Elisabeth Moss Rewatches Mad Men, The Handmaid's Tale, Us & More

That right there is real.

That's actually, those are real tears

because he held onto my hand and didn't let go

and then kissed it.

None of that was in the script.

And he did it on my closeup.

Like that right there is real Jon,

the veins in his head.

I can see him in that moment.

[static crackling]

My name is Elisabeth Moss,

and I am going to be revisiting

some of the biggest scenes from throughout my career.

[uplifting music]

[upbeat music] [VHS clicking]

I was not flirting with these guys.

And even if I was,

it certainly wasn't justification for their behavior.

[President Bartlet] So what were you doing?

I went to the bar to get a drink.

What the hell were you doing drinking?

So this was, I think, my either first or second scene

that I had done on the show.

I was very, very nervous

because I was 17

and I was acting with Martin Sheen.

I'm entitled to a normal-

Oh, please.

Don't, Oh, please, me.

Look, the Secret Service

has their hands full. The Secret Service

should worry about you getting shot.

They are worried about me getting shot.

I'm worried about me getting shot.

I was just trying to hold my own

against this just absolute legend.

The surrealness of it

was

my experience.

I think for everyone else, and for him,

it was just a normal workday.

This was the first show that I felt

like I was part of the ensemble.

Even though I was so much younger than everybody else

at the time, they made me feel included.

The directors, and Aaron, and everybody,

was very inclusive and very kind.

I've learned pretty much everything I know

about being a part of an ensemble on television

from working with this cast.

There can be no ego, and you have to know your lines,

and you have to be on time,

and you have to be nice to people,

and you can also have fun.

This was the example that was set for me

at a really young age at 17.

[upbeat music] [VHS clicking]

This is definitely one of my top three favorite scenes.

I swear I don't really need to talk right now.

[Don] Drink with me.

This scene I did at a time in my life

when I was about to go do, Top of the Lake,

which was another show that I did with Jane Campion.

I had to do an Australian accent,

and I was going to New Zealand,

and there was all this big stuff.

And I didn't know if I could pull it off.

Then I did this scene where I got to, kind of,

say

to Don, you know,

Thank you and I'm moving on.

And so it felt like a nice, kind of, crossover between

real life and fiction.

It's been my privilege to not only be at your side

but to be treated like a protégé,

and for you to be my mentor and my champion.

But?

I think I've reached a point where it's time for me

to have a new experience.

It all felt very real.

I have a very close relationship with Jon.

There was sort of like a mentor protégé relationship there.

Very older brother, little sister.

And so it meant something to the both of us

when we did this scene.

[Peggy breathing heavily]

That right there is real.

That's actually, those are real tears,

which, you know, hate to break it to you

but often we're faking it.

Because he held onto my hand and didn't let go

and then kissed it.

None of that was in the script.

And he did it on my closeup.

Like that right there is real Jon,

the veins in his head.

I can see him in that moment.

The only costume I have from, Mad Men,

from all seven seasons, 90-something episodes,

they asked me what costume I wanted to keep.

And I said I wanted to keep that one because of that scene.

I don't think it fits me anymore, but I have it [chuckles].

[upbeat music] [VHS clicking]

[Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys playing]

[Elisabeth chuckles]

It's so great.

I love this movie.

♪ Pickin' up good vibrations ♪

♪ She's givin' me ♪

I remember

how sore my arms were the next day

after doing this and dragging myself forward like that.

And I'm not a particularly athletic person.

And I just remember my arms were super sore.

But that's so great.

I love when he does that.

I took a lot of my cues of how to play the other people,

like the other versions of yourself, from Tim actually

because I hadn't seen Lupita do it or Winston do it.

The way that I had talked to Jordan about it

was

that

she was just this plastic version

of

herself.

She had this Marilyn Monroe, sort of like,

fascination with how she looked.

For her she looks like the most beautiful woman in the world

even though she looks, like, awful.

It's like the worst part of this character,

this character's inner life, like sort of brought out

to the surface.

Beyond that, we kind of just were making it up.

Like, we kind of just were trying things

and pushing this way and pushing that way

and seeing how far we could go and seeing what worked.

There's sort of no person more enthusiastic

and having more fun on set than Jordan Peele.

He's just really excited to see what you have

to bring to it.

Ophelia, call the police.

[Speaker] Sure, playing Fuck the Police, by N.W.A.

[record scratching]

So when you do this kind of thing

where you're playing the same person

but in two different places,

you know, you shoot everything as the one character

in that hair and makeup, and you shoot it all again

or the parts with the other character.

I don't remember how long it took us to shoot this.

I wanna say it was a night,

but it might have been two nights.

It was relatively quick.

That's the thing about Jordan though, he is organized.

His team is organized, his first is great,

his DP is amazing, like, they are on it.

