- The Observer, Sunday 25 January 2009
- Article history
Elisabeth Moss photographed at Prohibition, Manhattan. 16th January 2009. Photograph: Andrew Testa/Andrew Testa
It's close to cocktail hour when Elisabeth Moss comes blowing in on a freezing blast of New York, a tiny figure wrapped up in one of those big, quilted coats that looks like a sleeping bag with arms. "Coldest day of the year," she says, cheerfully, unwrapping herself (across town, I still imagine them rescuing passengers from the US Airlines plane that landed in the river) and marvelling with laughter at my war story of having gone out this afternoon without a hat as we head up in the lift to the hotel's "reading" room, with its fluting lounge music and view of the twinkling lights on Madison Avenue.
She apologises for being late, the result of having just moved in with her boyfriend (comedian Fred Armisen, a cast member of Saturday Night Live) uptown, which was confusing for her publicist, who arranged for a car to be sent to her old place downtown and had to divert it, which was then confusing for the driver. But doesn't she have to be on stage at eight? Oh, there's plenty of time, she says, rightly sensing that I'm more worried about my interview time ticking away than keeping her audience waiting.
Moss is best known for her portrayal of Peggy, the ingenuous young secretary in Mad Men, the brilliant TV drama set in a 1960s New York advertising agency, and is now playing another ingenuous young secretary, Karen, in a revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow, a satire of 80s Hollywood chicanery. It seems a superficial similarity but aren't both women trying to make themselves heard in the great male conversation? Yes, says Moss, though in different ways. "Peggy is prim and quiet, whereas Karen is outspoken, brutally truthful, says what she feels - can't help but tell the truth."
Moss hasn't done theatre since she first moved to New York as a 19-year-old, and this - a three-hander, with longtime Mamet collaborator William H Macy and Raúl Esparza ("He's a genius") playing a pair of bottom-feeding movie executives - is her Broadway debut. "It's fantastic," she says, but also "an emotional, physical and mental marathon. Eight shows a week is very difficult. I did Mad Men for four months until the end of August, then started rehearsals here in early September. But I get to work with the most amazing actors - and do Mamet, which is unusual for a woman. There aren't that many female parts, so I feel lucky that I got one."
Moss was raised in Los Angeles, in what she calls an "artistic household". Her father is British and manages jazz musicians and her mother is from Chicago and plays blues harmonica (with the likes of BB King). Her younger brother is in the movie business, but "on the other side of the camera". She went to a small private school which was "very focused, very academic - but there was no extra-curriculum". She graduated early at 15.
Then what - college? Stage training? "No, I just kept working, kept acting. I was a dancer for years. I've done everything. Big parts in indie films, small parts in big films, TV movies, one or two commercials. I've been acting for 20 years."
She's 26 now. At 15, she was the burns victim in Girl, Interrupted, a film set in a mental institution in the 60s and starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. Then at 17 she got what turned out to be her big break, in The West Wing, as Zoey Bartlet, the president's daughter. She was on the show for seven years. Was her political outlook formed during those years? "Well, it's a very liberal show, but it was more that - it was a very smart show. I was probably formed more by the intelligence of it than the politics. The writing was so smart and spot-on. When you have writing like that, you almost don't have to do anything, so I felt I was influenced more creatively."
I ask if she is looking forward to the Obama presidency. "I was in New York when he won and I've never seen the city like that. It felt almost like an episode of The West Wing - this idealism you could see in everyone. The excitement and positivity was incredible."
Did the frenetic pace of The West Wing help when it came to doing Mamet? "Absolutely. Mamet is a very different writer, of course, but the intelligence and pace are very similar."
It's some contrast to Mad Men, I say, with its unhurried storylines and dawdling shots of people having a long think. "The pace and the style of it was so completely different from anything I'd ever done. It's teasing, as opposed to being explicit like Mamet or Sorkin [creator of The West Wing]. But I think all of us [in the show] agree that we were attracted by that pilot script. The show was on a network that no one really knew. People knew who Matthew Weiner was because of The Sopranos [on which he was a writer and producer], but he'd never created his own show. There were no stars, and advertising in the 60s didn't sound like a winner - but the writing was so good."
I wonder if she felt a cultural shift with Mad Men - moving from a huge show to one that was only shown on cable? "You'd think there would have been, except that cable is big right now. There's been this incredible resurgence of cable programming - shows like Dexter and Damages, and HBO, obviously. Many years ago, there would have been a difference but now it's about the same. Plus, for me, it's a different thing anyway - The West Wing was a recurring thing, whereas Mad Men is regular."
