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Zosia Mamet, Colin Hanks, and Others Predict Where Their Mad Men Characters Ended Up

Photo: Maya Robinson and Photos by AMC

With all of the internal restructuring that goes on at Sterling Cooper & Partners, it can be easy to forget about the Mad Men characters who were fired, cast aside, or seemingly disappeared. But Mad Men’s lost characters number among some of the best, most fully realized minor players TV has to offer. Vulture caught up with Linda Cardellini, Zosia Mamet, and more former cast members to ask them about their characters, where they imagine they landed, and their favorite memories from working on the show. Possible futures include: the Peace Corps, Las Vegas, and “living with Ali McGraw.”

“Faye was a really unique character. She put herself through school, she was a professional, she took her career seriously. Clearly Joan and Peggy do, but she seems to be on a different track. I think it was episode two or three that I did, where Faye is running the focus group. I liked that scene because you saw her at work, and you saw her operating. It was really fun to play, and interesting to watch her work. They had that one-way mirror, and they watched her. There was this whole element of ‘watched and being watched.’ She was putting on a performance. I enjoyed doing that. [In “The Beautiful Girls”], I love that shot of all of us in our different worlds, each having experienced loss in our worlds, but together. Faye is a feminist. The term didn’t exist then, so there’s a whole dialog of what that means to people. Women working towards getting the same opportunities, and leveling the playing field, in wages and education. She was doing that before there was a term for it. She wasn’t in a movement, but the way she pursued not the typical path at that time would be considered a feminist way of pursuing your life.” Photo: AMC
“I guess she’s probably a mom now, I’d say she has three kids. She moved to Minneapolis and her husband works at the museum of art there. And she is just a social butterfly. [Laughs.] She wanted a man, she knew how to get it. She’s enjoying her life, but the winters are killing her.” Photo: AMC
“She’s probably living in Santa Fe with Ali MacGraw. I thought about that a few times because I felt like Suzanne was a bit of a fortune teller, in a way. She was the first wave of what’s to come. Matt [Weiner] said that she was going to be different than any other character you’d seen on that show up to that point. She wasn’t going to wear makeup, she wasn’t going to be in the overly corseted ensembles. I imagine she eventually ended up in the Peace Corps, was at Woodstock and lived a life of service in some way. She has a big heart, anyone who has a heart for children and commits their life to teaching is a really interesting human and has a lot of depth. I think she, in this age and stage where the show is at, I think she’s probably on that other end of it. But in more of a service-to-the-world sense instead of a self-inflicting exploration or drugs. She probably protested the war.” Photo: AMC
“I’m not quite sure how to answer questions about things that may actually be aired. Like, what if I said, ‘I imagine Ginsberg to be out of the hospital, with alopecia and dating the ghost of Lane Pryce,’ and then he was? There are jails built for actors who give plot points away. Pass. [My favorite moment was] my first scene on location (outside of our sets). We shot in Cole’s, this famous old restaurant downtown. And it was below ground but with windows so it kind of looked like Cheers but in the 60s. And old cars drove by and people in vintage clothing walking the street. And Hamm was chastising me. And I had a beer. Something about that was perfect. I knew my job was perfect.” Photo: AMC
“I hope that she’s still jetset traveling the world and sleeping with gorgeous men. Let’s all just have Joy’s life. She was super cool. Her wardrobe was amazing. That was a memorable moment, walking into the wardrobe fitting and seeing all of the dresses. It was like a dream for me because I’m obsessed with vintage clothes. There’s a scene where I have a swimsuit on, when I come and check on [Don Draper] after he passes out, and it’s a high-waisted 1950s swimsuit that was just to die for. Of course they fit it to you perfectly so all the alterations make it look like it fits you so well. If we all just had our own tailored clothes we would look amazing all the time.” Photo: AMC
“I would like to hear what Matt had to say about where he [Father Gill] would be. He was actually—in his own way—a renegade, in regards to the way he represented the Church and the new ideals that the Church had, post-Vatican II. There were radical changes going on in the Church at that time. I don’t think he would have changed that much. I think he had already sort of gone through his change. He was pretty different from other priests at that time.” Photo: AMC
