Characters

Stan Rizzo Played by Jay R. Ferguson

Mad Men Season 5 Jay Ferguson Stan Rizzo

Stan Rizzo is the Art Director at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Stan comes to the agency from DDB, where he was involved with an anti-bigotry commercial for Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign.

Peggy Olson teams up with Stan on Vicks and other accounts, but the two clash over his working methods and his taunts that she's sexually repressed. "Why is it so hard for you to accept that man's natural state is nude?" asks Stan, who flirts with female staffers and reads Playboy magazine for inspiration.

Working late one night, Peggy calls Stan's bluff and begins removing her clothes. "You're lazy and you have no ideas," she says, challenging him to "get liberated." The two strip naked, but Stan is uninspired creatively and eventually puts his clothes back on. "You win," he says, calling Peggy the "smuggest bitch in the world."

Despite the surface antagonism, Stan occasionally comes on to Peggy. Taking advantage of her nervousness before a presentation for client Playtex, Stan leads Peggy in a deep-breathing exercise that ends with him kissing her. Peggy pulls away. "Why do you keep making me reject you?" she asks. Stan takes revenge by not revealing to Peggy that her lipstick is smeared during an important presentation for Playtex executives.