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Kiernan Shipka on Sally Draper's difficult 'Mad Men' journey

by Maureen Ryan

"Mad Men" is deliciously complex, but you could almost sum up the AMC drama by calling it a prelude to Sally Draper's inevitable years of therapy.

Sally has witnessed the painful dissolution of her parents' marriage and the exposure of Don and Betty Draper's "perfect" suburban life as a carefully manufactured lie. Her parents' self-absorption and frequent emotional neglect has left Sally a lost and lonely child, who, in the fourth season of the AMC drama, has turned to a creepy young neighbor, Glen, for advice.

You may yearn for Sally to get a break, but the actress who plays her says that Sally's life isn't going to improve any time soon.

"She has a very rocky ride this season," says Kiernan Shipka, the 10-year old Chicagoan who plays ad executive Don Draper's oldest child.

Shipka, the daughter of real estate developer John Shipka and Erin Brennan Shipka, is friendly, composed and articulate, and she lights up when she talks about her profession.

"Any day acting is an amazing day," she said as she sat in the lobby of a Beverly Hills hotel on a recent Saturday.

After doing extensive print and commercial work in Chicago, at age 6, Shipka, who returns to her family's River North home whenever she can, started traveling to Los Angeles for auditions and acting roles.

"I had never been out here before not even on vacation. It was totally new and it was really exciting. I loved it from the beginning," she said.

Yet the path of a child actor isn't always easy, given that their growth spurts and the development of their acting abilities are hard to predict. Over the course of "Mad Men's" four-year history, for example, Bobby Draper, Sally's younger brother, has been played by three different young actors (Bobby is currently played by Jared Gilmore).

But Shipka's job on the award-winning show seems very secure -- she was a recurring guest star in past seasons, but in Season 4, she was made a series regular.

"Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner said via e-mail that he "always hoped" to give Sally's story increasing prominence on the show, but he added that he "just didn't know if it was possible, because of the limitations of actors that young."

"Obviously like any good actress she's learned a lot by working more and working with great actors, but she has a core talent that is very impressive and has remarkably not changed despite the process of growing up," Weiner said.

And Shipka's done it all without reading "Mad Men" scripts in their entirety. Her mother, who accompanied her to the interview, reads scripts and screens completed episodes for her, and the 10-year old is only allowed to read and watch scenes that are deemed appropriate.

"When we watch, she fast-forwards a lot," said Shipka, who added that she didn't start going to table reads, or read-throughs with the entire cast, until last year.

Shipka said she used to identify more with the more "free-spirited, happy, adventurous" Sally of the first two seasons of the show. But when her parents' marriage fell apart and her beloved grandfather, Gene (Ryan Cutrona), passed away in Season 3, Sally's journey got much darker.

Gene may not have been perfect, but he happily spent hours of quality time with Sally, who basked in the attention. In a Season 3 scene that perfectly combined "Mad Men's" atmosphere of potential danger with its sly sense of humor, he even let her drive a car.

Shipka's most indelible scene came after Gene died and the grownups around Sally tried to ignore her understandable emotional turmoil. As she confronted them about their attitudes, the callousness of Betty (January Jones) and Don Draper (Jon Hamm) was put into sharp relief, and it was hard not to admire the courage and honesty of the little girl who expertly put the adults in their places.

"When we're actually filming, I try to feel those emotions as much as possible," she added. Given that Cutrona -- by then a good friend -- would no longer be appearing on the show, the sense of loss was easier to summon when scene was shot, she said.

"It was hard to say goodbye to him," Shipka said. "I was almost crying that day too."

Sally's problems have only increased this season, as her brittle, remote mother tries to make a go of it with her second husband, leaving Sally to navigate the tricky waters of her new life without much guidance.

"In Season 3 and Season 4, I feel Sally is very beaten down and she has to cope with the separation (and divorce), but she has to do it on her own with a lot of trial and error, " Shipka said. "I think she has so many feelings bottled up inside. ...At the beginning of Season 3, her dad said he would never leave her. Now they're separated. it's hard for her to know her to trust because I feel the only person she can trust right now is herself."

Shipka ably portrays Sally's uncertainty and pain, but she's always given the character a measure of steely resolve, which she'll no doubt need as she deals with the turmoil of her own family and the cultural changes of the '60s. As "Mad Men" has shown, especially this season, the young are demanding more honesty, sincerity and emotional engagement from their elders and from life itself, and Sally is actually at the forefront of that generational rejection of polite hypocrisy and repression.

Sally "is very strong and she's very brave," said Shipka, who clearly relishes the challenges she's been given.

"Every script is so surprising," she said. "It's absolutely great to get such great material. The best feeling is that Matthew Weiner believes in me."

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