TORONTO – Mad Men is famously fastidious in its attention to detail, but for some Canadians there’s been one glaring misstep over the years — the way it portrays Quebec character Megan Calvet Draper.
As the series comes to a close, Montreal actress Jessica Paré says she’s been vaguely aware of complaints that the Calvets don’t seem typically Quebecois.
Online nitpickers have suggested Megan’s first and last name aren’t very French-Canadian, and took issue with the French spoken by Brit actress Julia Ormond, who plays Megan’s mother Marie, and Belgian-born actor Ronald Guttman, as Megan’s father Emile.
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Paré says Ormond worked with a coach on her French accent.
“(Creator) Matt (Weiner) is making an American TV show and it goes really fast and we all do the best we can,” Paré says in a recent phone interview from Palm Springs, Calif.
“I mean, as for my accent, I grew up there and I spoke both French and English.”
The Calvets recently took centre stage when Marie and Megan’s sister Marie-France — played by Canadian actress Kim Bubbs — arrive to help Megan move out of the New York pad she shared with philandering ad man Don Draper.
That episode included substantial exchanges in French between the bickering women, which so far haven’t elicited the same outcry as previous episodes.
Paré says she enjoyed getting to flip between English and French for the show, noting “it’s not something that you get to do very often” on a U.S. series.
And while she avoids reading online critics, she understands why Canadians especially would seize on the Calvet storyline.
“I feel like when it’s really close to home … we want to see it portrayed the way that we perceive it. But it’s also TV —(there’s) a little creative expression,” she says.
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