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Sally-Draper-Season-Six.jpg

Kiernan Shipka Talks About Growing Up on 'Mad Men'

By Genevieve Burgess | Mad Men | April 5, 2015 |

By Genevieve Burgess | Mad Men | April 5, 2015 |


Happy Easter, everyone! In addition to this being the day that most Christians are celebrating Jesus rising from the dead, us secular entertainment bloggers are celebrating today as the day that Mad Men rises from the dead for one last seven episode run.

Yesterday I talked about Pete Campbell’s hairline, but today we have something a little more substantial, this interview with Kiernan Shipka and Matthew Weiner about Kiernan’s experience growing up with the show. There’s a quick comparison to Boyhood at the beginning that Weiner dismisses, but it’s not entirely wrong. Shipka was 6 years old when she auditioned for the show, and she’ll be 16 this fall. She has grown up in front of an audience, and Sally Draper has as well.

They also discuss the care that Weiner took to shield Shipka from the adult aspects of the show. She wasn’t present at table reads, and prior to every season Weiner would sit down with her mother and discuss what they wanted Sally to do that season to make sure it was alright. Now, apparently, there was a point when Shipka told her mother to not turn down anything, but presumably her mother still had a good grasp on what her daughter could or couldn’t handle.

It’s a good interview overall, Shipka is an incredibly poised and thoughtful young actress and it’s interesting to see what she’s taken away from the show, and from playing Sally Draper.