She auditioned twice for the part of Peggy. "It just felt like a really good fit. I remember calling my manager after meeting Matt [Weiner] and saying I could work with that man. There was an immediate connection artistically. I think I did the part he wrote, and he saw that, and I knew it."
Mad Men, back soon for a second series on BBC4, oozes class, with critics and fans falling over themselves to praise its visual sophistication (the opening credit sequence of a silhouetted man slowly falling through the canyons of Manhattan is worth the entrance fee alone) and authentic handling of time and place. The LA Times said Mad Men had found "a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness and filled it with interesting people, all of them armed with great power of seduction". Entertainment Weekly identifies an America "free of self-doubt, guilt and counter-cultural confusion. It's the ripe fantasy before it turns rotten."
But it's the way the characters keep you guessing that keeps you watching. You assume from the start that the agency's creative chief, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), is the complicated one, but then you see the parallels emerging with Peggy, the frumpish new girl from out in the sticks whose talents start to shine. Moss is compelling as Peggy. She's the one who sees a horizon beyond this modern "clever" Manhattan set, whose lives - artificially illuminated by liquor and leisure and consumer fads - contain an inherent struggle for contentment of the sort seen in the vogueish, rediscovered fiction of Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road) and Sloan Wilson, whose novel The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is knowingly referenced in the new series. Nervy but watchful, Peggy sits amid the vulgarity of office life like a Buddha. You can almost hear her brains ticking. You just have to root for her. Was her development clear from the outset?
"Even I was guilty of thinking that maybe it was going to be a storyline where she claws her way to the top and sleeps with Don, but it doesn't go that way at all. What ends up happening is so much richer and so much more interesting. The thing about Don and Peggy that is obviously similar is they both have a secret they can't talk about. They're both very private people. They both just want to do their jobs."
To an extent, the depths of Don's existential angst have been fathomed for us (the hidden shame in his past that makes a daily misery of his handsomeness and his nice suits and successful career and beautiful wife), but Peggy seems harder to read - innocent but ambitious, self-contained but with unpredictable bursts of cruelty. She always seems capable of surprise. "It really is a great part. As an actor, you're always trying to play subtext or not say what you mean. So being given a character that does only that is really interesting."
Looking at practically everyone in the show - the super-groomed Draper, the reptilian junior exec Pete, the rest of the goofy ad team, the pneumatically stacked office man-eater Joan - it's tempting to marvel at the care that went into the casting, but seeing Moss here now (dark, slim, stylish, attractive; frankly, not really any of the things that Peggy is), that assumption starts to look a bit misguided. Of course, her character's dumpy looks and terrible hair and unworldly dress sense weren't helped by her getting fatter and fatter (or, as it turned out, pregnant - unknown to everyone, including herself) during the first series. "We went through this very meticulous process of making Peggy realistically gain weight. I had, like, four stages of padding and then two stages of prosthetic make-up. Thankfully, I wasn't asked to do it myself, which I would have done, but it would have been harder."
To put weight on?
She laughs. "To take it off again."
Did she mind playing the least glamorous girl in Manhattan?
"I enjoyed the second season more because we got to make everything a bit smaller and tighter and shorter. Not drastically - Peggy is still Peggy, but she definitely gets to wear nicer things."
Given that Moss wasn't born until 1982, I wonder how well she knew the era - this pre-revolutionary, pre-women's lib 60s. Was she shocked by how benighted and unswinging it was?
"I think so. I had a surface understanding. But this was on the tail-end of the 50s. You really are on the cusp of change - this carry-over from that earlier mentality. There's a little bit of the beatnik thing that's touched upon. The second season is different."
It is. A huge Xerox machine arrives in the office. A new accent on youth is signalled with the appearance of young creatives sporting cable knits rather than suits. Peggy represents this coming of the proper 60s too, of course, settling into her new post as junior copywriter, armoured by foreknowledge, it almost seems, against the spite of her male colleagues, laughing their foolish heads off. They are the ones whom history will sweep aside.
With its heavy freight of period misogyny, it's hard not to take against the alpha males, even though, as Moss says, Weiner is simply telling it how it was. "It doesn't really take men or women's sides."
Perhaps not, but the eye of the writer is a modern one and the temptation to even up the battle with some strong women's roles was clearly important. Is there anything of herself in Peggy? "With all of the characters in that show, each of the actors brings a huge part of themselves to it. That's the fun of it, figuring out which parts of yourself you can bring and which are different. Peggy and I have a lot of similarities. She's also a very positive person. She believes in the good of people. She's not conniving. She tries to do the right thing."
