Ben Feldman: I can tell you those actors are really nice people. There’s your lead right there. "Ben Feldman Says Some of the New Actors Are Nice."

GQ: With a big time leap like this, was there any coaching or preparation given to the cast?

Ben Feldman:. It’s almost as cryptic as the stuff that you guys get. It’s like, "Listen to this album." Or "If anything is in this season, it’s this book." Something like that. You get pop culture references and things to check in with. I probably shouldn’t tell you them, but they’re very much a part of it; once you’ve checked it out, you go, "Oh, right, of course, I totally get that." But otherwise you’re kind of on your own. I remember last year I met with Matt Weiner, and I told him, "You know what’s happening in real life during this episode? They actually broke ground on the Twin Towers, they started to build them." And I remember him looking at me with the biggest sort of "duh." Basically, "What do you think we do all day?" I was telling some of the hardest researchers on the planet one of the obvious things that was going on then.

GQ: And everybody follows through on doing their own research?

Ben Feldman: I think people do. It’s a really, really smart group of actors, and everybody has their own process. They’re all very literate. I mean, I’ve been on other shows, and this is a really smart, cultured group of actors. Nobody on the show is "the dumb guy." And you have to be smart, because the fans are so insanely intelligent and so well-studied and researched, that if we had a bunch of actors that didn’t pull their weight, we would just look lazy. I geek out a little bit and maybe—this sounds so obnoxious—but I probably read in a little bit too much? I definitely do my research.

GQ: We got a Jewish joke in this episode. For some reason that surprised me. I thought that him being "the Jewish guy" would have gone into a place of normalcy by this point.

Ben Feldman: Yeah, but you know? As a Jewish person in 2013, it’s still there. I think it would be irresponsible if the writers were just like, "Oh, eight months has gone by, everybody is totally cool now and nobody even notices that there’s a Jew in the room." I think it’s still a defining part of someone’s being back then, as it is now. I certainly don’t know a lot of anti-Semitic people, but I’ve got plenty of friends that have a whole bunch of Jew jokes up their sleeve, and every time it’s relevant, it will come up. So for it to not happen back then would be crazy. It’s still a thing.

GQ: With this premiere being so focused on death—

Ben Feldman: Oh, you picked up on that? [Laughs]

**GQ: Took me a couple viewings, but yes. I think your character’s in a unique position with that theme. **

Ben Feldman: He has definitely been around it before, and definitely been on the brink of it at the beginning of his life. For sure.

GQ: Can you tell me how his outlook might be different from the other characters because of that experience?

Ben Feldman: Certainly with last season, he’s more sensitive to it. They were talking about the nurse murders in Chicago, and it definitely resonated on a deeper level with him. And I think he’s always just a bit deeper in it than a lot of other people around him, and is far more sensitive to that kind of stuff. Certainly I would imagine at this period of time in American history, there’s a lot to rile him up.

GQ: Do you think Michael Ginsberg leads a double life? It’s a big theme in the show and seems to be hitting very hard right now—obviously with Don, but even with Roger, who’s always seemed so consistently himself.

Ben Feldman: I think that a case can be made that every character is struggling with who they are, who they’re perceived to be, who they want to be, who they don’t want to be. We could sit down and go through every single character and find examples for each one of them, and certainly Michael Ginsberg. He’s always been an outsider in this group of people for myriad reasons, not just the Jew thing. He comes home to an extremely different life than everyone else. So yes. I think so much of him is about who he wants to be, or who he’s trying to be, and what he’s running away from.