You can tell a holiday weekend is right around the corner because people are dicking off left and right making videos like the Daft Punk/Soul Train mashup we posted earlier. And now this: video of Ken Cosgrove dancing on Sunday’s bizarre episode of Mad Men — which by the way is starting to make a little more sense — set to Daft Punk’s “Doin’ It Right.” It’s simply outstanding. Enjoy!
Speaking of Ken Cosgrove’s little jig, Aaron Staton, the actor who plays Ken, talked to the New York Times about it.
Q. Are you in fact a dancer? Did you have any training in it?
A. I did. I took some classes in college, and my first job was in the Broadway show “Mamma Mia!” I played the fiancé [Sky], and I had to do a bit of dancing, albeit in flippers.
Q. So when you came onto “Mad Men,” did Matthew Weiner know you had this dance and theater background?
A. The truth of it is, it’s not something I’ve done in a while. It’s been a few years. First I got a text message, “Do you tap dance?” And so I had to go: “Do I? Let me check.” I’m still holding the phone — “What do I still know, if anything?” Mary Ann Kellogg — who has choreographed all of the dance sequences over the course of the show, from when Pete and Trudy did the Charleston and the “Zou Bisou Bisou” song last year — she came aboard, and we had fun figuring this out. Matt knew he wanted a time step in there, and there were a couple steps that I needed to work on and freshen up a little bit.
Q. How much time did you have to prepare this?
A. Fortunately they gave me about two weeks, and I needed every day of it. I really did. The hardest part was speaking while doing it. It was only maybe eight lines or so, but it’s a difficult thing. It’s like rubbing your stomach and patting your head.
Staton also said that Rich Sommer, who plays Harry Crane, sent him the magical GIF from the scene, which he described as “this thing, this little blurb — I’m sure there’s a term for it, and I’m just not familiar with — but it’s a little online snippet where it’s the dancing clip, sped up. And it says at the bottom, “It’s my job,” in big bold letters. It was really funny.”
That’s called a GIF, Aaron — with a hard “g.”
(Via Alex Blagg)
