On The Jennifer Hudson Show, Elisabeth Moss talked about her series The Veil, in which she plays an MI6 agent, and looked back on a musical childhood and her first years in New York.
A family of musicians
Moss grew up in a jazz and blues family, surrounded by musicians. In that house, you did not dabble: if you chose an instrument, you practised every day. She chose ballet at five and acting at six, then gave up ballet at 15 or 16, sensing that acting would give her a longer career. She is also a fourth-generation Chicago Cubs fan.
The Craigslist flatmate
At 18 or 19, with no money, she found a cheap one-bedroom flat in the East Village on Craigslist, to share with a substitute teacher in his fifties. Looking back, it sounds like “a really mad idea”, she admits, but he was kind, often let her pay the rent late, and made it possible for her to stay in New York and audition until she landed Mad Men. She has never been able to thank him.
Injured, and kept quiet
The Veil, a six-part series, was shot in three countries. Moss practised her British accent for about six months; the hardest accent she has done, she says, was Australian, for Top of the Lake. She trained for the fight scenes and did some of her own stunts, alongside a stunt double. She fractured her back on a rooftop in Istanbul (the scene was finished six weeks later) and later hurt a rib in Paris, but said nothing so that filming would not stop.
Her famous facial expressions, she insists, are not calculated: she simply tries to play the truth of the character in the moment. She was preparing the final season of The Handmaid’s Tale.