Don Draper
“Draper? Who knows anything about that guy? No one’s ever lifted that rock. He could be Batman for all we know.” So said colleague Harry Crane in series one. Eight years later, as the series enters its final seven episodes, what will become of Don? Alcoholic, chain-smoking, womanising, self-sabotaging and secretive, Don (real name Dick Whitman) stands alongside Tony Soprano and Walter White among TV’s top troubled antiheroes. So does that credits sequence of an ad man plunging to his death foreshadow Don’s fate or could redemption be his? Either way, Jon Hamm will look devilishly handsome.
Duck Phillips
The agency’s overly lubricated loose cannon, Herman “Duck” Phillips (Mark Moses) relocated from London after being brought in by Don as head of account services, but bitter rivalry soon developed between the two. Duck oversaw a merger with his old firm back in Blighty, bedded Peggy, tried to poach Pete Campbell and lost several jobs due to drunken rants. He was ejected from the Clio awards after causing a scene and tried to do a dirty protest on one of Roger’s white couches (in Duck’s defence, he thought it was Don’s office). Oops
Ida Blankenship
Roger’s impromptu eulogy summed up the battleaxe receptionist best: “She died like she lived – surrounded by the people she answered phones for.” Brilliantly, it turned out they had once had a raunchy affair, which led Roger to call her the “Queen of Perversion”. When minor character Ida’s role expanded during season four, she revealed herself to be a tactless, racist, incompetent, rudely cantankerous source of comic relief. When she died at her desk, Pete and Joan wheeled her corpse out of the building, covered in a blanket so that clients didn’t get spooked. She only had seven minutes of screen time during her entire stint yet actress Randee Heller (best known as the Karate Kid’s mum) still earned an Emmy nomination for the role.
Peggy Olson
Don’s protege Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) has climbed the ranks from cowering secretary to gifted copywriter. Yet she’s not some cardboard cutout of a career girl or feminist pioneer. What makes her fascinatingly fully rounded are the sacrifices she made to achieve her goals: giving up her baby for adoption, becoming neither one of the boys nor one of the girls, fighting for respect, never finding the contentment she deserves. She’s Don’s intellectual soulmate and their platonic chemistry is one of the touchstones that keeps Don just the right side of the lovable/loathsome line.
Salvatore Romano
Sal’s was a touching tale of closet homosexuality. The suave Italian-American, brilliantly played by bear-like Bryan Batt, was the agency’s art director, married to childhood sweetheart Kitty and flirting with women at work to keep up appearances, but nursing a crush on Ken Cosgrove. On a business trip, Don caught him in a compromising position (above) with a bellboy but to Sal’s relief, never mentioned it – although Don did pitch the raincoat slogan “Limit Your Exposure” as subtle advice for Sal’s personal life. Lee Garner Jr, heir to the Lucky Strike fortune, eventually got poor Sal fired for rejecting his advances, with the agency too scared of losing the $25m tobacco account to argue.
Roger Sterling
Roger (John Slattery) is the preening silver fox who swaggers around, semi-sozzled, the devil on Don’s shoulder. A naval war veteran who “lives like he’s on shore leave”, Roger got divorced, dabbled in hippie hedonism, dropped acid (with second wife, Jane, above) - and then, with the aid of hard-won wisdom and marijuana, worked his way back into his family’s affections. He’s a sharper dresser than Don and gets superior sardonic one-liners: “Have a drink, it’ll make me look younger” or: “When God closes a door, he opens a dress.” Roger has a lovechild with his ex-secretary Joan – might the pair live happily ever after? Please?
Joan Holloway
“Men may act like they want a secretary but most of the time they’re looking for something between a mother and a waitress.” So says Joan, played with matter-of-fact fabulousness by Christina Hendricks. Joan Harris née Holloway keeps Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce running like a well-oiled (with martinis) machine. She rose from queen bee of the secretarial pool (and Roger’s on-off lover) to office manager to partner. The resilient, red-headed powerhouse wears eye-popping outfits with such casual insouciance it makes them even sexier. She’s also an accomplished squeezebox player.
Paul Kinsey
Jowly copywriter Kinsey (Michael Gladis) was a complex, insecure nerd, more influenced by 60s boho counterculture than most inside the Madison Avenue bubble. A fan of sci-fi, space travel and The Twilight Zone, he grew an Orson Welles beard and started quoting War of the Worlds. He campaigned for the civil rights movement to impress his black girlfriend, then started listening to jazz and smoking marijuana. He dated Joan but blew it by bragging, later hit on Peggy, and was last sighted wearing Hare Krishna robes (to impress another girl), while planning a trip to Hollywood to pitch his terrible script for an episode of Star Trek.
Dawn Chambers
Sterling Cooper’s first black employee gave perhaps the most astute description of life at the agency: “Everybody’s scared there. Women crying in the ladies’ room. Men crying in the elevator. It sounds like New Year’s Eve when they empty the garbage, there’s so many bottles. And that poor man hanging himself in his office…” Hired as Don’s secretary in a cynical move to position the firm as an equal opportunity employer, Dawn (Teyonah Parris) soon made herself indispensable. When Joan became a fully-fledged partner, she rewarded Dawn for her savvy dedication by promoting her to personnel director.
Michael Ginsberg
It’s not often a character exits a drama by going insane and cutting off his nipple to spite his computer. Genius Ginsberg (Ben Feldman) was an innovative copywriter with a captivatingly theatrical pitching style. But when an IBM computer was installed in the office, Ginsberg grew paranoid that it was plotting to destroy the human race. He presented his severed nipple to Peggy in a jewellery box, explaining that removing his “valve” meant the computer’s vibrations could now flow through him. He was stretchered off, warning his watching colleagues that the machine would soon replace them.
Mad Men is on Thursdays on Sky Atlantic at 10pm. Guardian Members can attend exclusive screenings of each episode in central London followed by a panel discussion.
This article was amended at 13.04 on 9 April 2015. The copy originally referred to Duck Phillips as “the token Brit”. While the character had worked in London prior to appearing in the series, he is an American.
