THOUGHTS ON EMMY

Nikki Finke tracks down Mad Men creator Matt Weiner and conducts an excellent Q&A. The subject is all about the impending Emmy Awards.

DEADLINE: What’s interesting here is how much you really want to win these things.

WEINER: Is there someone out there on the planet who doesn’t like to? There is no one who is not competitive. I’m a competitive person, and I always do want to win, and I can’t be upset if I don’t. I’m fine with it. I’ve won plenty. The show has been recognized in a ridiculous way. But if you ask me, ‘Would you like to win?’ then the answer is ‘Yes.’ And does Terry deserve the award? Always. Terry deserves every award that is out there. And the show Boardwalk Empire is fantastic. It’s just a matter of like, you know, if there’s a candy bar on the table, you would like the candy bar.


DEADLINE: One of the Emmy episodes that you submitted to voters was ‘The Suitcase.’ Why?

WEINER: Yes, I know how people keep track of this stuff, and I know they handicap everything. I think that the episode was kind of a culmination. You have two characters, Don and Peggy, whose lives are intertwined in a very interesting way. He knows about her secrets, she
knows about his secrets, but they don’t talk about them when they’re in a professional environment. And here was this moment where Don was very vulnerable. He had spent the season basically dealing with being divorced and alone, drinking too much, breaking a lot of his personal rules, sleeping with his secretary, just being very self-destructive, everything. And of course this person doesn’t have a shrink or a bartender or any friends, and that’s also part of his machismo on some level to hold his secrets inside. And Peggy has her own life. And the idea that they could collide at that moment of this historic boxing match that was over in 90 seconds was a chance for a lot of the unspoken tension in the show to sort of come out for people who had been holding in their feelings for so long. And it was beautifully directed, and the performances are spectacular, and I had nothing to do with that. These few actors just rose to the occasion, and you get this non-saccharine emotional connection between two people you really care about. So it became a very special episode in the old-fashioned Emmy sense.