With AMC’s award-winning series Mad Men returning Sunday night, I recently had the chance to participate in a roundtable interview with Elisabeth Moss.  Since the cast is always guarded when talking about upcoming storylines, most of the interview covered the big storylines of last season, Peggy’s relationship with Don Draper (Jon Hamm), what Matthew Weiner told her about her character last season, and a lot more.  Hit the jump to either read or listen to what Moss had to say.

Written and directed by Academy Award winner Jane Campion, the stunning, evocative and often unsettling seven-part mini-series Top of the Lake follows Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss), who returns home to care for her sick mother and finds herself caught up in the missing persons investigation of Tui Mitcham, a young girl who is 12 years old and five months pregnant.  But, in this breathtaking but remote mountain town, Robin quickly realizes that this case is far from simple and that she must face her own haunting past, along with evil forces as powerful as the land itself, if she is ever to uncover the answers.  The mini-series also stars Holly Hunter, David Wenham, Peter Mullan, Thomas M. Wright and Jay Ryan.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, actress Elisabeth Moss talked about how she came to be a part of this mini-series, the most challenging aspects of the role, the experience of shooting in such a desolate and vast part of New Zealand, how she approached playing this character, collaborating with filmmaker Jane Campion, that the story will continue to get darker and creepier as it evolves, the experience of working with co-star Holly Hunter, and how cool it was to work on a series where the story has the closure of a film.  Check out what she had to say after the jump.

There is something darkly meditative about Jane Campion‘s (Bright Star) work Top of the Lake, which was the first television series ever to be screened at Sundance, and definitely deserves the distinction.  The premise is reminiscent of works like The Killing or even Twin Peaks, where a special investigator begins unraveling a disturbing central mystery that is ripping a small, remote town apart.  In this case it’s Mad Men‘s Elizabeth Moss as Robin, who is home in New Zealand visiting her cancer-stricken mother when a 12 year old girl, Tui (Jacqueline Joe), the daughter of a local drug lord, is found to be five months pregnant.  The father?  “No one,” Tui writes down.  Soon she disappears completely, and what follows is a dark and twisted journey that uncovers the moral decay of what appears to be a pristine paradise.  For more on the series, hit the jump.

Today, Sundance announced their stellar Premieres line-up and we have the first images from a few of the movies playing in the category:

• Top of the Lake – Directed by Jane Champion and Garth Davis, written by Campion and Gerard Lee, starring Elisabeth Moss, Holly Hunter, Peter Mullan, and David Wenham.

• Two Mothers – Directed by Anne Fontaine, written by Christopher Hampton, starring Naomi Watts, Robin Wright, Xavier Samuel, and James Frechevile.

• Very Good Girls – Written and directed by Naomi Foner starring Dakota Fanning, Elizabeth Olsen, Demi Moore, Richard Dreyfuss, and Ellen Barkin.

Hit the jump for the images and synopses.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17 – 27.

Last week we saw the 2013 Sundance Film Festival announce lineups for its competition and Spotlight/Park City at Midnight programming, and today they have unveiled the list of films that will screen as part of the Premieres lineup.  It’s one hell of a program, as films that will screen include the Ashton Kutcher-fronted Steve Jobs biopic jOBS, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut Don Jon’s Addiction, director Richard Linklater’s trilogy-completing Before Midnight with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, the ensemble comedy A.C.O.D., director Park Chan-wook’s English-language debut Stoker, and much, much more.

Hit the jump to check out the full lineup for the narrative and documentary premieres.  The 2013 Sundance Film Festival runs January 17 – 27th.

Just last week word came that Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss would lead the BBC miniseries Top of the Lake from writer Jane Campion, director Garth David and The King’s Speech producers Emile Sherman and Iain Canning. Now Deadline has word that Holly Hunter (who worked with Campion on The Piano), David Wenham (Faramir from Lord of the Rings) and Peter Mullan (War Horse) have joined the production telling the story of Robin Griffin (Moss), a detective investigating the disappearance of a 12-year-old pregnant girl, who is the daughter of a local drug lord. Mullan will play Matt Mitcham, the missing pregnant woman’s father and local drug lord while Hunter will play G.J., a guru at a local women’s camp. Wenham’s role has not yet been revealed, but it’d be nice to see him in a villainous role this time around just to mix things up a bit. Also, as was speculated in our initial report, Sundance Channel has closed a deal to distribute the miniseries here in the United States, so if all goes well when the shoot begins in New Zealand in February, we should see some Emmy love for the miniseries when the time comes.