Mad Men Creator Explains Sunday’s Mid-Season Finale

If you’re still trying to make sense of all that happened this season on Mad Men, creator Matthew Weiner finally has a few answers for you. After Sunday’s mid-season finale — Mad Men returns for its final seven episodes in 2015 — Weiner spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about writing the last episodes, the evolution of his characters and what really went on with Ginsberg.

The full interview is worth a read, but here are the most enlightening excerpts:

On hallucinations: “I don’t want to do it all the time, but it is the language of the show. It’s as old as the flashback … For me, I’m a person who frequently sees things that aren’t there. I don’t know if they’re as elaborate as that, but I don’t question the reality of the emotion.”

On Bert Cooper’s musical send-off: “I never thought it would happen, actually. I know who [Robert Morse] is. I knew who he was when I hired him. It’s part of why I hired him. We were really dodging it the first two seasons, in our fictional 1961 and 1962, because Robert was a gigantic star on Broadway at the time.”

On how Don Draper has changed: “You’re surprised and worried about whether he can stick it out and not self-destruct, not drink his way out of it, embarrass everyone or be selfish … Peggy earned her real confidence, because it wasn’t given to her, and Don behaved with — I wouldn’t call it maturity — integrity on a pretty large scale.”

On Ginsberg: “He’s a delusional schizophrenic. That’s not a disease that’s a cause and effect disease. I don’t know how much we know about it, but there are triggers and anyone who has been paying attention to the story can see that he’s been wrestling with that.”

On the series finale: “I’m in the office today finishing the series finale. I start directing episode thirteen, the second to last, next week. It’s pretty heavy stuff.”

[THR]