Something’s fishy over at Sterling Cooper.
It’s not too often that a newly minted Emmy winner leaves the show that earned her an Emmy, but that’s what seems to have happened to Kater Gordon. Nikki Finke reported on Deadline Hollywood yesterday that Gordon has departed the show. It’s not clear whether she was fired or quit, but in general people don’t leave hit shows and double that in this economy.
Kater held the title of staff writer which is the entry level position in the writer’s room. According to reports she first started out as Matthew Weiner’s (the show’s creator and executive producer) personal assistant. She was then made a writer’s assistant, and then got her a big break when Weiner tapped her to co-write the last year’s season finale. Matthew Weiner is no idiot. I’m sure he knew the woman could write even if she got the gig unconventionally. Do you think this man would sacrifice his show and hire someone to co-write an episode who couldn’t write? I don’t think so.
Now she has an Emmy and no job. Some people on the Deadline Hollywood message board are saying she got her writing gig by sleeping with Weiner. That’s insulting, demeaning and degrading to all women writers who have worked hard to be taken seriously. They never say the same stuff about male writers, but when a young woman gets a break, she has to have earned it through sex.
I’m still torn about Matthew Weiner. On the one hand he’s involved with this project I have become familiar with called the Good Men Project which is about men trying to be better dads and men in our culture. On the other hand, even though the writer’s room at Mad Men is populated by women we’ve already explored that they don’t hold high level positions. Maybe the Emmy win pissed off Weiner? Maybe Gordon wanted a promotion? Maybe she got another gig?
There are a lot of maybes in this story and nobody has the real answer. All I know is that is looks horrible for the show that a young, successful female writer is now out of a job just a couple of weeks after getting the most coveted award in television. It makes no fucking sense. I wish Kater Gordon the best of luck and hope she gets a great next gig.
Maybe, fingers crossed, that she has a secret TV show in the making with another major network.
That’s disgusting some of these jerks implied she slept with a man to get the job. F–king pigs.
I am hoping—perhaps with too much optimism—that Kater Gordon left on amicable terms for a better gig. When I read the news this weekend it was presented as if she was fired because she had ascended too quickly. I hope that’s not the case, because that sounds like BS to me. If it’s true I don’t know if I can watch Mad Men with the same fervor I did before.
I’m not really interested in the gossip of it, but “Kater held the title of staff writer which is the entry level position in the writer’s room. According to reports she first started out as Matthew Weiner’s (the show’s creator and executive producer) personal assistant. She was then made a writer’s assistant, and then got her a big break when Weiner tapped her to co-write the last year’s season finale.”
That’s EXACTLY how you become a staff writer. There’s nothing unconventional about it, in form or time frame. You have an in, you get tapped for writer’s assistant, you get tapped for a writing opportunity. Happens all the time.
To be fair, how is speculating that Gordon was fired because “the Emmy win pissed off Weiner” any less insulting to all involved that speculating that “she (Gordon) got her writing gig by sleeping with Weiner”? Both seem to be pure speculation that borders on libel. I sincerely hope neither of those reasons are true, but let’s not decry gossip while tossing out gossip of our own.
This doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me. She won an Emmy. Her rate just went up – a lot. Her agent probably tried to negotiate a much higher salary for her, and the production budget of MAD MEN couldn’t or wouldn’t accommodate it. She wouldn’t take a lower amount – they let her walk.
People don’t want Emmys because they’re gold and pretty – they want them because they make your work worth more money.
Seeing as she was a new writer, just promoted, she was likely the cheapest writer in the room (and this is not sexism – it’s a seniority thing, and totally normal). So she went from being super cheap, possibly not even represented, to having an Emmy, and having representation, and trying to negotiate the deal that an Emmy winner should get. And for whatever reason, they couldn’t make it work. Happens all the time, to men AND women.
I’d go with the money argument. The Paula Abdul argument. The Suzanne Somers argument. And other women basically fired for asking for their relative value to others. A lot of things don’t make any fucking sense. Like the original director let go from the Twilight series. The actress let go from Twilight when her contract allowed filming on another project.
But when things don’t make any fucking sense, people have to wonder when someone who arose from personal assistant to Emmy winning writer. It was some emotional decision. But where did it come from – sex or money or spite? In any case, it was something unprofessonal, against the quality of the show and the investors in the show, unless she asked for something they could not afford. Another woman is reputed to have left too from the writing staff.
She is getting married this fall and moving to northern california. That’s why she left, tired of the commute!
Hello,
She got married and moved to Nor Cal to live with her Husbend. She picked the love of her life over some job!!! Give her big credit for that for sure!