Basket of Kisses

Donielle Artese shoots the breeze with hullaballoo - Part I

Okay, I know I’ve been promising this for days and weeks and more, but life is kicking my butt right now. Here is the first part of my conversation with Donielle Artese, who plays Sheila White, the ex-girlfriend of Paul Kinsey. There’s still a lot (A LOT) more to come, but I thought I’d whet your whistles with a teensy bit of our very long, but interesting conversation.

Donielle Artese (Sheila White) flirts with fans at the Mad Men Revue

hullaballoo I’m with the lovely Donielle Artese. She plays Sheila White on Mad Men. She just kicked Paul to the curb and…

Donielle Nooooo! (Laughs)

hullaballoo Heh, heh. So, to start off, I’d like you to tell us a little about who you are as an actress, then a little about your experience on the show. I checked your IMDB page. It’s got some stuff, not a lot, so give me some background on who you are. Where you grew up, where’d you go to school, did you always want to be an actor, that sort of thing. (more…)

The picture of Sheila on Paul’s desk? That was foreshadowing. Someone is going to see it; someone other than Sally. Someone who is none too comfortable with it.

Just sayin’.

Okay, I’m going to just post all of them, I really am, but this one just tickled me pink. I had to do the coy thing and hide it under a Read More link. Just had to.

(more…)

Eme commented on another post about the appeal of the Mad Men as grownups:

The fact that the men are supposed to be real adult men. Yes, I know that when we discuss these things we realize the real adolescent immaturity at (the) heart of the MM men but nevertheless, doesn’t MM in a way celebrate a culture of sophisticated adulthood? Personally, I’m just dying for a grown man to show up onscreen…

This reminded me of something Matthew Weiner said (back at that thing we saw him speak at where we met him and stuff) about how one thing that drives the characters forward is each of their struggles with where they are in their life cycle. That keeping that ‘real’ (no way did Weiner say “keeping anything real”) was how he could guarantee that this series never run dry, or need to rely on over-the-top plot devices.

(more…)

Michael Gladis, who plays Paul Kinsey on MM, is set to star off-Broadway in The Main(e) Play, according to TheaterMania. This the the premiere of this play, which opens January 23 at the Lion Theater.

While looking up Gladis on IMDb to make sure I had the character name right, I find he played a crazy kitten freak on one of my other favorite shows, Life. And he was so transparent, so utterly in character, that I didn’t even realize it was him. The very definition of true character acting.

Speaking of symbolic names, Paul Kinsey? For the horny guy with a past relationship with Joan, who hit on Peggy but hard? Oh, my.