MAD BRILLIANT
it doesn’t take much to loosen up Mad Men’s Vincent Kartheiser—some cool new spring stuff will do just fine.
Vincent Kartheiser is having a hard time ordering a drink. It’s not because this nondescript wine bar on a strangely desolate stretch of Sunset Boulevard is slammed. Quite the opposite—we’re among a quartet of customers there for happy hour and its discounted cheese plate. “What’s in a gimlet?” he quizzes the bartender, which is weird, considering that his Mad Men character, Pete Campbell, is basically a professional drinker. She starts rattling off the ingredients, but he abandons the idea and commands a vodka soda instead.
By the time it arrives, we’re already talking about furries. You know, the sexual subculture. It is a quick and strange detour from the original line of questioning—fashion—and the first indication that Kartheiser is capable of extremely freestyle conversation. But back to business: Is his look as polished as Campbell’s, I wonder? “I don’t have that kind of money, man,” he says, leaning back precariously on his barstool. Grinning sardonically, a lick of semi-slicked hair obscuring his vision, it’s clear that he’s much more willing to go off-script than any Mad Men character—or actor, for that matter. “I mean, I do have a lot of suits and tuxedos, but only because you get a lot of that stuff given to you.”
Not like he wears them all that often. “Someone on set asked me the other day, ‘Do you have friends? Like, what do you do?’ They’re always inviting me to these social events, but I’m always like, ‘Oh, it’s OK,’ because I worry about ruining relationships that way. I find that the less you see of me, the more you like me.”
I ask if he feels sympathetic toward Campbell, who not only becomes even less likeable in each episode, but also seems to be aging at warp speed. “He’s not Asian,” insists Kartheiser, mishearing, or pretending to mishear, the question. “Did you say Asian? Oh, OK. He’s aging. There are things that he’s been going through that come with age—the weariness of life weighing on you, you know? I haven’t taken on some of the responsibilities he has—marriage, children, partnership. But then again, other things in my life I took on at a much younger age than he did.”
The youngest of six children, Kartheiser started acting at the Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis. He landed his first film role in 1993’s Untamed Heart and eventually made a home for himself in Los Angeles. He appeared mostly in family fare and indie films until securing a regular role in Angel, a Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off that ran from 2002 to 2004.
Flush with success and a steady job, he bought a house, and several years afterward, he went through an ascetic period, living in his sparse little box that, for several months, lacked a functional toilet (he used a neighbor’s). In an act of blasphemy to the city of Los Angeles, he did not own a car. He eventually bought a frills-free two-door, and presumably, got the bathroom up and running. “I live a very bachelor-y type of life,” he explains. “It looks tidy, but maybe I’m delusional.”
He recently gave up video games—“I guess you play enough of one thing and it stops being interesting, you know?”—but he still watches a lot of sports. He loyally follows the Minnesota Vikings, a nod to his hometown, where his father sells tools and his mother works at a daycare center. When he goes home for the holidays, Kartheiser says, “I get to the point where I’m like, ‘OK! I’m not gonna sit around and talk about tools with you, Dad. You’ve done it all week long. Let’s relax.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I love to talk about my work!’ So it’s like, ‘Ugh, fine, let’s talk about tools.’” We all have different areas of expertise, I suggest. “I’m still looking for mine,” he says.
I ask Kartheiser if he was surprised by how much people love to hate his character. “No,” he says, before suggesting that his own reputation, like Pete’s, can be somewhat unsavory. “I’ve been dealing with that my whole life. It’s good to know who you are, and what your role is. I’ve observed in my life there’s a fair amount of people who have a natural dislike for me.”
In several interviews, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner has identified Pete as the show’s everyman. “Well, Don is certainly not the fucking everyman,” says Kartheiser, leaning in close and locking eyes. “Look around here and find me a Don Draper!” He waves his arms around the empty room. “OK, this place might be a bad example. Anyway, the thing that makes Don Draper more likeable and someone who gets women is that he has charisma and he has charm and he’s handsome and he’s well-spoken. Those are the things we look for in a fucking President.”
For that job, Pete Campbell and Vincent Kartheiser are unlikely to be contenders, but Kartheiser has plenty of other ways to pass the time. “It’s the easiest job in the world,” he says of his métier. “Basically, acting is as hard a job as skydiving. Jumping out of a plane is pretty fucking easy.” Sure, to someone who has no fear of falling.