In an interview with E!'s Jennifer Godwin, there's good news and bad news. The good news? Betty's coming back. Matt Weiner says: "I don't like spoilers, but you will find out that January's contract has been renewed." He adds:
"She's raising Don's kids. And I also feel that she was always in her own show." Godwin also gets Weiner to talk about Betty's relationship with Henry Francis. Godwin posits, "My theory about Betty is that she's a sloth — she doesn't like to leave one tree without already having found her next tree. She doesn't like touching the ground." Weiner answers:
What confirms your suspicion of this, because I agree with you, is that Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) did not sleep with her. He knew he was not getting anything. He was not getting anything until it was legal… He's a handsome guy who says, "You'll never have to work again." A lot of women like that. Lots of people don't know the people that they're marrying. She didn't know Don that well. But Henry has been good to her, and I think she knows what he's about, and he's a very exciting person for her. I think he's the anti-Don in the sense that he seems very grounded. All I can tell you is that, as a pregnant woman, when he treated her sexually at a party, something happened in her brain chemistry.
The other woman we may seem more of is Carla; Weiner says that he and the writers have "talked about" a Carla-centric episode:
Deborah Lacey is a great actress, and Carla's relationship with the family has so much integrity. That's a real relationship between employer and employee, and that's something that we're very proud of.
In addition, since she is one of the only African-Americans on the show, her thoughts of, feelings about and place in the changing American landscape of the 1960s —compared to that of the Drapers — could make for extremely rich storylines. And if the show makes it to 1968 and Martin Luther King's assassination, well, she's just got to have a bigger part.
Lastly, the bad news. It's about Joan.
Godwin: It's a tragedy. It hurts me. She bet on the wrong horse when she married her husband, and now all we can do is hope that he dies in Vietnam.
Weiner: Guys like him, apparently, don't really die in Vietnam. Only good people die.
Godwin: And he's not good?
Weiner: No, he's not good for her.
Ugh. Sadness.
Mastermind Matt Weiner Tells the Future of Mad Men [E!]