen smiling while doing yoga before the screen cut to the "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" commercial. This led to speculation that Don came up with the idea of the ad during the meditative moment.

Talking in an interview with the New York Times about the series finale, the actor seems to agree with this interpretation of the end of the series. He says that "there probably is" a correct interpretation to it, "but I think, like most stories that we go back to, that it's a little bit ambiguous."

Asked about his own take on the ending, Hamm says Don wakes up the day after his emotional group therapy session "and has this serene moment of understanding, and realizes who he is. And who he is, is an advertising man. And so, this thing comes to him."

Responding to people's reactions that the ending is "so pat, and it's rom-com-y," he says people should not see it as the end of the characters' lives. "It's not the end of anything," he says, "The world doesn't blow up right after the Coke commercial ends. No one is suggesting that Stan and Peggy live happily ever after, or that Joan's business is a rousing success, or that Roger and Marie come back from Paris together. None of it is done."

He adds, "Matt had said at one point, 'I just want my characters to be a little more happy than they were in the beginning,' and I think that's pretty much true. But these aren't the last moments of any of these characters' lives, including Betty. She doesn't have much time left, but damn if she's not going to spend it the way she wants to spend it."

Meanwhile, Bill Backer, the real man who created the 1971 Coca-Cola jingle, is asked how he feels that his real-life success has been borrowed by Don. "I think it.s fine. No problem with that," he says.

Though so, he notes that his own experience as a creative guy was way different from that of Don. "I definitely did not look like Don Draper or dress like Don Draper," he says. "Don is a martini-drinking suave character. Most of the creative directors had a little more ink stain on their hands. They did the actual writing and working. They were a different breed, I thought, than Don Draper."

Recalling the time he came up with the jingle, he shares, "See, my moment came out of truth and emergency. I had to come up with a commercial, we were getting sent to record in London and were stuck in Ireland.... I was stuck in an airport.... I looked around people were sitting there together having a coke. So I wrote that on the back of a napkin: 'I've got to teach the world to sing. I'd like to buy the world a coke and furnish it with love.' That's what the product was doing at the time."

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