Elisabeth Moss: Of Mad Men... and a Madman

By day, she toils at Sterling Cooper as mild-mannered Peggy. By night - at least on this Thursday night, at 10 pm/ET on NBC's Fear Itself - she's a rookie cop working a most undesirable shift. TVGuide.com invited (Emmy semifinalist!) Elisabeth Moss to preview what's ahead for both her and the Mad Men and a people-eating madman.
TVGuide.com: The last time you and I spoke, Peggy was just weeks away from popping out the super-secret kid - and you didn't let slip even the tiniest hint.
Elisabeth Moss: [ Laughs] Pretty good of me, huh?
TVGuide.com: The most you said was: "What's ahead is not typical."
Moss: Well, it was true! It was true. It was a very hard secret to keep.
TVGuide.com: How far into Season 1 did you find out?
Moss: I knew before we started. I had to, because there were wardrobe issues I'd have to deal with, with the padding and everything.
TVGuide.com: What can you reveal about Mad Men's Season 2?
Moss: Well, it picks up a couple of years later, which is very interesting. It gives us the opportunity to not only see what's happening two years later, but for us to explore what has happened during that time. It in a way picks up at the same place, and in a way it picks up in a very different place.
TVGuide.com: Does Pete know about the kid?
Moss: I can't say.... But you almost had me! [ Laughs]
TVGuide.com: Previously, you had said that Peggy was in love with Pete, so why not use the child as leverage...?
Moss: I don't know what episode we were at when I said that, but she definitely was not in love with him by the end of the first season. He broke her heart when he said, "I don't like you this way." That was the beginning of the end for her. That's not to say there isn't a lot of feeling there - I mean, she had his child - but is she in love with him? No.
TVGuide.com: Does Peggy still have the same relationship with Joan?
Moss: Things with all the characters changed in a way, but Joan is still Joan and Peggy is still Peggy, and they're never really going to be friends.
TVGuide.com: Now that Peggy is no longer suspiciously "large," do you hope her wardrobe gets more stylish?
Moss: It definitely has gotten more stylish. She still tries to dress professionally - not like Joan - and she still doesn't want to catch too much attention, but she gets a bit more stylish. She stops making her own clothes! And she shows a bit of "pins."
TVGuide.com: What historical touchstones might Mad Men cover this season?
Moss: It's interesting because the tendency would be to focus on the big events, but the great thing about this show is we never do the typical. We focus on the characters, and whatever event transpires historically....
TVGuide.com: Is in the background, just icing on the cake.
Moss: Exactly. It's about what ties into the characters and what they are going through emotionally.
TVGuide.com: On NBC's Fear Itself, you play a cop who spends her first night in the precinct watching over a serial killer named "The Eater." Um, why is he called "The Eater"?
Moss: I think you can put two and two together on that one.
TVGuide.com: Yeah, it's hard to find a photo of you in this where you aren't being gnawed on.
Moss: Right! Or on someone else. It's a very classic horror story. It's totally understood that it's a classic story and it embraces that. It's very scary as a result.
TVGuide.com: But if you're a cop with a gun and he's locked behind bars... I don't see a problem.
Moss: You wouldn't, would you? But that's the thing about these stories, there's always a twist, a little extra something that gets the girl in trouble. This girl is a huge fan of horror. Before she joined the precinct she was a bit of a Goth, and her own curiosity gets the better of her.
TVGuide.com: Is it unnerving filming scenes that are so gruesome?
Moss: A little bit. Stephen [R. Hart], who plays the Eater, is a very tall man. He's very big. He doesn't have blood coming out of his mouth when he walks around, but he is very intimidating. And I'm 5-foot-3! So when he's coming at me, it's definitely unnerving - and not so hard to act completely terrified! Doing this genre is the ultimate in pretend. You draw on all those films that scared the bejesus out of you when you were 8. You get to be that girl, and it's kind of fun.
TVGuide.com: Do you have any fears? Spiders, heights, confined spaces...?
Moss: There are things that to an extreme anyone is afraid of - I don't love being on the top of tall buildings, and I wouldn't love having a tarantula crawling on me. But I don't like deep water, like when swimming in the ocean. Once, I was in Martha's Vineyard, out in the ocean, when I realized, "Hey, this is where they shot Jaws. Um, I'm going to go back to the beach!"
TVGuide.com: Before we go, one last tease about Mad Men.
Moss: I'm completely biased, but this season is even better than the last one. I feel like, in a way, it's an extension of the first season rather than a new one. And yet it's totally possible for someone new to jump in and enter into it and enjoy the show for what it is.
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