Matthew Weiner On the End of ‘Mad Men’

The Book Review

The New York Times

Books, Arts

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2015

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

In a special supplement from The Times’s culture desk, Mr. Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men,” discusses the coming conclusion of the series with Dave Itzkoff, a reporter for The Times.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Dave Itzkov, Culture Reporter for the New York Times. One of the great pleasures of
0:04.6	this job over the past seven years has been getting to write about Mad Men, the hit AMC period drama
0:10.4	about the advertising executive Don Draper and his colleagues in cohorts at a fictional 1960s New
0:16.2	York agency. Since its debut in 2007, Mad Men has become one of television's most influential and
0:22.4	imitated shows, as well as the winner of four consecutive Emmy awards for outstanding dramatic
0:27.2	series. Credit for that success is due to many people, not least of them Matthew Weiner,
0:32.1	who is the creator of Mad Men and has been its showrunner from the very beginning to the very end,
0:37.2	which sadly is coming on May 17th. That's when Mad Men will broadcast its final episode,
0:42.8	and after seven groundbreaking seasons, the story of Don Draper will reach its conclusion. Or will it?
0:48.9	Here with me, to talk about Mad Men is Matthew Weiner. Thanks very much for joining me.
0:53.6	Thank you David. It's great to be here. Thanks. Always nice to talk to you.
0:56.4	I appreciate that. So I mean, it was announced more than four years ago now that this current
1:01.6	seventh season of the show was going to be the last season of Mad Men. Have you been thinking for
1:06.7	that long about how you would wrap up the series? No, I'm a creature of habit, which basically means
1:13.4	not having any habits. It was one of the reasons I've bought so hard to not have the running time cut
1:18.4	and to not get rid of the cast. I was like, we've gotten this far, we figured out how to do the show.
1:23.2	I don't want to change that. What I really didn't want to change when I found out there's going to be
1:27.3	36 then 37, which I did fight for. And more episodes was I didn't want to change pulling on all
1:33.5	the stops on every season. You tell the story, you go for broke, you use everything you have in the
1:38.9	story, you do a finale that could be the end of the show every season. We came back after that
1:44.5	with season five, Don and Megan's relationship. It ends with you only lived twice with him,
1:50.2	really calling his marriage quits on some level and going in a bar for are you alone?
	...

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