ELISABETH MOSS
BY KYLE LEVY
 
Elisabeth Moss has come a long way from the time she walked into the studio set of Mad Men as a timid young actress taking on her first major role. Over a decade later, the 37-year-old actress is riding a wave of critically-acclaimed performances in both film and TV. Recently she was the toast of La Croisette when her film The Square won the coveted Palme d’Or. After that, Top of the Lake gave her free reign over the complicated, determined yet haunted Aussie police detective Robin Griffin.

But even with The Seagull and Us thrown into the mix, it is her work on the soon-returning TV series The Handmaid’s Tale, that is placing her star highest. Indeed, it has earned her a Golden Globe and Emmy along the way, both for best actress.

With season four expected along in 2020, the break-in play has allowed Moss to pursue new projects, notably a return to film with The Invisible Man. In the Leigh Whannell written and directed project, the actress plays Cecilia Kass, a woman trapped in a violent and controlling relationship with a wealthy scientist. When her ex apparently commits suicide, she inherits a large proportion of his vast fortune, but her suspicions over whether the death was a hoax turn to fear as life around her unravel.

Moss lives in the upper west side of Manhattan in New York City, together with her two cats, Lucy and Ethel.

STRIPLV: You’ve been able to build a pretty extraordinary career playing some very edgy and proto-feminist kinds of female characters?
MOSS: I feel privileged to have had these opportunities. When I first began playing Peggy (on Mad Men), it was a time when the industry began to understand that creating serious female characters would get more people to watch a TV show or see a film. I was lucky to start my career at a time when more good roles were opening up for women. That’s even more true now, and I think series like Top of the Lake and The Handmaid’s Tale are great examples of how you can tell female-driven stories and find an audience. The Invisible Man is exactly the same. People want to see women and stories that reflect complex female characters. So it’s important for women in the industry to keep pushing to have not only more good roles for women but also create more opportunities for women to direct and get involved in every aspect of the industry.
STRIPLV: Why has it taken so long though?
MOSS: Well, in some ways it has and it other ways it hasn’t. The Invisible Man is a novel written by HG Wells way back in 1897, so it can hardly be said that these sorts of stories haven’t been out there and haven’t been available. I guess, as ever, it’s the right producer and the right studio seeing enough behind it to give it a go. I think with the surge in TV drama, we are placing female figures back into the center of the screen, and that effect is pushing outwards towards the film. From a purely selfish perspective, The Invisible Man is too good a story not to reinvent and represent in the way that is now being done.
STRIPLV: Do you feel like you’re on a roll in terms of how your career seems to be gathering a lot of momentum?
MOSS: Things have been working out really well. Sometimes you’re lucky that certain people want to work with you, and other times you have to know which projects are right for you. I’m mainly looking for good scripts and the opportunity to work with interesting people who are more talented than me so that I can learn from them and grow as an artist. People think it sounds strange, but I don’t really focus so much on the characters I’m playing as much as the quality of the writing.
STRIPLV: What’s your favorite thing about being an actor?
MOSS: I think it’s the fact that in this job, you’re constantly trying to understand your characters and gaining so much more of an insight into human psychology. Acting gives me a way of learning about myself and the world in general, and that’s what makes it exciting to keep finding new characters and new stories that give you a much deeper appreciation of humanity. That’s also the function of art.
STRIPLV: Did working in the kind of dystopian atmosphere of a series like The Handmaid’s Tale give you any insights into how women need to face up to the world?
MOSS: We’ve got to have our backs and look out for each other. One of the great observations that Margaret Atwood explored was how women treat each other and how things can go very wrong when women are pitted against each other instead of uniting. There’s a lot of that coming into The Invisible Man – the idea that women working together can be a major force, but first of all, they’ve got to be willing to work together.
STRIPLV: Was it at all daunting for you to take on the kind of harrowing atmosphere created by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid’s Tale?
MOSS: Even though it presents a very pessimistic view of the world and the future of women, I think the symbolism is very relevant to what’s going on in the world today. When you look at what’s happening in my country and in many other parts of the world, you can see how women’s rights are often under threat. That’s what’s truly frightening.  I’m much more worried about the future than ever before.
STRIPLV: You’ve never shied away from the topic of motherhood and recently came out saying you wanted children, but there was no set plan.
MOSS: Motherhood can be a complicated issue, but I’m an actor, and all I’m doing it representing a way of thinking, so why shouldn’t I do that. I think it would be weird and a bit weak if I didn’t take on those sorts of motherhood roles because it wasn’t something I had fulfilled in my own life. You can’t live like that – you can’t steer clear of topics because you don’t fit their narrative. Instead, you have to adapt to their narrative. But yes, I’ve always dreamed of becoming a mother, and most women find it one of the most important decisions they can ever make in their lives. I have a lot of respect for mothers, and women are lucky today that there are many different ways to have children, including adoption and surrogate mothers.
STRIPLV: You’ve worked much more doing TV series rather than feature films. Do you have a preference for TV?
MOSS: I like the fact that doing TV allows you to develop a character over a period of several years, and you have so many more scenes and so much more time to add layers as you go along. That’s what was interesting to me about getting to play Robin again because I had a chance to explore many more aspects to her that you only saw glimpses of in the first season. But there’s also something more intense about making a film because you have a much more limited time to tell the story, and that means all your scenes have to count.
STRIPLV: In Mad Men, you played a determined but still fairly pleasant character. Do you think, in the time since your fans have been surprised to see you playing so many dark roles?
MOSS: (Laughs) Probably. I sometimes surprise myself. I wouldn’t mind playing someone who is more outgoing and expressive the way I am personally. I would much rather have a good time than mope around or get down on myself. Even with Peggy in Top of the Lake, she was at the beginning very reserved and worried about asserting herself, although she gained more confidence as the series went on. In my early twenties, I was kind of similar to Peggy, but then just being able to play her and experience her personal evolution in the series helped me find my way to start enjoying life more. I think a lot of women in their twenties go through that kind of process. Just the way Peggy experienced different relationships was kind of an education for me.
STRIPLV: You spent years getting to work with and get to know the other cast members on Mad Men. Do you still stay in touch?
MOSS: I was lucky to be able to see Vinnie (Vincent Kartheiser, who played Pete Campbell on Mad Men - ED) a lot when we were shooting Handmaid’s Tale because he’s married to Alexis Bledel who was working with me on that. But otherwise, it’s pretty difficult to meet up when everyone is busy working on different projects and you’re in different places. We have a text chain that we use to keep in touch, though, and sometimes I’ll wake up, and suddenly there will be 50 text messages between people from the cast. The thing is, you’ve got to move on as no-one wants to get stuck on an old project without having something new to look forward to and talk about. That’s natural and means the past often gets left in the past.