Jon Hamm recounts the dangers of the ‘Mad Men’ set

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Jon Hamm appeared on ‘Late Show With David Letterman’ on Thursday to promote his new movie, ‘Friends With Kids,’ but invariably talk turned to the upcoming fifth season of ‘Mad Men.’ And for a show that takes place primarily in an office, its star sure has suffered a lot of injuries.

Hamm told Letterman that, in his time as smooth-talking New York adman Don Draper, he’s received eight stitches in his head, broken his hand and separated his shoulder.

‘Good Lord!’ Letterman said. ‘What? Doing paperwork?’

Actually, the stitches came from a piece of the set falling on Hamm’s head. The broken hand came from a poorly aimed leap from an explosion during a flashback to the Korean War and the separated shoulder came from a bad landing from an awkward leap caused by not being able to land on the aforementioned broken hand.

Hamm is nothing if not a straight shooter on talk shows, totally unlike his duplicitous adman. And when asked by Letterman to explain the lengthy delay between the series’ fourth and fifth seasons, he stated it this way: ‘I’ve described it thusly and I’ve gotten in trouble, so I’ll do it again the same way. When billionaires fight, it takes a lot longer to settle. So we had some very wealthy people determining how long we would be off the air.’

The season was delayed when creator Matt Weiner and cable channel AMC could not come to financial and creative terms for the new season, a dispute that was finally resolved last April.

The new season begins March 25.

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— Patrick Kevin Day