10 Mind-Blowing facts about Mad Men!

Mad Men, the famous AMC TV series, returns on April 5 for its final season.

Here, we’ve collected 10 crazy facts, and we bet that even the most loyal Mad Men fan, will be surprised by at least a few.

1. How much does it cost (on average) to produce an episode?

It costs $2.84 million per episode to produce. But it is not that much, when you realize that Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce achieved a super deal of $100 million from Netflix for streaming rights.

2. Mad Men is misogynist they said.

The show has been accused of misogyny but most of the writing team are women (seven out of nine at last count) and 14 of the 65 episodes have been directed by women.

3. Don Draper Was Almost Jack Donaghy! 

In 2009, Hamm told Entertainment Weekly that “I actually auditioned for the role of Jack Donaghy. … It was way early in the process. So somewhere on tape, there exists me talking about three kinds of heat.”

4. The show was turned down by both HBO and Showtime.

How they like it now?

5. The toxic smog featured in the episode “Dark Shadows” really happened.

Between 1940-2000 hundreds of deaths have been attributed directly to episodes of severe smog in the U.S. including three killer smog events in New York City.

On November 24th, 1966 New York City, smog kills at least 169 people.

6. Mona, Roger Sterling’s ex-wife, is John Slattery’s wife in real life!

7.  When Hulk Hogan met Elisabeth.

Elisabeth Moss — who is a Scientologist — made her big-screen debut in Hulk Hogan’s Suburban Commando. She played “Little Girl.”

(Ok. I lied, what made me go “WHAT?!” was the fact that Moss is a Scientologist…)

8. What are they smoking?

Thanks to California state law which forbids smoking in the workplace, the cast puff on Ecstasy herbal cigarettes, which are tobacco and nicotine-free. Jon Hamm says they taste “terrible, like a mixture between pot and soap.” Showrunner Matthew Weiner says: “You don’t want actors smoking real cigarettes anyway. They get agitated and nervous. I’ve been on sets where people throw up, they’ve smoked so much.”

9. What if i telling you that…

Don Draper is -at least partially- based on Draper Daniels, a legendary Chicago ad man best known for creating the Marlboro Man.

Draper Daniels’ wife, Myra, has said her late husband became an one-woman man once they were married, and even quit drinking at her request. It’s perhaps for these reasons that Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner told New York Magazine that Daniels was not related to the show. “I just saw the name,” Weiner said.

Draper Daniels died of cancer in 1983.

10. Jom Hamm and alcohol.

On March 23rd, 2015 Jon Hamm released a statement admitting that he, like his character of Don Draper, had developed an alcohol addiction, and he had just completed a 30 day rehabilitation.