So they're like, it was very well mapped out

and it was very succinct.

[upbeat music] [VHS clicking]

[intense music] [gasping]

[gasping continues]

I trained to do this scene with, The Invisible Man,

stunt double and the whole stunt team for weeks

because they wanted it to be mostly me.

[intense music]

So it's one shot, quote unquote,

but it is obviously stitched together.

And that me going over the table is my stunt double.

Everything else is me.

So my incredible stunt double, Sarah Laidler, in Australia

who actually also was stunt double for, Top of the Lake,

that is all her and definitely not me.

So they shot it with this incredible motion control camera.

When you're working with a camera like that,

it's all choreographed.

So it's all by count.

And I used to dance so I knew how to do that.

So that was good.

And so you do everything on a count or a half count.

And there's like a computer voice that's like

literally counting one, two, three.

And you do, so you make certain moves on certain counts.

So it's like a ballet.

You have to be in the right place at the right time

because it's moving in a way that if you are

in the wrong place, it won't stop.

It's choreographed to do this.

It's in the computer so the camera's not gonna stop.

It will hit you and it will seriously injure you,

if not kill you, if it hit you in the wrong place.

[intense music] [gasping]

Acting with

nothing

is really weird.

In moments like this, like so,

you know, somebody pulled my legs

but then obviously when I'm doing that,

there's nothing there.

[gasping]

Just hitting air like an idiot.

[intense music] [glass breaking]

So those are breakaway plates

that I am hitting over the head of the stunt double

who is dressed in the green suit.

There is probably nothing more fun than breakaway.

It's really, really fun.

It's just fun to break shit.

I think for me the fear part is easier

because that's what I normally do.

Acting.

But the the harder part was remembering

all of the moves that I had to make,

the counts, looking not super lame.

Weirdly, I have a thing where,

which I only noticed when I was making this movie,

where when I'm pretending to be choked,

I stick my tongue out,

which doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

'Cause that's not something that anybody does, is it?

No.

And I was like, What am I doing?

Why am I sticking my tongue out?

That makes no sense, I look stupid.

So I'm trying to remember to not stick my tongue out,

break the plates in the right spots.

So the fear part is fine.

I've got the fear.

It's everything else that I have to remember.

[upbeat music] [VHS clicking]

[orchestral music]

This is Serena Waterford who has requested

to have a state funeral for her husband, Fred,

back in Gilead.

So there's all this pomp and circumstance.

Probably the most important thing to me,

and to the art department, was the elegance of it.

It had to look perfect.

Even the snow had to be perfect.

Everybody's in their group, there's nobody out of line.

It just needed to look

cold,

and

elegant,

and

beautiful.

[orchestral music]

When I read this in the outline,

that there was gonna be a ballet in episode two,

the first person I thought of that I wanted to come in

and choreograph a piece for the show was Justin Peck,

who is one of the most brilliant choreographers around.

Worked with a man you may know, called Steven Spielberg.

I actually messaged him on Instagram,

which I don't do cause I'm 40 years old.

He was like, I'm a huge fan of the show.

And I was like, Oh my God, that's so cool.

And I told him, I was like, There's this thing.

So anyway, he choreographed this beautiful piece for us.

[orchestral music]

When I was 10 years old, I performed in, Sleeping Beauty.

I was like a garland waltzer.

That's how I fell in love with really with ballet

and New York City Ballet.

And I ended up going to The School of American Ballet

and blah, blah, blah.

So Rose Adagio is a very important piece for me.

Now, I played the music at the funeral location

because I wanted to make sure everybody was walking

in the same rhythm

and walking also at a rhythm that made sense

for what the music was going to be.

So for two days we all listened to Rose Adagio.

And I loved it but I think everyone else got sick of it.

[orchestral music intensifies]

June is for the first time in a really long time

actually just enjoying the moment.

And she is just watching something that

is

pure beauty

and she hasn't seen pure beauty in a very, very long time.

She has seen a lot of pure evil.

What

was important to me was the juxtaposition

between the two.

Serena is also performing a ballet.

She's also performing a dance.

She is having a performance of her own,

which is this state funeral.

The editing of it is very, very, very precise

as far as when it goes back and forth

between the ballerina and Serena.

[orchestral music]

We talked about Jackie O a lot.

We talked about the performance aspect of it for Serena,

that she was giving the performance of a lifetime.

That woman in mourning for her husband

had to be incredibly sincere

and had to look incredibly sincere,

that it was gonna be stoic, and elegant, and composed.

But we also wanted to make sure that there were

little hints of seeing behind the curtain.

So there's a fantastic moment where she turns there

and she looks right into the camera

and that little smile,

and just that little moment of seeing behind the curtain.

The smile means she knows she's killing it.

[upbeat music] [VHS clicking]

Thank you so much for watching.