Elisabeth Moss was attracted to Mad Men because of her character’s “delicious complications.” The 29-year-old actress, who plays secretary-turned-copywriter Peggy Olson in the US TV series, took on the role because she relished the opportunity to play a quiet, “naïve” secretary who sleeps her way to the top.
She said, “I loved the fact that she was this really naive, inexperienced, wide-eyed woman, she didn’t even know how to use a typewriter, and then, at the end of the pilot, she sleeps with one of her bosses.”
Peggy has risen up through the ranks at the fictional 1960s Sterling Cooper advertising agency eventually progressing to effectively be main character Don Draper’s Jon Hamm second-in-command in the creative department, but Elisabeth doesn't believe her alter-ego is out to clinch the creative director’s job. Elisabeth added, “She’s moving up and they’re passing each other on the way. I have no idea but I don’t think she wants the job. I think she wants her own job, her own life, her own power.”