Elisabeth Moss: Marriage to Fred Armisen was “Awful”

On the hit television series Mad Men, Elisabeth Moss’ character, Peggy Olsen, has had her share of ups and downs as far as relationships go. But sometimes life imitates art. Recently 31-year old...
Elisabeth Moss: Marriage to Fred Armisen was “Awful”
Written by Mike Tuttle
  • On the hit television series Mad Men, Elisabeth Moss’ character, Peggy Olsen, has had her share of ups and downs as far as relationships go. But sometimes life imitates art.

    Recently 31-year old Moss spoke of her brief marriage to SNL star and Late Night with Seth Meyers bandleader Fred Armisen.

    The two met after Mad Men costar Jon Hamm hosted Saturday Night Live in 2008. They got engaged and married in 2009, separated in 2010, and divorced in 2011.

    “It’s so hard to talk about,” Moss said in a 2012 interview. “One of the greatest things I heard someone say about him is, ‘He’s so great at doing impersonations. But the greatest impersonation he does is that of a normal person.’ To me, that sums it up…And I think that’s…that’s it. I’ve never told anyone that. And I don’t want to waste any more of my life talking about it.”

    “Looking back, I feel like I was really young, and at the time I didn’t think that I was that young. It was extremely traumatic and awful and horrible,” she adds. “At the same time, it turned out for the best. I’m glad that I’m not there. I’m glad that it didn’t happen when I was 50. I’m glad I didn’t have kids. And I got that out of the way.”

    Although Moss enjoys the occasional photo of “celebrities going into Starbucks,” when her divorce made tabloid headlines, it was like a slap in the face. “I always knew that the stuff that you read is not true, but when I was in the situation and you really, actually read things that you apparently said or did that are 100 percent made up…It’s just the strange, simple thing of, that’s your heart they’re talking about, and it just…it sucks.”

    None of this really comes as a surprise to Armisen who, in a January interview with Howard Stern, said he was a “terrible husband.”

    “I want it all – fast…I want to be married,” he said. “The amount of girls I’ve lived with – right away – and then somewhere around a year, two years, I get freaked out. Freaked out emotionally…and I actually feel like, ‘oh my god, who is this stranger in my house?'”

    Although Moss will speak frankly of her ex-husband, she zips up when it comes to her involvement in Scientology, a controversial Hollywood religion.

    “I’m not going to talk about it anymore…it’s private, off limits.”

    Moss recently won a Golden Globe award for her role in the mini-series Top of the Lake. She will co-star in the final season of Mad Men starting in April on AMC.

    Image via YouTube

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