Just Asking . . . Vincent Kartheiser, Actor

As far as sinister cable television villains go, Mad Men’s Pete Campbell—Sterling Cooper’s short, smarmy, Richie Rich account man, portrayed by a Minnesota native and Children’s Theatre Company alum Vincent Kartheiser, 30—isn’t exactly in Deadwood territory. Unlike Mad Men’s laconic paragon of masculinity, Kryptonian creative director Don Draper, Pete Campbell is more, well, human. He’s a discontented 1960s company man with suppressed caveman impulses, and unlike Draper, there seem to be consequences to his chauvinism: the only time he cheated on his wife, he impregnated a female coworker. And in last season’s finale, instead of finding some sort of redemption or comfort, like the rest of the cast, Pete was emotionally eviscerated by that same woman (and this was in ’62!). So if, as New York Magazine argued last year, Draper is the past and Campbell is the future—and the future is now—then maybe Pete Campbell is more sinister than he looks. We’ll know soon, since the new season starts on August 16 AMC. For now, we caught up with Kartheiser by cell phone in L.A.

Mad Men is such a Freudian, psychoanalytical show. How self-aware do you have to be in order to act like somebody else?
As an actor, it’s not so much that we’re portraying somebody else—rather, we’re finding that part of us that is in that character and accentuating it, and taking away parts of ourselves that the character doesn’t have as strongly. Definitely, all those parts of Pete Campbell are in me, and it’s me shining through the Pete Campbell mask, but ultimately it is me.

There are a couple scenes where Jon Hamm as Don Draper gets right in your face. Do you feel real panic or fear?
No. Well, that’s a fine line. Am I scared that Jon Hamm is actually gonna like . . .? No, of course not. But as an actor am I allowing myself to go to a place where I emotionally am in a place of fear? Yes. But I’m not actually feeling, like, threatened.

Pete Campbell has grown up in some ways. His sense of entitlement has been diminished, hasn’t it?
I think he still feels the world owes him something. But he’s also been humbled. That’s what happened in the first season: he gets fired by Don Draper and then he gets saved by his family name and then he gets humiliated by the blackmailing thing. I think those moments have changed him, and they’ve made him grow a little bit, but I think he’s still basically that guy.

You’ve taken a nine-month break in between season two and season three. How do you keep Pete Campbell with you during these huge cable hiatuses?
I worried about the same thing after we shot the pilot. It was a year before we started shooting the season. And then after the first season it was another eight months before we shot the second season. Both times I had these worries that I was going to get there and I was going to forget exactly where he was coming from and what his voice was like and how his posture was. But once I had the words, it was all there. And that’s a testament to the great writing of [show creator] Matthew Weiner and the whole writing team. Pete Campbell lives on the page and he speaks to me in that way. And he always has. Since the first time I read the pilot, I read it and I said, [starts doing the smarmy Pete Campbell voice] I know this guy’s voice. His voice is here. [goes back to his regular voice.] It sang to me. My questions are always answered in the dialogue.

You were a child actor (Alaska and The Indian in the Cupboard), and child actors are stereotypically entitled little people. There’s something recently socialized about Pete, something that also could come from somebody forced into the adult working world from such a young age.
I try not to draw direct comparisons between me and my characters’ lives. For me, it’s a separate thing. I’ve been doing this for so long. So for me the process is very separate from my life. Part of being an actor is observing and being self-aware of all the different aspects of yourself. So when you read a script you can identity with whatever character they feel fits you or you’re supposed to fit. But ultimately the actual work—when it comes down to delivering a character—I try to separate it from myself. Especially on this show—these characters are all from Matt’s head, and in a way they’re all Matt. He might hate me for saying that, but it’s the truth. He is Betty Draper! And sometimes the best thing that you can do is to do your impression of Matthew Weiner in the scene, because ultimately that’s what it’s about. It’s not about my comparisons to the character. It’s about the writer’s actual words and where those words are coming from, which is his brain, and his relationship to the character. That’s the relationship that matters. Not my relationship to the characters. That’s the other thing about being an actor. You’re not the original creator. You don’t have intellectual property. I don’t write a poem but I can recite it. I can’t write new music, but I can sing to it or dance to it.

There’s a theory that says that after you’ve devoted 10,000 hours to anything, whether it’s a jump shot or writing a sonnet, you’ll perfect that thing. Was there a point in your career where you felt that shift?
Yeah. It was when I was 12 or 13 at the Children’s Theatre Company. We were doing a small play for one of my classes.

