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Matt Weiner Is One of the Smartest People on TV, Says Entertainment Weekly

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Matthew Weiner is one of the 25 Smartest People in TV. No. 11, to be exact. That's the official word from Entertainment Weekly. A couple of Weiner's tips? "1. He realized he wasn't smart -- yet. 'I started looking at people whose careers I wanted -- David Chase, Woody Allen -- and saw that I was not on that path.' and 2. He said no. 'I turned down a contract at [Ted Danson's sitcom] Becker even though I had no other job. It proved that I was uncompromising. Or crazy.'''

Also on the list, at No. 21, is Christina Wayne, AMC's senior vice president of original programming.

Wayne gets the credit for remaking AMC as "a purveyor of some of television's finest dramas." Wayne is the subject of a W Magazine feature, where she says she immediately knew Mad Men was the perfect first series for AMC: "We were ripe to take risks. Plus, our audience is used to watching 'period' on our channel."

January Jones gets the Town and Country cover girl treatment. The article characterizes Jones as a Hitchcock homage, noting she "serves as Weiner's patrician ice princess in the same vein as Hitchcock's Grace Kelly." She's credited too with much of the early development of her character, as well as with enlarging her role and that of the Draper household on the show, according to Weiner, who tells the magazine, "January has a profound understanding of who this woman is." Vogue -- which has a 16-page fashion layout with Jon Hamm -- features Jones as an "enthusiastic and exacting shopper," who likes "to wear vintage with expensive accessories, or vice versa. Often I'll go classic and then add something kind of wild to make it my own."

Posted by Carolyn Koo
December 8, 2008 4:08pm

Filed under: Press & Related Links

Comments

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By holottawoman on December 9, 2008 7:55 PM

This article doesn't mention which issue January will be in. I saw an interview with Jon Hamm on the Vogue website that he was in the December issue but there was no mention of January.Does anybody know which issue she will be in?

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By Carolyn Koo on December 9, 2008 7:59 PM

Hi -- January Jones is also in the December issue of Vogue, though I'm not sure the interview is on the magazine's website.