Kiernan Shipka Says She Knew What Was Going on in Mad Men Despite Efforts to Protect Her ‘Innocence’ as a Child Star

Mad Men star Kiernan Shipka is praising the show’s behind-the-scenes efforts to shield her from its more adult content, while admitting that she still had a pretty good idea of what was going on all along.

The 25-year-old star of Max’s upcoming rom-com Sweethearts was just 6 years old when she took on the role of little Sally Draper in the acclaimed drama series, but as she told Jesse Tyler Ferguson on the latest episode of his podcast Dinner’s On Me, she remember everything from Mad Men’s seven-season run on AMC.  

“I don’t know if it was because my brain and body just decided to remember, like, audition, first day, whole thing,” Shipka said. “I’m glad for that. I mean, I’m sure there’s some days that are a blip, but that’s kind of everything.”

Over the course of the series, Shipka’s character witnessed her TV parents Don and Betty Draper (played by Jon Hamm and January Jones) behaving extraordinarily badly. But, she explained, the show’s creators and crew made sure she was protected from the more adult content during filming.

“I was reacting to, like, Jon playing Words with Friends on his phone as an eye line and not the real deal,” she told Ferguson.

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Shipka recalled Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner saying that her character “saw everything, but Kiernan didn’t see much.”

“They were so protective over me and my kind of innocence and not exposing me to stuff that, you know, was sensitive or more adult,” she explained.

Still, Shipka said she “definitely had context” for scenes like one in which Sally walks in on Hamm’s character making love to a neighbor.

“I always knew what I was reacting to. Like, I always knew what I was walking in on,” she said. “I just didn’t have to see it over and over again.”

“I think at a certain point, I was like, ‘Guys, I know what this is. Like, I’m good. I’m fine,’ ” Shipka added. “But I really, like, admire and respect the way that they handled it. But I do think in my head, I was probably like, ‘I’m mature. I’m an adult. I know what’s going on here. Like, it’s fine, guys.’ ”

While Shipka said she was allowed to see some episodes of the show at season premiere screenings, she didn’t watch Mad Men all the way through until the COVID-19 pandemic when she was approaching her 21st birthday. Watching her character as an adult, she said, was an eye-opening experience.

“I was watching [Sally] go through stuff that at the time [of filming] I was feeling in a really natural way,” she explained. “But now as sort of an adult, I can psychoanalyze and go, ‘Oh, no, she was grieving there and acting out.’ And at the time, I think I understood her as much as she understood herself. And as I get older, I kind of understand her the way that I hope she, you know, would understand herself one day with therapy. And there’s something really wild about seeing that because it was like, it wasn’t that I didn’t know what was going on, but I didn’t know what was going on the way that we don’t know what’s going on with us until later too.”

As recently as 2022, Shipka said she’d be interested in revisiting her Mad Men character. “I’m not done with Sally,” she told ET ahead of the show’s 15th anniversary. “I don’t think she’d be in New York. I think she’d do L.A. … but I’m not done with her at all.”