It seems fitting that Jared Harris directed “Time & Life,” this week’s episode of “Mad Men,” since it dealt with the future of Sterling Cooper & Partners, the oft-renamed advertising firm where he once toiled as Lane Pryce.
Following his character’s suicide two seasons ago, Mr. Harris talked with Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator, about shooting an episode, but it wasn’t originally slated to be this one. “I worked up the nerve to ask Matt about directing an episode when he worked up the nerve to tell me, with some regret, that I would be leaving the show,” Mr. Harris recalled. “I was supposed to direct an earlier episode, but I got stuck filming on ‘Poltergeist’ and couldn’t get out in time.” (The horror-movie remake opens May 22.)
The timing turned out to be perfect. Mr. Harris explained, “I ended up, kind of serendipitously, with this episode because there are so many echoes of the Season 3 finale,” when the agency morphed into Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Mr. Harris, a British actor, spoke about stepping behind the camera for this pivotal late entry. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. (Read a recap of “Time & Life” here.)
You hadn’t directed since you made a film as a student at Duke University in the early ’80s. Why do you think Matthew Weiner agreed to let you direct an episode?
One of the things Matt likes about directors who have come through the show — with John Slattery and Jon Hamm but also Jennifer Getzinger, who started as a script supervisor — is they understand it. They know the style and the tone. They get it already. I shadowed Michael Uppendahl when he directed an episode in Season 6, and I was passionate about it. I really wanted to do it. So Matt took a leap into the unknown and said, “O.K.”
The episode really felt like the beginning of the end, even though Don Draper tries to reassure the employees that being absorbed into McCann-Erickson is the opposite. Was there a sense of foreboding on the set as well?
There was a finality to everything, but there was still a lot of speculation about how the series was going to end, because nobody knew at that point. There was excitement and a guessing game going on and also a sense of sadness. I was only there for half of it, but as time has gone by, I have appreciated with greater and greater significance how unique the experience was and how special it was in terms of the standard of excellence in every single department. It’s just a phenomenal achievement.
Was any scene in the episode particularly challenging to shoot?
It’s quite rare that you get a legitimate excuse to move the camera on the show, so the scene where they all burst out of the conference room — it’s like ‘The Magnificent Seven’ going off to achieve this goal — was exciting. And any time you see a space you’ve seen before, it’s always a challenge in how you’re going to represent it. We’d already seen Don alone in his apartment, but we were trying to capture a different feeling of him in that space, on the phone by himself.
When Pete Campbell punches the headmaster who denies his daughter entrance to a private school because of a centuries-old feud between the Campbell and McDonald clans, did it feel like you’d come full circle since Lane famously punched Pete in Season 5?
He punched me as well. We both got a good licking in that scene. That was one of those things where it suddenly turned out to be serendipitous. That was a funny scene. It was the first scene I shot. It’s a great example of Matt’s comedic genius, because when you find out the real reason the kid has been denied, it’s absurd. It’s fantastic. Matt gets that in there as a joke, but he also has Pete defending his ex-wife Trudy’s honor. The way he was able to engineer that as a story point was fantastic.
What’s it like directing Vincent Kartheiser?
I love Vinnie, and I have a soft spot for Pete. As an actor who often plays the bad guy, I appreciate everything he does with that character. He manages to make Pete endearing, even though he’s not immediately empathetic. It’s interesting that he’s often the character who presents the most modern point of view of anybody in that office.
Was Roger Sterling kissing Don on the head in the bar scripted?
Everything is scripted. It starts off, and they’re both really hammered and almost getting ugly drunk, dark drunk, then it takes this funny little turn. When Roger says, “I married my secretary and you told me off, and then you went off and did the same thing,” John delivers that with such humor. Roger has a realization that the world is a big joke, and you can either be destroyed by the absurdity and the madness of it or you can see it with a crazy sense of humor.
What are we to take from the last shot, when the partners seem to have lost all control of their employees after announcing the McCann-Erickson move?
I discussed with Matt the idea of doing that pull-back shot to get the feeling that the whole thing was pulling away from them. Cranes needed to be hired, and parts of the set needed to be pulled down. The amazing thing is the people who have been in that office for seven years as extras almost for the first time got to properly be in the scene as the characters they had been imagining. It was also nerve-racking because there were so many people in the scene. Children, crowd scenes and animals: The only thing I didn’t have to handle were animals.
How do you look back over the whole “Mad Men” experience now?
In terms of my career, it’s obviously been a tremendous opportunity. It was the first time I signed a contract for a long term on a TV show. I’d mostly done movies before. It had a big effect because people in the business watch this show. It was a huge boost. “Mad Men” led to my role in “Lincoln.”
What do you think the show’s legacy will be?
It’s going to be one of those things people can revisit and realize with each viewing the level of detail and complexity isn’t exhausted. I watched all the seasons over a couple weeks to prepare myself to direct, and I was absolutely stunned. In Season 1, Gene says to Don that Betty used to be a fat teenager. You think, “Well, Matt can’t have planned that so far ahead.” That’s incredible if he did. So I think the show will only grow in stature.