When we last saw Mad Men‘s Peggy Olson, ten long months ago, she was holed up in a Richmond motel room on her first business trip, with a grin on her face and a glass of wine in her hand. Having rejected Don Draper’s blank-check offer to keep her around, she had taken a job as the copy chief at a rival ad agency. It seemed almost impossible that Peggy would sever all ties with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce—so much so that some pundits speculated that Peggy wouldn’t stick around for another season. So, to answer our questions–and allay our fears—we went straight to the person who’s been playing the character for five seasons: Elisabeth Moss. TIME caught up with the busy actress at January’s Sundance Film Festival, where she talked about her role in the Top of the Lake, a seven-part miniseries directed by Jane Campion and currently airing on the Sundance Channel, and, of course, her character on Mad Men, whose sixth season begins this Sunday night on AMC. TIME: In Top of the Lake, your character Robin Griffin is an inexperienced yet strong woman working as a detective, determined to get to the bottom of a difficult case. Sounds like there are a few parallels to Peggy, who you’ve called the “ultimate feminist.” Is this an important role for you to promote? Elisabeth Moss: It’s not really a conscious choice, you don’t intend to go attack these issues of misogyny or feminism, but I think as a young woman, it’s difficult to avoid. But if you play a strong independent career woman, you’re gonna run up against that. And I think I’m a bit more suited for those roles than being a housewife or girlfriend. I’m attracted to strong independent characters. Something I didn’t grasp until I started to be asked questions about the parallels between what Peggy deals with in a man’s world, and what Robin deals with in this other world. You could also apply it to Zoey Bartlet, the character you played on The West Wing. She had to deal with a![]()
