‘The First Time’ With Elisabeth Moss

On the heels of her performances in The Invisible Man and Shirley, Elisabeth Moss discusses her acting career in the latest installment of Rolling Stone’s “The First Time.”

Moss launched the segment by sharing the time she starred in an Excedrin commercial, which she described as dramatic. “Of course, I got the one that was a serious monologue straight to camera about pain,” she cracks.

She then recalled the first time she experienced the work of Shirley Jackson, when she read the horror novelist’s 1948 short story “The Lottery” as a teenager. “I was so shocked by of the fearlessness of the story and how modern it was, and how [it was] like nothing I’d ever read,” she explains. “I never in a million years thought that 15, 20 years later that something like that would come back around.”

Moss adds that she first got involved with the biopic when she was sent Sarah Gubbins’ script. “I’ll probably piss off some writers by saying this, but I honestly thought it was kind of the best script I’ve ever read,” she says, with a laugh. “I really, really wanted to do it, and then I had to wait for them to pick me to do it. And they did! Which I was very happy about.”

Elsewhere in the video, Moss talks about the first time she appeared on The West Wing. “I got to sit on the couch and watch Martin Sheen,” she shares. “I think I was 17. He was so nice and so professional and so cool. I was like, ‘Well this is the greatest job I’ve ever had.’ It was an incredible experience.”

Moss also discusses watching her audition tape for Mad Men at showrunner Matthew Weiner’s house before the show ended in 2015, as well as the first time she read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. “I never in a million years would have thought it would come back around my way. It also didn’t seem like something that could be a TV show.”

“So many years later, I remember my first thought was just, ‘How in the world did they manage to adapt that book? That is impossible,’” she notes. “And I read the first script and I remember thinking, ‘Oh! That’s how they did it.”