Internships: a Mad Woman’s experience

Danielle Lauren, producer and director of the 11/11/11Project, recently spent six weeks in Los Angeles working as an intern in the production office of the acclaimed drama series Mad Men. She can now tell you a) the name of the most popular cigarettes in mid-July 1965, and b) how an internship can change your career.

I guess you know you’ve grown when you can look back at yourself when you were younger and see with great clarity how naive you once were. For me, my retrospective evolution took place over six weeks, when I had the educational privilege of interning on one of the most popular TV series in the world, Mad Men.

I first met Matthew Weiner, the show’s creator and executive producer at the SPAA Conference in 2009. It was through a meeting of fate that Matthew and I had a chance to connect on the stairs – he was on a cigarette break and I was walking to another seminar. Our worlds collided and without a doubt my life changed because of this fortuitous encounter. Matthew and I spoke about the possibility of interning on the show and, after months and months of back and forth emailing, I finally received my confirmation letter from UROK Productions.
With this one page letter and a detailed proposal, I approached Screen Australia for support – they agreed to endorse my project and put together the paperwork.
Development manager Christopher Sharp was particularly helpful in making the process easier and more fluid – including early morning phone calls to LA to help complete the grant process in time. It’s unlikely that I would have been able to attend without the support of the agency.
My first day driving downtown to the UCLA studios was nerve-wracking. It had been a dream of mine since I was a little girl to work in LA. American flags, plastic Oscars and Hollywood sign postcards had always been a part of my bedroom décor, but to actually be in  the “real” professional world of entertainment was a dream come true. I recall turning into the studio, being cleared by security and as the boom pole lifted I thought ‘Wow this is it – this is what you’ve been working for’.
I arrived at the Mad Men offices where I was greeted by Matthew’s assistant, whom I reported to. During my first few weeks I was positioned in the writers’ room, with my desk directly outside Weiner’s office. Walking into that room was like walking onto the set of Mad Men. The production offices were decked out with retro desks, chairs, lamps and posters and you were reminded instantly that you had entered a new world – the world of Weiner’s imagination.
My day-to-day role in the writer’s room was research. There were three main research assistants – one paid, and two interns. The role of the researchers is to provide total historical accuracy to the show. The writers provide research briefs in the form of questions  such as “On January 8, 1966, what plays were showing on Broadway and what were their session times?”.