Elisabeth Moss: "Mad Men's" Square Peggy

NY Mag:

There's a scene in Mad Men's season finale in which Peggy Olson, the secretary with the unflattering bangs, gets her big break as a copywriter. She's allowed to cast her own radio ad, but she picks the wrong girl: the younger one, with the weaker voice. As each take descends in quality, Peggy gives the actress increasingly withering notes, then simply fires her--at which point her victim runs from the studio in tears. Peggy coolly instructs her male colleague to repair the damage: "I want you to go after her and console her. And after you make plans, or whatever you need to do, call Rita, the older lady you liked."

That's our Peggy Olson! In any other narrative, she'd be merely an aspirational chick-lit heroine--the underdog who will whip off her glasses someday and win the man and the account. But in Matthew Weiner's sixties melodrama about Madison Avenue's advertising heyday, Peggy's something more perverse and far more interesting. She's an eaglet disguised as a wren, capable of keeping secrets when she needs to, even from herself.

Or at least this is what I tell Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy as a unique mix of canniness and naïveté. The 26-year-old actress has just finished up a whirlwind trip to New York, where she still keeps an apartment in the East Village--one far smaller than Peggy's. ("Peggy's apartment is massive," she marvels. "It's two times the size of mine! When I walked onto the set, my first thought was, Damn, times change.") She's also just finished a whirlwind set of PR events: Her Emmy-nominated series, which begins its second season on AMC on July 27, is so hyped at this point I'm almost afraid to admit I like it, for fear of tipping it into backlash.

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Comments

[LaFilleEnRose]

She's one of the main reasons I love Mad Men. Her character touches deep within me even more so than her hunky boss. Her nemesis who got her pregnant is also a great character although unlikeable. Can't wait to see what happens to Peggy this season.

[Charity]

watched it from the get-go - as someone who was a kid in the late 50s/early 60s, the attention to detail is pretty much on target. the storyline for peggy was a bit perplexing with the obvious padding her character started to pack on. no one was quite sure where that was going - for a long time i thought that perhaps elizabeth moss herself was pregnant and this was the way the show covered that. however, when she had the baby almost unaware, i understood where the show might go with that.

btw, rent 'the best of everything" with hope lange, joan crawford.

and as someone who was in the workplace in the late 60s early 70s where it was "natural" to have smoking in the office, i think they've got that about right, too. as a nonsmoker myself, it never seemed to be a problem, however. but people did smoke in their cubicles all day long - and in the bathroom, too. at meetings. at office parties. and today, with most smoking banned in offices, etc. i pretty much can't stand smoke when i smell it. funny, that.

[Bama4obama]

I agree. I just finished watching Season 1-having resisted it for so long. Great show...great storyline...great performances, especially Moss. Can't wait for season 2. Funny thing, though. I quit smoking 1 year ago and thought maybe all the smoking on the show would bother me. Nope. They smoke so much it's just sickening....

[heyabbott]

I just finished power-watching the first season over the last two weeks and Peggy is THE character to watch on a show filled with very interesting people. Elizabeth Moss infuses her with a strange charm and just a hint of underlying mystery (or menace).
For a series in which the men seem to get all the breaks, it is the women on the show that steal every scene they are in. MAD MEN is the most fun I've had with a TV show since the early seasons of SIX FEET UNDER and SOPRANOS.