Cast and Crew of ‘Mad Men’ sing along to ‘Bye Bye Birdie’

Here’s a video of the cast and crew of Mad Men singing (and lip syncing) to Bye Bye Birdie.

They start filming season 4 in a couple of days and I absolutely cannot wait!

Chelcie Ross, ‘Mad Men’s’ Conrad Hilton: “In a script, I don’t want to know what other characters are doing”

From chicagotribune.com:

Q. You and your character seemed to fit right in from the start on “Mad Men.” What was it like to work on the show?

A. There are places you go to work where you’re immediately made to feel at home and everybody’s there because  they want to be there. Nobody’s just putting in time. That’s the atmosphere on “Mad Men.”

In my considered opinion, (the tone is set) from the top. And the director and producers of “Mad Men” couldn’t be nicer. That’s always been one of the things that has made an experience exceptional –— when the director absolutely believes in what he’s doing and he’s filled up with the prospect of bringing this (story) to life and making it as real for everybody else as it is for him. I used to work with a director named David H. Bell at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. He had that same kind of infectious quality about him, (the attitude that) nothing is small about what we’re doing if we don’t belittle it and (if we) believe in what we’re doing.

Jon Hamm is truly a down-to-earth Missouri guy, he brings his dog Cora to the set most days. I had a great time with Robert Morse, he’s fun and he’s so good and his resume is jaw-dropping. He’s really an actor’s actor. It’s a good group. I’m glad that it looked like I belonged there because I’d like to go back.

Read more

Mad Men’s Rich Sommer behind the scenes of his Emmy day

Rich Sommer, Harry Crane from Mad Men, takes us behind the scenes on Emmy day.

Jon Hamm on starting out as an actor, on-set injuries and Mad Men

From Vanity Fair:

When did you start acting? Were you pretty young?

You know, kind of. My first acting job, so the story goes, was in first grade. I was picked by my teacher to be Winnie the Pooh in our first-grade production of Winnie the Pooh—back when, you know, public school programs still had things like productions of Winnie the Pooh, and music programs and recess and things like that.

Jumping ahead a bit, or a lot, what was your first acting job after you moved to L.A.?

The first job I got was a one-episode thing on Providence where I played this sort of bartender. It was a Halloween party and I had a costume. I dressed up as Zorro. I was sort of a…

A love interest?

Yeah, for the younger sister. But what I didn’t know was that the star of the show [Melina Kanakaredes] had gotten pregnant and they were running out of lenses to shoot her with and things for her to hold in front of her. So they had to kind of beef up everybody’s storyline, and I was available. They ended up bringing my guy back for 17 or 18 more episodes. And after that, I got a little part in a movie and another couple of little parts in TV shows and pilots and this and that and the other. And I was able to, about a year after that, quit my day job and focus on it full time.
Read more

Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser: “The words kind of do the work for me”

From Vanity Fair:

Bruce Handy: I’m curious what your discussions were like with [series creator] Matt Weiner about Pete, when you first signed on. In the pilot, it feels like Pete’s going to be the villain of the series, the young snake-y executive. And probably on a lot of TV shows that’s what he would have been. But he’s become much more complicated and interesting than that.

Vincent Kartheiser: I think one of the things Matt [Weiner, the show’s creator] really wanted with Pete was someone who didn’t villainize him from the inside out. Take the pilot, that scene with Peggy, where Pete’s kind of dressing her down—he really thinks he’s being helpful and actually we had to do that scene quite a few times just to get that tone right for me. It was something that Matt and [director] Alan Taylor kept trying to finesse with me, to get to that point where it is rude but it’s really said from this helpful place. But I’m constantly reminding myself with Pete Campbell that the words kind of do the work for me. I don’t have to add any sort of emphasis to it—it’s there. I was reading quotes by Marlon Brando the other day, because I’m a dork, and he has one where he’s talking about his character in On the Waterfront and he says it’s virtually actor-proof. Roles like that show how much of the acting the audience actually does, because the character is so well written that it sings to the audience and the audience fills in the blanks with their own emotion and their own life. And that really sung to me about this project, because the characters are written with such humanism. So even though, like you say, Pete comes from this place of being a villain, that’s something Matt carefully writes away from.
Read more