Were you close to 10,000 hours at that point? How long had you been acting?
Seven years. I’d been doing it a long time. And I did every day. I mean, I was very committed. I went to class everyday and I cared a lot about it. I had great teachers who cared a lot about me and made it fun for me. I had a team of people who it really mattered to them that my experience was good and that I learn the right way. It was phenomenal. It was a great time in my life.

Who was at the Children’s Theatre back then?
Jon Craney was our artistic director and I was mostly schooled by Wendy Lehr, Gary Gisselman and Myron Johnson.

I just did a little video with Myron Johnson.
He’s amazing. He’s still doing Ballet of the Dolls, right?

Yeah. His technique was interesting—maybe similar to Weiner’s. I asked him to teach me a couple of steps for my story. And he said that’s not how it works. He says he looks at the way you move and then choreographs for that. “Look at that thing you do with your hands,” he says. I was like, “what thing with my hands?”
Right, right. And that’s what Matthew does for us. He sees how we are and he writes for us. Not only does he write for us for things in our life—some character’s kids or things like that—experiences that we can pull and draw on from our own lives. But he also writes for us as actors. Oh, okay, I noticed that this actor is really good at doing this, so I’m going to accentuate this. I’m going to put that in the spotlight. With a play or with a movie the writing is pretty much done and you can do an impersonation or an impression of their theory or their work, but to have someone who every week is watching and adjusting the character for you it really makes my job pretty easy.

Youngest of six in Apple Valley is a far cry from Manhattan royalty. So did you research this character at all?
Not very much. I know, it makes me seem like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. There’s not a lot of research that I’ve done, but it’s just presenting it. It’s thinking about the character. I don’t think I need to know every yacht club in Manhattan.

We see Don Draper reading Frank O’Hara. Does Wiener ever give Pete any reading assignments?
Um, no he doesn’t give me any writing assignments. Before the first season, I read a little bit about the times and advertising. Things like that.

Pete does make a reference to Hitchcock’s Rope and he famously points out that JFK is like Elvis. How intellectually curious is this guy?
Pete Campbell is right! The first season Pete Campbell is right about everything he says. He’s right about everything. As is often the case in businesses, what’s right isn’t what is the social norm at the time. In the pilot he stands up and says people want to die, that’s why they smoke—it’s a death thing. And everyone’s like, you’re a fool. Well, no. Now that is how they sell cigarettes. He’s really ahead of his time! But as for most people that are ahead of their time . . .

So you agree with New York Magazine. Pete Campbell is the future. Pete Campbell is the future! And now we’re living in the future and guess what? Men kind of suck. You know what I mean? The male today is a much different beast than the Humphrey Bogarts of the past.

Pete has this weird caveman rape fantasy in one scene—he seems nostalgic for this era that he’s actually living in but isn’t really able to participate with.
Right. I guess he feels like he missed out on something. And I think that speaks to, for me, that every man feels like he could kill a lion if he had to. I think we all walk around being humble and modest, but deep down inside of us we feel like if we were pitted against any beast in the world we would have a fighting chance. That no one knows the strength in our heart and the ability to be rugged. And I think that’s Pete Campbell. Inside, he feels that he is this rough and rugged man who could make it and could do it. But he’s never going to test that. And he’s probably never going to try that. It’s just a little part of his brain.

Do you enjoy the suits and Brylcreem on the show? How do you wear your hair in real life?
I don’t “wear my hair” any way. [Long pause as Kartheiser surveys his surroundings.] Man, I am walking through Santa Monica. There are the most beautiful women in the world all around me. It’s retarded. Naw, I don’t wear my hair any way. I just kind of roll out of bed and there it is. And all the other stuff . . . you don’t really notice it. You just go in there in the morning and you sit down. I’ve been sitting in makeup chairs my whole life. I just close my eyes and it gets done.

5 THINGS

1. He grew up in Apple Valley where he was home-schooled. His parents and his sisters still live in Minnesota.
2. He likes to ballroom dance. “Mostly traditional but there are some tango variations that I don’t shy away from.”
3. He’s a vegetarian and he quit driving his car. “Now I take public transportation and walk a ton.” [Ed note: yes, in L.A.]
4. He tries to keep his pet out of the news.
5. He’s never gotten a girl pregnant. “That I know of.”