The Mad Men Season 5 Moment That Made Elizabeth Moss Cry Wasn't Even In The Script
Although Peggy Olsen starts off "Mad Men" as Don Draper's quiet new secretary, by season 5 she has risen up the copywriting ranks and become Don's confident right-hand man. There's just one problem with Peggy's rise up the corporate ladder: Technically, she owes a ton of her success to Don, and Don's kind of a jerk. By the end of season 5, the characters have long since lost their post-"The Suitcase" groove, with Don taking Peggy for granted and Peggy growing increasingly frustrated. The last straw is at the beginning of "The Other Woman," where Don dismissively throws a bunch of money at her, in front of her co-workers no less.
Although Peggy was surely already considering jumping ship, it's here where she knows for certain she needs to get away. It's not just that she needs a less toxic work environment, but she needs to prove that she doesn't require Don to succeed. In her quitting scene, Don tries to guilt her into staying by telling her, "Let's pretend I'm not responsible for every single good thing that's ever happened to you..." but this is the last time he'll ever get to play that card, because Peggy thrives at her next company without him.
There's just one problem for Peggy, which becomes clear as Don kisses her hand goodbye: These characters do genuinely love each other in their own platonic way. Despite their problems with each other, it's still tough to say goodbye. In a moment that's long been praised as a stellar bit of acting from Elisabeth Moss, Peggy quietly tears up as Don kisses his hand. But as she explained in a 2022 interview with Vanity Fair, Moss wasn't completely acting here.
A quiet, tender moment
It turns out that Don's decision to kiss Peggy's hand — showing that despite his anger, he does in fact understand her perspective and still cares a lot about her — was not scripted. "None of that was in the script, and he did it on my close-up," Moss explained. "That right there is real Jon [Hamm] — the veins in his head, I can see him in that moment."
Moss explained how, much like Peggy and Don, she and Jon had "sort of like a mentor-protegé relationship there, very older brother/little sister." So when it came time to film their goodbye scene, a scene that promised that the two actors would no longer get to perform with each other with nearly as much regularity, the actors in real life were feeling a lot more like the characters than usual. Maybe that's why when Hamm spontaneously kissed her hand, Moss barely had to act. "That right there is real, that's actually, those are real tears, which you know, hate to break it to you but often we're faking it," she said.
Luckily, this wasn't the last scene between the two characters. Peggy's company merges with Don's halfway through season 6, forcing her in the same office as him and giving the two no choice but to work out their differences. But at the time, Peggy's resignation scene seemed like the end. It felt like we were saying goodbye to one of the most compelling character duos in the series. With Don and Peggy (and Hamm and Moss) possibly parting ways forever, no one can blame the two for making the scene far more sentimental than the script required. There are no bad episodes of "Mad Men," but this moment made "The Other Woman" one of the show's best.