Mad Men's Matthew Weiner

There's no better example of Matthew Weiner's creative vision than the sensation caused by the busty, bootylicious actress Christina Hendricks. Weiner had the nous to cast a beautiful woman who had previously been stuck playing the plain girl sitting behind a desk because she was considered too fat.

Hendricks plays Joan Holloway, office manager at Manhattan advertising agency Sterling Cooper, in Weiner's hit series Mad Men. Joan is simultaneously mother hen and sex bomb - that mix of Marilyn and Jackie O that every man is looking for, whether he knows it or not.

"I looked at [Christina Hendricks] and I thought ‘oh my god, this woman's radiation of sexuality is intimidating,'" recalls Weiner, in Sydney to launch season three of Mad Men. "So I went with it. I said, ‘Make her look like a nun.' But she radiates sex. She's practically naked in these dresses!"

Mad Men, if you've been hiding under a rock, is the best American tv show since The Wire and The Sopranos. Set in the early 60s, it transports you to a time of the three-Martini lunch, the company account, the supply room where the pens and coffee sit next to the bourbon and cigarettes. It was a time of sharp suits, pencil skirts, up 'dos, handsome guys and pretty gals.

From dashing head of creative Don Draper (Jon Hamm), his beautiful wife and ex-model Betty (January Jones) to slimy go-getter Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), each character is a perfectly formed piece of casting brilliance. "I don't want to have anybody too famous in the show, because I don't want their history as a performer to impact the world that I set up," says Weiner, who likes natural teeth and hates obvious plastic surgery. "I look for faces. I have a predisposition for plastic surgery - if I can see it, it bothers me."

Given the way standards of beauty have evolved in the last 40 years, Weiner's casting instincts can also work against him. "I had to cast this woman who was supposed to be homely. You don't write in the script‘ugly girl', but I tell the casting people. This woman came in for this role. She was the plainest of the people that I saw. We put her in this Chinese dress that I liked, and they did her hair, and she was a knock-out! All I could say was 'you were not what I wanted.'"

Weiner, previously a staff writer on The Sopranos, has created a business world highly atuned to the mores of the 1960s. Goldigging secretaries try to bag execs as husbands, while married execs carry on with their mistresses. A gay art director struggles to stay in the closet at all costs, while a mousy girl fights her way up the ladder to become a copywriter.

Season three opens in 1963. Marilyn has overdosed; the Cuban Missile Crisis has shaken the world; and JFK's fateful visit to Dallas is just around the corner. Such milestone events are spice in the Weiner soup. "I pick historical events and have them impact the show when they help serve a thematic storyline," he says. "The death of Marilyn Monroe was a great way for me to talk about the value of a person's name, what fame is about and how we make meaning out of these events that really have nothing to do to us."

As to what else we can expect from the new season? "Powerlessness," says Weiner. "You'll be thrust from the first episode into a world that's very unstable. When you're in the moment, and the future is uncertain, there tends to be this attempt to look back [to] make sense of it. Roger Sterling [John Slattery] says ‘I miss the 50s'. Don't you think there's somebody at General Motors who misses the 90s?"

Mad Men Season 3 airs on Movie Extra from 25 Feb at 8.30pm.

More on how to live like a 60s swinger in Sydney? Drink like a Mad Man and Live like a Mad Man.

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