Career-wise, it's not bad going, I say, to follow up The West Wing with another huge hit. What's it like to be an overnight sensation after 20 years? "Well, things have changed. And I do actually get recognised a lot. It always surprises me. I'll stand outside in the street and people will be, 'Peggy! Peggy!' But it's been a slow burn. I like that people really love the show and associate me with it. I don't seek it out - being a celebrity - but if it happens I'm glad it's for something that I'm proud of."
Does she have other ambitions - a big movie maybe?
"To me, the writing is important. It's helped me get into some really good shows. I wouldn't change that."
But what if someone came along and wanted to give you millions to play Wonder Woman?
"Well, I wouldn't say I wouldn't do a huge movie if it was a great script. You have to do things for the right reasons. The material is the important thing." Anyway, she points out, things have changed. It's not as if TV actors still seek validation from doing movies. "You look at American TV now and you've got Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Sally Field - incredible female actors who have won Oscars and they're doing television shows. Film used to be more 'respected'; now it's not like that."
She prefers, too, the camaraderie of TV - and latterly theatre - where intense work and close proximity for long seasons make for lasting friendships. She has also developed a taste for awards ceremonies. Mad Men has won a shelf of prizes including six Emmys and three Golden Globes (two for the show, one for Jon Hamm); Moss is nominated this year for a Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding female actor. "I've been fortunate in that the last few awards parties we've been to we've won. I hear it's not so much fun when you don't. It's a great chance to hang out together and catch up."
Does she drink? In fact, does she smoke
No!
So who in the cast smokes? She won't say. I only ask, of course, because Mad Men is notorious for its 60-an-episode habit. She laughs. "Isn't that funny? Everyone who saw it was like, 'They're SMOKING! They're SMOKING!' No one noticed they were cheating on their wives."
Theatre calls. I wish her luck. I'm not sure if American thespians say "break a leg". In this weather, it seems to be asking for trouble.
• The second series of Mad Men begins on BBC4 on 10 February, 10pm
Ad men on Mad Men: What the pros think
Sir John Hegarty, worldwide creative director of BBH
"It's a fantastic series and I can certainly remember when every director had a drinks cabinet in his office and smoking was everywhere. What's clever is that they've woven real advertising from the era into the plots. In the first series they discuss Doyle Dane Bernbach's famous Volkswagen Beetle ad called Lemon. Bernbach laid the foundations of modern creative advertising. The industry was all about 'irresponsible optimism' before he emerged as a prophet, saying if you don't base your advertising on some truth then it will fail - just make the truth interesting."
Robin Wight, president of Engine and WCRS
"Mad Men captures the last hooray of the dinosaurs about to be challenged by the new generation who were to invent modern advertising in the 1960s. In fact, the Mad Men were even madder than on the show. Alcohol flowed freely: I was offered a huge martini at 3pm in my first job interview in 1965. The boardroom table of my first agency was used as a ping-pong table, and the receptionist, I discovered years later, doubled as a hooker. But it wasn't this alone that bought this world to an end; the adverts it produced weren't very good. The new agencies used wit and imagination rather than bullying hard sell."
Mark Lund, chief executive of DLKW and chairman of the Advertising Association
"Mad Men is a hymn to the power of confidence, which is still key to creating a good advertising campaign today. The characters have an innate belief that they can remake a company's fortunes or a brand's image and are prepared to make that bold jump into the unknown. Like all good social drama it compresses the incidents of 10 years into a week. But did they drink, smoke and fornicate a lot back then? Yes! Is there less of that now? Almost certainly. You can say that's a good or a bad thing, but it looks like fun doesn't it?"
Nicola Mendelsohn, chair and partner of Karmarama and president of Women in Advertising and Communications London
"I'm a huge fan. The styling is drop-dead gorgeous. It whisks you straight back to the early 1960s. Yes, there was racism and sexism in the business, but that was because it existed throughout society, and advertising reflects the world around it. If you walked into an agency today you would find a very different scenario. There'd be more women, many in the top jobs. We'd still be doing essentially the same work, solving marketing problems, but we wouldn't be swigging whisky and smoking fags while we're at it."
Lord Tim Bell, chair of Chime Communications
"It is a glamorous, hyperbolised version of what agencies were like at the time. It's exaggerated because that's what TV does and that's what we want it to do. Reality can be dull. Has advertising changed? Yes, it has become much more serious and less fun. People do not have the same sense of drama. But isn't that always the way? Any new industry is more exciting when it first starts up - then it becomes just like any other."
Interviews by Imogen Carter and Lisa O'Kelly
Carla Bruni sul sofà di Fazio