Bryan Batt (Sal) talks about his role on ‘Mad Men

Elisabeth Moss talks 'Mad Men', picking roles and Broadway

From Yahoo:

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: MATT WEINER’S NEGOTIATION FOR A NEW DEAL WITH (PRODUCER) LIONSGATE AND AMC GOT PRETTY HEATED LAST FALL. WAS THERE A POINT WHERE YOU AND THE CAST THOUGHT YOU MIGHT HAVE A NEW BOSS THIS SEASON?
Elisabeth Moss: We were standing on the sidelines. We all talked about it, as you’d speculate on whether you’re going to have a job. We were unanimous in feeling that this was Matt’s show and we wanted him to get what he wanted, but at the same time, we wanted to go back and make more (episodes). I think we all would have followed Matt wherever he went, but we also love working with AMC. I am just happy it worked out.

THE GOSSIP MAGAZINES RECENTLY PUBLISHED A PHOTO FROM THE SET OF THE DRAPERS HOLDING A BABY, WHICH MUST HAVE REALLY TICKED OFF WEINER. HOW TIGHT IS HIS GRIP ON PLOT DETAILS?
Moss: It is so important to Matt, and to the way the story is told, that things remain secret if possible. But I can say that (this season) Peggy starts becoming more of Don’s protege and moves up in that world. She goes down paths that are wrong for her, but she is just trying to figure out what it means to be in her position in that man’s world. I don’t honestly know if she is going to figure it out. Does she have to be like Don, or can she be her own person?

FOR ALL THE ACCLAIM, SOME HAVE SUGGESTED THAT THE SHOW COULD GROW ITS AUDIENCE IF IT DIDN’T UNFOLD AT SUCH A DELIBERATE PACE. HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY CHANGES THIS SEASON?
Moss: We have our way of doing things. We like to not give people what they want right away, and it makes us what we are. It seems to have worked so far, so I think we’ll keep going.
Read more

Mad Men Cast Bio's

JON HAMM
“Donald Draper”

Jon Hamm plays the lead character of ‘Donald Draper’ in the award-winning, critically-acclaimed AMC original series “Mad Men,” created by Matthew Weiner, about the professional lives, social mores and sexual exploits of advertising executives on Madison Avenue circa 1960. Among his many accolades for his performance on the show, Hamm won the 2008 Golden Globe® Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama, and has been nominated for an Emmy® Award for Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Screen Actors Guild® Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series (the cast received the award for Best Ensemble in a Drama Series at the 2009 Screen Actors Guild Awards).

Hamm will next be seen starring opposite James Franco, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, and David Strathairn in the indie feature Howl, about poet Allen Ginsberg, directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.

Hamm recently starred opposite Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly and Kathy Bates in the sci-fi remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still directed by Scott Derrickson. He also completed work on the independent thriller The Boy in the Box, with Josh Lucas. Additional film credits include Kissing Jessica Stein, We Were Soldiers and Space Cowboys.

Hamm recently completed a three-episode arc on the Emmy-winning comedy, “30 Rock,” in which he played a love interest to Tina Fey, as well as a critically acclaimed hosting debut on “Saturday Night Live.” Other television credits include the popular Lifetime television series “The Division,” as well as “What About Brian,” “The Unit,” “Numb3rs” and “CSI Miami,” among others. He landed his first big role in the NBC series “Providence” where a cameo performance turned into an 18-episode run.

Hamm received BA in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Read more

Rich Sommer spills the beans on this season's 'Mad Men' (ok..not really)

Rich Sommer, who plays Harry Crane on the incredibly awesome Mad Men, did a Q&A with the Washington Post recently.

Here are the goodies.

From the washingtonpost.com:
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Half the fun of watching “Mad Men” is figuring out what Matt Weiner really meant. Does the cast do that, too? And, was there an episode that puzzled all of you?

Rich Sommer: I have no idea what Matt means in many of these scripts, but I don’t think it matters. I had a professor tell me in grad school that theme is not the actor’s job, so I took that to heart.

Sometimes, Matt will grab me and say, “you know this episode is about X, right?” And I will say, “sure, sure.” And it’s always enlightening, because it feels like a code being cracked. But I don’t work too hard on trying to figure it out on my own, because I’m not that smart.

Read more

Mad Men Season 3 Preview

Next Page »