02-06-2025
‘The Gilded Age' cast on what to expect in Season 3: feuding sisters, robber barons and a wedding?
'Welcome to the sober circus!'
When The Gilded Age returns for its third season on June 22, the fallout from the characters' ongoing power struggles, both large and small, will be immediately felt, revealed the cast at a panel held Saturday at the ATX TV Festival in Austin.
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Stars Christine Baranski (Agnes van Rhijn), Carrie Coon (Bertha Russell), and Morgan Spector (George Russell) shared a sneak peek at their upcoming plotlines, as well as plenty of banter about life on the set.
'If there's an overriding theme in this entire Gilded Age show, I think it is how people are coping with change, each character individually coping with tremendous change, and changes that are happening in society at the time,' said Baranski.
Temperance has come to 61st Street — 'but not to me!' declared Baranski. With the (literal) change in fortunes, Ada (Cynthia Nixon) has taken over as the head of the household, much to Agnes' consternation. To deal with her grief, she aligns herself with the temperance movement.
'I think if Ada had wanted to change the draperies, Agnes would have had difficulty. So whatever Ada's up to is going to rankle Agnes because it's not her idea,' said Baranski.
'It's not good news for Agnes, but it's great news for Christine, because as an actor, you don't want to play the same thing. If you're playing someone who's firmly convinced that her position is right and then you get toppled, there's so many places you can go comedically and tragically.'
SEEWhy 'The Gilded Age' Season 3 won't be eligible for any Emmys this year
Baranski thinks Julian Fellowes, who writes The Gilded Age, channels his own personality into Agnes. 'He loves those tough old broads — they are survivors, and they've got the wit and they're made of vinegar,' said Baranski. Added Spector, 'I think he thinks those are the women who are really holding civilization together, and I think he's probably right.'
Asked how she nailed Agnes' withering stare, 'Oh god it's so awful to say, I didn't have to work at it,' said Baranski. 'My mother was a tough old broad. And I swear when I watch myself play Agnes, I just see my mom with her glass of Seagram 7 crown.'
As for Bertha, 'She's pretty single-minded,' said Coon. 'We know she's determined to marry off Gladys. I'll say without spoiling anything, Bertha usually does get her way. But it doesn't mean there aren't consequences to that.'
Coon defends Bertha's single-mindededness in marrying off her daughter. 'She understands the world is not set up for Gladys, and that if Gladys hopes to have any power or influence — the power and influence Bertha would wish to have — she has to be married in a very particular way, married well,' said Coon. 'Because I think what Bertha understands is that you can have puppy love and have a lovely time, but that will not sustain you for 35 years. So I have a lot of respect for what Bertha wants for Gladys, and I do believe it's loving. Does she go about it in a way that seems a little bit blunt? Perhaps. But I do believe she understands something about the world that she wants her daughter to be not just safe but fulfilled.'
That's another theme of the third season — the collision between social and business forces that was happening at the time.
'How many women born at a different time would have been running places? And what do you do with that energy?' said Coon. 'Well, you put it into your kids because that's the only place you're allowed to put it.'
Added Baranski, 'The men were busy earning money and making money and creating this capitalistic society, but it was the women who were spending the money and creating the culture of the Gilded Age. You could say it was completely over the top and indulgent in income inequality, except that they did create cultural institutions that last to this day. And the robber barons, whatever we think of them, they financed cultural institutions, which is not really true today with our tech barons and our current oligarchs.
'Shame on them for not supporting the arts.'
Speaking of robber barons, 'George's story of the season is trying to build the transcontinental railroad,' said Spector. 'I think there's something actually fundamentally relatable about George, even though because of the scale on which he acts, there's a monstrousness to a lot of what he does.'
Said Baranski, 'I have to say you are a man on a mission, and these robber barons, they got a lot done.'
'So did Mussolini,' quipped Spector.
New cast members will join this season, including Merritt Wever as Bertha's sister, Bill Camp as J.P. Morgan, Andrea Martin as a medium, and Lisagay Hamilton as the suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
'The thing that I most was gratified by was I had not seen Black middle- and upper-class communities represented in this period,' said Coon. 'The history of that is so fraught because of the way those neighborhoods were bulldozed to make Central Park. And the fact that we see these black actors in their joy, having a ball, getting paired off, with their own history, and yet existing still in a world where Bertha Russell isn't going to look at you, or acknowledge that you're there, to me that's one of the most thrilling parts of the show. To get to see that world sort of brought to life in this Gilded Age period is just something we haven't really seen before. I always thrill to those moments in the story.'
Spector acknowledged that the show has been criticized for having 'a lot of drama, but no stakes,' said Spector. 'But there's a real subtle wit in cutting from being in the South, with Denée [Benton]'s character, to then being in our drawing rooms. The show has a kind of ironic wit about it because of that that I think it would lack otherwise.'
And while Agnes can be such a 'bitch,' as Baranski acknowledged, she does think she has a point. 'Things will really go awry if you only think in terms of material existence,' she said. 'So I think her heart and her mind and her ethics are very much in the right place, as stubborn as she is. One of the reasons I'd love this show to continue is because I think there is such an exploration to be done in terms of the corruption that goes on, the buying of government influence, and the grotesque displays of wealth sending women into a spaceship.'
Joked Spector, 'Christine, you're a firework.'
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