Q: What TV shows are you currently watching? Are there any shows you obsess over the same way others obsess over Mad Men?
MW: I love television and I will watch it every chance that I get, which is not that much when you’re in the middle of the job. But I also have four children and really do not have control over what I get to watch. I’m into Top Chef and Chopped and Project Runway, and because I have four boys, I’ve seen more Doctor Who than most people can imagine. I can get into anything. The last time that I really had a chunk of time, I binge-watched two seasons of Downton Abbey. I haven’t seen True Detective but I will. I watch Boardwalk Empire whenever I can. I saw all of Orange is the New Black, because it came on in the off-season. I love that show.
Q: As the show’s played out over seven seasons, does setting it in the advertising world prove as rich an environment as you thought it would be?
MW: It’s been a gift. It’s been a great environment. It’s been great to investigate all of the personalities of the workplace, because they’re all there in an advertising agency, whether it’s people who have commercial concerns, people who have creative concerns. Just what happened to advertising in this period, as a business and its relationship with the culture. It yielded more fruit than I thought it would. It’s the kind of thing where, literally, every time I would think about something that was going on, either in my own life or in the writers’ lives that we wanted to tell a story about, we would be able to find something in the advertising world that could support that story. I didn’t set out to make a show about advertising — and on some level, it really isn’t — but as an environment to tell the story, just the idea of how important buying things and selling things is as an American pastime. An identity. Living through the last eight years of what’s happened economically in this country, what a great chance to talk about just the forensics of American business.
Q: What is it like to have [renowned screenwriter] Robert Towne on the show’s writing staff?
MW: You’re running a baseball team and someone says Babe Ruth wants to come in one day a week and show people how to hit… I mean, that’s what it is. I admire him, I was thrilled that he was interested in and liked the show. Robert is exactly what you think. He is a sage advisor but he’s also a great artist. He’s in the moment. He takes the conversation down to character immediately. He makes me work harder because I am always trying to impress him. You know that if Robert Towne likes what you’re doing, it’s probably good.
Q: As you approach the end of the series, which characters are you the saddest to leave behind?
MW: Oh my gosh. All of them. I’ll miss all of them. That’s the greatest gift about this show, is that they’re so different from each other and they are so many different voices. When you are in the mood, whatever mood you’re in when you’re writing, you have every flavor there is. It’s hard for me to imagine not writing these characters any more. I can’t even imagine it, actually. I don’t even want to think about it. They’re so tied to the actors that play them that the loss is something I can’t really think about.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Matthew very much for his time. Be sure to catch the final season of Mad Men when it premieres on April 13th.