Mad Men: All 19 of Don Draper's Mistresses Explained (2024)

FAQs

Mad Men: All 19 of Don Draper's Mistresses Explained? ›

He has symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, but he also appears to have an impulse control disorder.

He has symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, but he also appears to have an impulse control disorder.

Peggy is a woman who just never fell under the spell of Don Draper. Her colleagues often assumed that she built her career by sleeping with Don, but they've never had that kind of relationship — thank goodness.

Joan's relationship with Don Draper was never a romantic one, but rather a relationship based on trust, respect and mutual admiration for each other. ("Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency") ("Christmas Waltz"). Don was at first very intimidated by Joan when he started working at Sterling Cooper.

While Jones was pregnant with her now-six-month-old son Xander during filming, instead of writing that into the plot, series creator Matthew Weiner had the series' writers explain it away by explaining that Betty had packed on the pounds out of boredom, depression and a distance from her second husband, Henry Francis.

Diana Bauer

She is a waitress when Don meets her and is shown to be someone who isn't that intelligent throughout her run on the show. While Diana is inquisitive and does read, she never really engages much in conversation in the way that many of Don's partners do.

Betty Francis (January Jones), the ex-wife of advertising executive extraordinaire Don Draper (Jon Hamm), was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Betty has been routinely marginalized and dismissed, but her final storyline proved her character is a woman of poise and grace.

She Was Psychologically Struggling

Betty started seeing a therapist in season 1 after she reported that her hands tend to start shaking uncontrollably and that they feel numb. It turned out that the symptom was psychosomatic, which indicates that Betty was in a lot of distress.

Her death from lung cancer at age 38(ish) is somehow the payment that Mad Men—which offered a giddy sleekness not at all unlike that of the shiny exchange explained in my first paragraph—has been willing to make so that viewers will know the beauty of capitalism kills, or rather kills in some cases.

Well, we've done some intensive investigations and have found that over the course of the nine years that Mad Men was set, Don had sex or was intimate with 17 women.

Why did Don call Peggy? ›

We learn more about the source of this developing bond in episode five, “The New Girl.” Don calls Peggy to bail him out of jail after he and Bobbie Barret drunkenly crashed the car he was driving. In flashback, we see that Don was the only person who visited Peggy in the hospital when she (surprisingly) had her baby.

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) had 19 mistresses throughout Mad Men's seven seasons, not counting his three wives. Created by Matthew Weiner, Mad Men was one of AMC's prestige series that followed the lives and careers of Madison Avenue advertising executives throughout the 1960s.

In an interesting twist on the mother theme, the vagrant black woman who breaks into the Drapers to rob them fashions herself as Don's mother. She calls herself Grandma Aida when Sally confronts her. Aimee took Don's virginity; Aida takes his gold watch.

Megan had moved to Los Angeles to pursue her acting career and asked him for a divorce. Feeling guilty over his past infidelities, Draper gave her a generous divorce settlement.

It is revealed that at the end of Season 1, Peggy gave birth to a son, which she gave up for adoption.

Season 3, episode 5 of Mad Men: “The Fog,” is otherwise known as the episode where the third and final Draper child, Gene, is born. As Betty gives birth in a drug-induced twilight sleep (it was the '60s, after all), she hallucinates a conversation with her recently deceased father.

It ran on the cable network AMC from July 19, 2007, to May 17, 2015, lasting for seven seasons and 92 episodes. The show is set from March 1960 to November 1970.

Ending interpretation

The series finale ends with Don Draper meditating on a hilltop and cuts to the iconic 1971 "Hilltop" television advertisem*nt for Coca-Cola, which leaves viewers to interpret whether Don created the ad.

For the first three seasons, Don was married to Betty Draper (née Hofstadt; January Jones). At the end of the third season, she divorced him and married Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), an aide to then-New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller.

Does Betty Draper get skinny again? ›

6. Betty Gets Skinny Again. No more "fat Betty!" Don's ex had been following her weight-loss plan, and after she had dramatically put on the pounds, Betty thins out after she realizes that Henry's career may put her in the spotlight. Here's Your First Look at the Mad Men Season 7 Premiere!

Betty slept with Don as a way to prove to herself it wasn't her fault he had constantly cheated on her. As young, beautiful, stylish, famous, and easygoing as Megan was, Don wasn't happy and cheated on her anyway. Betty and Henry were doing fine at that point so it had nothing to do with him.

Mad Men wasn't canceled, but instead, it ended with season 7 because creator and showrunner Matthew Weiner felt it was the right time to conclude the story. Indeed, most of the characters had reached the natural conclusion of the arcs.

