Alexis Bledel, who plays Beth Dawes on AMC’s Mad Men, speaks with AMCtv.com about her character’s sex scene with Pete Campbell and what excited her about this role.

Q: Who was your favorite character before joining the cast?

A: They’re all written so well… Peggy is an incredible character, and I remember thinking that when I first watched the show. She’s a great and rare television character. It’s been fun watching her go from Don’s secretary to coming into her own in that time period.

Q: What drew you to the part of Beth?

A: I instantly wanted to know more about her because she’s quite mysterious and she’s conflicted… I felt for her right away. She is stuck in a bad marriage that is really taking a toll on her psyche I think, so I just wanted to explore what that meant for her.
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In the new play Regrets it’s the year 1954 and a group of men escape to a Nevada retreat where they can wallow in their marital misfortunes in peace and secure a quick divorce. In a place where “no girls allowed” is a dictum, not a mantra, Alexis Bledel’s character, Chrissie Meyers, is vivacious and sexy. A townie, Chrissie is an object of desire to a pack of lonely men, and she’ll sleep with them for money, but it doesn’t take long to realize she is also innocent despite herself—the type of girl who sweeps in on her bicycle, all smiles. She wears her reputation like she can shed it at any time.

Probably best known for her roles in the television series Gilmore Girls and the films The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Robert Redford’s The Conspirator, Bledel takes on her first original role for the stage in Regrets. On her day off, she spoke with Interview about working with playwright Matt Charman, playing a not-so-wholesome young woman, and how much she is loving theater.

MERYL CATES: The full cast for Regrets was announced before previews. How long have you been working with each other?

ALEXIS BLEDEL: I think its been almost about a month now. Nearly a month—I think we had three weeks of rehearsals and we started previews about a week and a half ago.

CATES: Yeah, so three weeks of rehearsals—that’s a pretty quick turn-around.

BLEDEL: It was quick but we’ve had a lot of previews, which is good. So we’ve been having rehearsals before the previews.
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We all know John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln. But have you also heard the tale of Mary Surratt, a boarding-house owner who was convicted of participating in the conspiracy to kill him? No? Well, don’t worry, neither did Alexis Bledel, who co-stars in “The Conspirator,” a Robert Redford-directed film based on the true-life tale of Surratt and the plot to assassinate our 16th president.

“I had no idea. I had never heard this story!” laughed Bledel during a recent interview. Luckily, she got up to speed once she stepped into some Civil War-era petticoats.

Is this your first time appearing in a period film?

It’s the first one I’ve done that is a true story, that’s historically accurate with so much attention paid to detail. It was interesting to build the character and to make sure her social habits and speech were accurate.
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Alexis Bledel, formerly known for her roles in “Gilmore Girls,” “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” film series and, most recently, the drama-thriller, “The Kate Logan Affair,” now lives in Brooklyn and has decided to “dip her toe” into the world of theater with a four-week role in Norah and Delia Ephron’s “Love, Loss, and What I Wore” at the Westside Theatre through Sunday, February 13. We chatted with the lovable Texas-bred starlet yesterday about her live theater debut, how to cook a better brisket and of course, New York fire safety.

Let’s talk about opening night — which is actually tonight [Thursday] — are you nervous?
Well, we had two performances yesterday that were previews but it’s been an accelerated process that we only started this week, so I guess I am nervous.

What about stage fright — sorry, are we freaking you out yet?
No! (laughs) I don’t really get stage fright because I’m just as nervous backstage as I am on-stage. I think the cure is just doing it and once it’s over, [stage fight] is cured. But the nervousness is good. It’s really just excitement, as long as you look at it in a positive way.

You’re really thrown into this show with a rotating cast every four weeks. What’s that like?
It’s a very intimate little theater and even in the backstage area, we’re all kind of in the same space getting ready so it’s the most fun in the dressing room. A lot of our own stories come out and since the nature of the show is about women sharing their experiences and what they’ve been through, I think it inspires that [same practice] within the actors. The rehearsal process is over two days, so the bonding is very immediate.
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