“I think Bobbie and her husband Jimmy did get into television. By now, they are bicoastal. Jimmy is probably able to play in Vegas, but is starting to become a retro act. The ‘70s are coming! I think Bobbie Barrett took on some more clients and found a way to keep reinventing them. She was very resourceful and would have stayed on top of his career, and gotten him in the news circuit. They’ll be around, and when Laugh-In rolls around, he’ll be appearing on it. I’m sure they’re still together and they’re still in their co-dependent splendor. They are probably grandparents by now. They continue living in their fractured relationship, and probably get into some more barbiturate-heavy drugs. The thing about Bobbie is she came from a very broken, decrepit background like Don Draper. However broken she was when we met her, whatever her pathologies are, she had made peace with them. She had done it all herself. She was proud and able to acknowledge that she was a survivor. Those demons that she had, she had already wrestled with – they made her adaptable, like a shark to all sorts of waters. It doesn’t mean she wasn’t afraid, but she knew that Jimmy would never leave her. I think she’s a feminist and a survivor. I never saw her, when I played her, as a corrupt or bad character. I was very surprised that people judged her and not Don. I never judged her because I don’t think she judged herself. It was a great freedom to play a character like that. I use her as an archetype for inspiration sometimes. I miss her.” Photo: AMC
“I think Jimmy’s TV show Grin and Barrett ran for six successful seasons before it was cancelled because he became so difficult. He was offered a permanent show at the Riviera in Las Vegas. As the final season begins Jimmy has lost all his money to his severe gambling addiction. He divorced Bobbie and married a showgirl, Lana. His show at the Riviera ended and he has taken up residency at Circus Circus.” Photo: Carin Baer / AMC
“With Joyce, who knows! My guess is she joined the Peace Corps and ended up in some far away land…probably seduced a princess and is now living large. [My favorite memory] is the first episode I shot, which was directed by John Slattery. There’s a scene at the end of the episode where Lizzie Moss and I are running through the streets of ‘New York’ aka downtown Los Angeles, drunk and happy. They dressed an entire street corner of downtown Los Angeles to look like New York in the 50s. There were period milk trucks and food carts and chickens, it was incredible. We shot at 3 or 4 in the morning with this huge crane following us through the street and massive lights all over the place. It was still early on in my career, and I remember how palpable the magic felt that night, how epic it all felt. I remember thinking, ‘this must’ve been what it was like during the golden age of film.’ I suddenly felt part of the tradition. Then John called “CUT,” and we all went home. It was a special night for sure, one I’ll never forget.” Photo: AMC
“He probably kept bouncing around to other places, probably got fired some more. It was probably somebody else’s fault, of course. Or he found a place that was till 10 years in the past and fit right in with the other chauvinists. I always kind of held that hope that he would come back. I even gave Matt Weiner a nice bottle of scotch with a note that said, ‘Surely, Peggy could forgive Joey.’ As the seasons went on, I thought, ‘Nah, it’s not likely.’ He went out with a bang.” Photo: AMC
“I think she’s probably a worried mother, with her son away after he joined the Air Force. She probably is taking a break for philandering from a while. I would assume that maybe she goes back to it at one point, but I don’t know. I guess she just keeps on doing what she’s always done. I think she probably changes for the moment, and then goes back to her old ways. I certainly don’t think she tells her husband. I love that once they find out, that’s it for them. There’s no more. That’s how some people just have to separate completely. I think she goes back to church for a little bit and repents. She definitely goes to confession!” Photo: AMC
“Wherever Rachel is, she’s running the show. My favorite memory is shooting the final scene between Don Draper and Rachel Menken in the pilot episode. We shot it in the Zebra Room at the Lenox Lounge in Harlem. Don has been instructed to apologize for his rudeness to her in the board room (’I won’t let a woman talk to me like this’). It was just a fun day…in that historic spot, laying the groundwork for these very strong and complicated characters. Everyone was finding their legs, and Jon and I bonded over how grueling the audition process had been. I struggled with a cigarette holder and smoking continuity (oh dear, I inhaled mid-line didn’t I, can’t go back on that one…). I went home exhausted but proud, and fairly certain that we were making something awfully good.” Photo: AMC
“I’d like to think that Paul took Harry’s money and ran west to make a go of it as a writer in Hollywood. I don’t know if he’d have been successful, but I hope so. There would be an irony, and a perverse justice if he did succeed. But in the Mad Men universe, Paul is always destined to fail, I think. He probably definitely hung out at Esalen. Maybe he ended up in the mountains of Big Sur getting drunk with (and annoying the hell out of) Henry Miller.” Photo: AMC
“William is probably still trying to find a way to get his father Gene’s house. Or perhaps he has moved in with his wife and kids and sleeps in the bunk beds.” Photo: Carin Baer / AMC
What Happened to Mad Men’s Forgotten Characters?