By season 5, Betty Draper is Betty Francis and is trying to break free of her atypical looking housewife image by dyeing her hair a darker shade. As soon she comes through the door her oldest son Bobby see's her and yells, “You look ugly”. Bobby might've been harsh, but he's right. It was awful.

This, like when she shoots at the pigeons with a toy gun, is an empty gesture to keep appearances (which she's been programmed to do all her life). She pretends to shoot down her own dreams instead of really, truly face them.

Season 5. During the gap between Season 4 and 5, Joan has giving birth to healthy baby bo neamed Kevin and is currently finishing her last couple of weeks of maternity leave. She eventually returns back to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in the episode "Signal 30".

It just seems lazy. Is January Jones really that fat? No. While the actress, who was pregnant with her new son at the time, had put on weight, she wore a fatsuit and prosthetic facial and neck appliances to make her appear fatter than she was.

In the series finale, "Person to Person", Joan starts her own film production company. She attempts to recruit Peggy as a partner, but Peggy chooses to stay at McCann. Joan and Richard continue dating and become somewhat serious about one another, but he is opposed to her re-entering the business world.

For Someone Who Hated Don's Thanklessness, She's Pretty Cold As A Boss. One of the many reasons why Peggy started resenting Don over the course of the show is the fact that he never really thanked her for her contributions, and took credit for her work, at times, as well.

Don Draper had many years to go. If he were alive today (and not a fictional person), he would be in his late 80s. Given the damage those decades of cigarettes and alcohol would have done to his body, he probably would not be in great shape. And it is not hard to imagine who would be taking care of him.

How old was Don Draper at the end? ›

The episode takes place in November 1970, exactly 10 years and eight months after the pilot, which would pin Don's real age at 44 at the end of the series. The series' seven seasons span a decade in Draper's life, from his mid-30s in 1960 to his mid-40s in 1970, revealing lingering pieces of his past along the way.

Don Draper is a creative genius. It's a premise Mad Men viewers have been reminded of constantly during the show's four seasons.

She also reveals that she gave her baby up for adoption to Stan, a man with whom she has spent four seasons building intimacy. Peggy wasn't able to erase that from her identity like Don suggested, but she comes to peace with it so many years later.

Don was the only person who knew Peggy gave birth, and he was the only person who visited her in the hospital. His advice — "It will shock you how much this never happened," — ultimately got Peggy out of her hospital bed and back to work.

One of Peggy's story arcs involved her pregnancy after sleeping with Pete. It was quite extreme, her not knowing she was pregnant while her colleagues noticed her growing bump.

The lothario lost his virginity to a prostitute when he was a teen and in the latest episode of the show, entitled The Crash, the advertising executive relives the traumatic experience. Don is reminded of the pivotal day after falling ill with an overwhelming cough, a similar illness to one he suffered as a child.

A Sterling Cooper employee since Season 1, Allison started as a receptionist and became Don's secretary in Season 3. When a drunken Don forgets his keys after a Christmas party, she delivers them to his apartment and the two sleep together.

Anna Draper

It's obvious that Don truly cares for Anna and it seems like this is only possible because of the platonic nature of their relationship. She is truly the most important person in his life.

Betty appears to be a cold and neglectful mother—especially by the standards of today's hyper-involved parents. She allows her daughter, Sally, to run around the house, submerged head to toe beneath a body-length plastic dry cleaning bag.

The first is Rachel Menken, and you could say she's the prototype when it comes to Don's preference for sad brunettes. Even though the Don/Rachel romance is short-lived, it's framed as one of the defining loves of his life.

What is the age difference between Don and Megan? ›

A representative for Mad Men told The Daily Beast that Megan is somewhere between 25 and 26 years old this season, while Don is 41, Peggy is in her late 20s, and Betty is in her mid-30s.

Don is falling in love with Megan, in large part, because she's not Betty, exploding into rage, or Faye, nervous and freaked out around the kids. She's not high-strung and unpredictable. ... Part of Megan's appeal is that she'll let Don go back to thinking about work and nothing but work.

She was almost perfect for Don... but he was ultimately too broken as a character to really connect to her. His infatuation with his neighbor ultimately led to Don losing any interest in Megan, and their marriage quickly took a turn for the worse over time.

Diana Serra Cary, silent-film star 'Baby Peggy' who often cheated death on set, dies at 101. During her brief career as a silent-film star, “Baby Peggy” came perilously close to death time and again.

The entire reason Married with Children opted to make Peggy pregnant was that actress Katey Sagal was pregnant in real life, and the decision was made to write the pregnancy into the show instead of trying to use camera tricks to hide it, or make up an excuse why Peggy had to go away for a while.

