Q: Are the late sixties more of a challenge to portray on the show, since you are interweaving the culture with the story and characters?
MW: A lot of the reason that I started the show in 1960 was because it was so much the height of the ‘50s. I felt that there was a sort of constricted social environment based on manners that we’ve watched disintegrate and erode throughout the decade. The weirdest thing about getting to the late ‘60s is that it feels more and more like today. Other than saying “groovy” once in a while… there is not, in either watching the movies [of the late ‘60s] or reading books or reading interviews or watching the news, it does not feel even slightly anachronistic. There is nothing to laugh at by the time you’re in the late ‘60s. It is very similar to right now, with the exception of, you know, technology. That stuff’s still funny.
1968, in particular, was the climax for me of the intersection of national and world events in the private lives of the characters. I think that [national events] only poke through occasionally in our lives [today]. Writing something about this period right now, you could have a scene with people talking about the Malaysia Airlines plane, because we’re obsessed with it. We’re at war, there are economic issues, [but] none of these other things really affect our lives in a conversational way on a daily basis. 1968 was a chance where I felt, OK, people are reading the paper, it was [simiar to] 9/11 for an entire year, of just being inundated with a social catastrophe. And I felt by the end of it, Richard Nixon’s election and a kind of return to a state of normalcy. It really feels like all of the radicalization of that period just retracted.
Q: As the show goes on, the stories continue and new characters come in, do you find you have any less time for individual scenes because there’s more to tell?
MW: You add more characters, you add more stories. I’m playing with this orchestra and the writers and I am trying to weave people in and out. The interesting thing about these last 14 episodes is the main characters have really surfaced to the top and we’re trying to service them in the interest of endng the series. The most difficult thing has been juggling all of the characters and trying to keep the story interesting.
Q: How has Peggy changed since the beginning of the series?
MW: Peggy has changed a lot. It’s interesting to see that Peggy is still earnest and naïve about certain things, but what a powerful person she’s become in terms of knowing her gifts and making decisions. I think she would probably still say that she’s not a political person. But, everything she does is pioneering. To see her sort of, ending up stabbing her boyfriend and having an affair with her boss the same year that she is clearly excelling, creatively and in status. Last season, she didn’t have any decisions to make. Hopefully she’s reaching a point in her life where she going to start to actually have some choices.
Q: How has Joan evolved?
MW: I think the thing that happened the most to Joan is that she stopped caring about how things look. Women of that generation, and maybe today too, men as well, they were really raised believing that that was the most important thing. Joan, we see expressing her desire to take advantage of the bad things that have happened and make the best of them, and also to be a little bit more of her own person. She started the show with a very clear philosophy, which is have a lot of fun, and we’ve all loved her sexual confidence. And then find a husband, get married and have children and move to the country. We see now that her interests are very different than that now.
