LOS ANGELES — When one agency door closes, for Elisabeth Moss, a host of windows fly open.
On Friday, Moss and Mark Duplass’ Sundance hit, “The One I Love,” arrives in theaters, just a month after the actress said goodbye on the set of “Mad Men.” Buzz is building about her next move. (Will she take on HBO’s “True Detective?”) There’s the Golden Globe she won for “Top of the Lake”. And the actress is on a short break from a new film shooting in Ireland.
The day she and the cast bid their adieus at the storied offices of “Mad Men’s” Sterling Cooper, “we approached it head on,” she says. “No one ran away from their feelings. We got through it together and really said goodbye in a way that was very cathartic for all of us.”
Surely she poached a few items from the 1960s set? “The two most important things were the ring I’ve worn in every single episode for seven seasons, and the red thermos that Peggy takes from job to job,” she says, grinning. “I got that. I got my purple chair. I got a typewriter. I got everything!”
Moss grows introspective when asked about her favorite lines from seven seasons of the show that made her and Jon Hamm household names.
There are two moments that stand out, she says. The first is a recent scene in which Peggy, single and childless at the apex of her success as a copy chief, wonders why she’s missed the boat on having it all.
“It was on season 7A: When Peggy’s talking about how she’s at this place in her life that she wanted to get to and she feels like she’s done everything that she’s supposed to do. And she’s basically asking Don and asking the universe, what did I do wrong? I feel like that’s such a universal question that we’ve all asked at some point in our lives. And I had more response from that line than I’ve ever had in seven seasons of Mad Men,” she says. “People texting me, emailing me, saying how much they connected to that idea.”
The other? “Just one word in Season 4,” says Moss. “When she says, ‘playgrounds’ when she’s talking about what makes her think of her baby that she gave away. That was my favorite for a long time.”
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