Alison Brie Recalled Her Most Mortifying Incident From The ‘Mad Men’ Set

Months after appearing with her Community castmates Joel McHale and Ken Jeong on The Darkest Timeline, the zaniest podcast episode I heard in all of 2020 (also, the very last, so far, of that podcast), Alison Brie is making the podcast rounds again in support of Emerald Fennell’s awards-season contender, Promising Young Woman. In fact, despite the cancellation of her Netflix series, GLOW, Brie has had a busy year promoting projects. In addition to Promising Young Woman, Brie appeared in her husband. Dave Franco’s nifty horror flick, The Rental, the final season of BoJack Horseman, and the Thanksgiving Hulu hit, The Happiest Season.

Before becoming a hugely in-demand actress, however, Alison Brie starred as Trudy Campbell on AMC’s Mad Men. Fashion was a big part of the ’60s set series, which meant that Brie would often have to wear a girdle. Early on, however, Brie didn’t realize that she shouldn’t wear underwear in addition to the girdle, a lesson she learned the hard way, as she told Justin Long on the Life is Short podcast.

[A girdle] is “basically like biker shorts that go all the way up to our ribs, and it’s like time-period appropriate,” Brie explained:

“There’s a small hole in them for everything to come out. So I didn’t know, for the first season of Mad Men, that you weren’t really supposed to wear underwear under them, because they are underwear. So I was rushing to set and I had to go to the bathroom. Mad Men was my first real job so I didn’t ever want to be the problem person. So I rushed to the bathroom, tried to pull the hole open, but I didn’t pull my underwear to the side so I’m peeing and not hearing it hit the bowl and then I just feel warmth. I went straight back to set. I just dabbed it with a bunch of toilet paper, because they’re waiting on me, I don’t want to be that person or lose my job. So I go and do several takes.”

Oops.

Fortunately, Mad Men‘s fashion designer, Janie Bryant, was very understanding, and when Brie finally admitted to her that she’d peed in her girdle, Bryant brought Brie another girdle and explained to her that it definitely wasn’t the first time that had happened. “She couldn’t have been better about it,” Brie gushed to Justin Long.

Source: Life is Short with Justin Long