Vincent Kartheiser, best known for portraying slimy ad exec Pete Campbell on Mad Men, is using his time off the show to tackle another challenging character—Mr. Darcy in a Minneapolis stage production of Pride and Prejudice. Despite the difference in time periods, the actor was able to find common ground between the two roles.
“[There’s] this type of woodenness that Pete Campbell has that I also bring to Darcy,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.
Initially, Kartheiser was reluctant to take on the role. “You know, Darcy is something I never get,” he said. “In film, they would never ever ever ask me that, they really wouldn’t. I’m fine with that. But here I have a chance to do it, and so let me do it.”
He also questioned his ability to play the character, saying, “I’m not that good of an actor, so I kind of like say: ‘Yeah? How do I fix it? Was it that bad? Ok, let me try again.’”
But the main challenge has been the difference in Kartheiser’s theater routine versus his television one. Every night backstage, he said he thinks, “‘Is this actually happening again? Didn’t we just do this seven times last week?’”