Throughout Season One, her character unknowingly becomes pregnant. Moss did not gain any weight for the role, however, but wore increasingly bigger padding, along with a fat suit, and makeup artists used prosthetics to make her face and neck appear fat and swollen.

Betty is pregnant with Archie's child, and in 25 years, he'll be crowned the Maple King, just like his dad. Cheryl explains Archie's blood is what will bring the town back to its glory, as he has the distinction of being the town's one true, pure heart.

Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka)—the baby boomer of Matthew Weiner's Mad Men—is essentially you or your parents. Watch our take and find out what her story tells us about the boomer generation.

The actor who played him gives the character a proper goodbye. On the ninth episode of Mad Men's third season, Don Draper fired Salvatore Romano by request of a major client who threatened to take his business elsewhere (and whose advances had been rejected by the closeted art director just the night before).

The actors do not smoke real cigarettes. They smoke Ecstacy herbal cigarettes, which are tobacco and nicotine free. Show creator Matthew Weiner said in a New York Times article, "You don't want actors smoking real cigarettes. They get agitated and nervous.

How many cigarettes were smoked in Mad Men? ›

Not surprisingly, cigarette consumption was equally prodigious. AMC counted 942 cigarettes, spread out over almost every character: Don, Roger, Joan, Peggy, Betty and yes, even young Sally. A little less open, sometimes, was the smoking of 18 joints.

One of the core themes of "Mad Men" is identity. The series explores how people present different versions of their true self depending on their surroundings. Everyone is wearing a mask and no one is who they appear to be.

Diana is Don's twinge, the pain from his old wound personified, his time machine. But both the way she rejects him and the fact that afterward, he returns to his apartment to find it completely empty, are proof that it doesn't matter what Don Draper does or who he sleeps with or where he lives.

Joan's relationship with Don Draper was never a romantic one, but rather a relationship based on trust, respect and mutual admiration for each other. ("Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency") ("Christmas Waltz").

However, his vomiting isn't just indicative of a physical illness, but a psychological one as well. Throughout the course of the series, he's always suppressing his psychological turmoil, but the funeral reveals that he can no longer contain it. Don arrives drunk to the funeral.

He has symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder, but he also appears to have an impulse control disorder.

In the finale of the series, Don Draper goes to a retreat in order to find peace after all the sufferings his lies have caused to himself and others. All other characters except Do have been given happy endings such as Roger is married to Marie, Joan sets up her own production company, etc.

She Was Psychologically Struggling

Betty started seeing a therapist in season 1 after she reported that her hands tend to start shaking uncontrollably and that they feel numb. It turned out that the symptom was psychosomatic, which indicates that Betty was in a lot of distress.

The cause was cardiac arrest, according to his son, Robert Draper, who was his father's caretaker during the last decade of his life.

Running from emotions

Flashbacks gave us glimmers into Don's childhood. Fraught with economic and emotional poverty, he was also physically and sexually abused. The most psychologically damaging part, however, was that he had no caring people at home. His suffering was met with indifference and even contempt.

Does Don Draper have imposter syndrome? ›

We've followed Don the most closely, compared to any other character, having access to his troubling childhood during the Great Depression and his traumatic time in Korea, where his great lie of Donald Draper began. This intimate access means we know of Don's crippling imposter syndrome from the beginning.

No, he is narcissistic as a result of a troubled childhood: he suffered complete lack of affection from his mother and abandonment from his father. He is narcissistic as a result but he understands moral codes, he shows empathy for other people, he does selfless acts and loves his children.

If he were alive today (and not a fictional person), he would be in his late 80s. Given the damage those decades of cigarettes and alcohol would have done to his body, he probably would not be in great shape. And it is not hard to imagine who would be taking care of him.

Ending interpretation

The series finale ends with Don Draper meditating on a hilltop and cuts to the iconic 1971 "Hilltop" television advertisem*nt for Coca-Cola, which leaves viewers to interpret whether Don created the ad.

Well, we've done some intensive investigations and have found that over the course of the nine years that Mad Men was set, Don had sex or was intimate with 17 women.

Don't turn down the chance to move up.

The opportunity to “upgrade” one's life/career should never be passed up, even if it seems as if the scenario is scary or intimidating. After all, not everyone has the option to move up in the world, regardless of how hard they work for what they have.

The actors do not smoke real cigarettes. They smoke Ecstacy herbal cigarettes, which are tobacco and nicotine free. Show creator Matthew Weiner said in a New York Times article, "You don't want actors smoking real cigarettes. They get agitated and nervous.

Don is not a very nice person. That is clearly established throughout the entirety of Mad Men - specifically in the scenes that take place at the office. And while Don is the only one to see Peggy for the incredible talent that she is, he also treats her like an underling throughout much of the series.