Be nice to the new guy
Actor Bruce Greenwood talks about keeping Mad Men’s secrets
TORONTO — Doing a guest stint on the final episodes of Mad Men can be a tricky proposition — just ask Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood, who popped up on the most recent episode as a love interest for the world-weary Joan.
First, you must weather the complaints from devoted fans, who question the introduction of any new character. After all, there’s precious little time remaining to resolve the storylines of the beloved longtime leads, like beleaguered junior partner Joan (Christina Hendricks).
Then, there’s the responsibility of keeping your appearance a secret until the big reveal. In Greenwood’s case, that was about a year. The Quebec-born, Vancouver-raised actor says the importance of protecting his storyline was drilled into him at the first table read, when creator Matthew Weiner went out of his way to stress the need to preserve surprises.
“He says, ‘ You will be prosecuted to the end of the earth if you breathe a word about any element of this thing you’ve just heard!’” Greenwood said in a recent phone interview from his home in California.
Greenwood not only had to keep his mouth shut, but also had to concoct stories about how he’d met members of the cast. A month or two after shooting his Mad Men part, he turned up to work on the set of the film Truth, also featuring Elisabeth Moss, who plays Peggy Olsen on the series.
“We met in Australia and we went, ‘Hey, how’re you doing? Wait a second — we’ve got to make a plan. How did we meet?’ ” a chuckling Greenwood says.
After a quick, private confab they invented a story — they met when Greenwood visited his pal John Slattery (who plays Roger Sterling) on the set of Mad Men. These white lies are just part of the gig, Greenwood says.
“I was going to go to a film festival somewhere in the southern States at one point last year and (Weiner) was going to be speaking there,” says Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the first two Star Trek reboots and also appears in the upcoming feature Good Kill, with Mad Men’s January Jones. “As it turned out, I couldn’t go because I was busy or something, but I was thinking to myself, ‘God, do I walk up to him? Is he going to ignore me because he’s so into this secrecy thing? Is he going to feel he has to say, ‘Nice to meet you, Mr. Greenwood?’” Greenwood i s mum on whether his leisure-suited character Richard Burghoff will return for more episodes, or if he’s really Joan’s happily-everafter, as it was made to seem in last Sunday’s episode.
“It sort of seems like that. You could be forgiven for thinking that’s the way it goes,” he says noncommittally.
Just four episodes remain of the acclaimed AMC period drama, which revolves around charismatic adman Donald Draper, played by Jon Hamm.
Greenwood says he’s aware of online complaints that limited screen time is being dedicated to new characters. But it’s all in keeping with a show that does the unexpected, he says.
Weiner, he says, “is challenging the audience in that way.”