The season three premiere of Mad Men comes on this Sunday, and if you’re anything like me, you are literally driving yourself crazy waiting for the best show on television today to come back. Meanwhile, us Jon Hamm-holics will have to content ourselves with two new Jon Hamm interviews.

First up, Jon’s interview on Good Morning America this morning. Jon calls his second and third Emmy nominations “amazing” and says the 16 total nominations the show received was a “validation by your peers.” At this point, I’d just like to mention that Jon carries himself like a man who knows he’s always the coolest guy in the room. It’s not arrogance or smugness. It doesn’t even comes across as narcissism. He seems like a genuinely confident man who can own a room naturally. Okay, what else does he say? Here are some quotes from the interview:

Asked if he is a “cool dude” and the “amount of stardom he’s achieved” Hamm replies, “Is that a technical term? I’ll have to look that up…. It’s been a weird few years. I’m pretty much the same person I’ve always been since I moved out to LA and was unemployed and waiting tables and all that, that entire progression. The last couple of years have been pretty surreal.”

Asked “What is about Don Draper?… there’s a darkness there” Hamm agrees and says, “There are a couple of reasons. When you have a character… that makes some dubious choices in his personal life and professional life, I think there’s a lot of people that get some kind of vicarious thrill out of that. That’s the person who’s doing the things they wish they could do. And it takes place in a time that’s not too far removed but far enough removed that people can feel a little bit of distance from that as well.”

On smoking in Mad Men: Hamm says that it’s not real smoking, “it’s play smoke…California law, you can’t smoke inside anyway… so there are other people we have to consider when we’re on the set, these are in fact burning…uh… burning things, and we don’t want people to get sick, so it’s some sort of herbal blend that has no nicotine, they’re not addictive.”

[Transcribed from Good Morning America interview]

Hamm was also on The Tonight Show last night, and Huffington Post has some of the more interesting quotes from that appearance:

Mad Men’s Jon Hamm visted Conan Tuesday night and talked about his cameo on 30 Rock, when he played Liz Lemon’s boyfriend who is so terribly handsome he lives in a bubble of illusion where things always go his way. This was Hamm’s first encounter with Tracy Morgan, whom he described as a “spectacular form of chaos.”

“Everyone should have the experience of meeting Tracy Morgan for the first time,” Hamm said. “He goes, ‘do you know who my biological mother is?’ Uh no, Tracy, I don’t. ‘Leslie Uggams.’ Then he goes, ‘do you know who my biological father is?’ No, Tracy. ‘Burt Bacharach.’ So now I’m stuck in this bit…I said, ‘I have to go to read-through.'”

Hamm also talked a bit about Mad Men, premiering in its third season August 16. He said his grandmother, a churchgoing lady from a small town in Missouri, is not a big fan of the show. “Her feedback was, ‘I don’t think you’re making very good decisions,’ which I think distilled things pretty nicely. I think that’s going on the season three DVD case.”

[From Huffington Post]

I don’t even have words for how much I love Jon and the show. I know I’m not alone, because yesterday Jaybird sent me this cool thing about all of the Mad Men-themed parties and events being hosted in New York this week. Nevermind that the show actually films in Los Angeles – Mad Men is a love letter to a bygone New York, and New Yorkers should celebrate.

Here’s Jon Hamm with the rest of the “Mad Men” cast at the AMC premiere of of Season 3 held at Director’s Guild of America in Los Angeles on August 3rd. Images thanks to WENN.com .