The Gilded Age is a period drama that has been on HBO-Max beginning in 2022.
The series, created by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey), focuses on life in 1882 New York City and the struggles between the Old Money and the "Nouveau Riche".
Starring in the series is Christine Baranski (The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Cybill) as Agnes Van Rijhn, an old money widow who is determined to keep the Nouveau Riche out to ensure the superiority of the Old Money life she's devoted to.
Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City) also appears as her spinster younger sister, Ada Brook. Ada is a lot less rigid than Agnes, but still understands the rules of old money to which she belongs. She's also a bit more sheltered than Agnes.
In the series' second season, Ada later falls in love with the new vicar of their church, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Rev. Luke Forte (Robert Sean Leonard), and they, at first against Agnes's wishes (she does eventually go to the wedding), eventually marry, but their marriage is very short lived when he succumbs to cancer.
The story begins with the finishing and opening of a very palatial mansion right across from the Brook-Van Rijhn townhouse on Fifth Avenue and East 61st Street in Manhattan's upper East side near Central Park.
This mansion is owned by the Nouveau Riche Russell family. George (Morgan Spector) is a railroad baron with interests in Real Estate, copper, coal, steel, oil, and the like, which is under the umbrella company called Russell Consolidated Trusts.
His ambitious and somewhat imperious wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon) is extremely determined to get into the society called the Four Hundred. However, there are those of that number who are equally bent on keeping her out.
As if the Russells arrival in the neighborhood, and the attending chaos that accompanied it, wasn't enough to keep Agnes and Ada busy, the arrival of their orphaned niece, Marian (Louisa Jacobson) gave the sisters even more cause for alarm.
Marian, who was a lot like her late father, Union General, Henry Brook, who was estranged from his younger sisters, has her own way of thinking, which didn't mesh well with the old money rules that Agnes dearly held to.
Agnes had married the highly wealthy and extremely troublesome Mr. Arnold Van Rijhn after Henry, the sole son and heir, squandered his family's fortune, sold the farms, sold their childhood home and everything in it, earning him Agnes's wrath. Supposedly, Mr. Van Rijhn wasn't an easy person to be around or be alone with, but Agnes married him to save her and Ada from a life of destitution,
While she was upset with what Henry did, Ada didn't have the same level of anger at Henry as Agnes did. As Ada was the baby, Henry teased her and made her laugh.
Marian had more modern ideas, but she bonds instantly with her aunt Ada, who became her mother figure.
Marian was often more comfortable with confiding with Ada in matters of the heart than she was with Agnes.
Also involved with the Brook-Van Rijhn family was Agnes's niece by marriage, Aurora Fane (Kelli O'Hara).
Aurora, married to City Alderman, Charles Fane (Ward Horton), becomes connected with Bertha as she, reluctantly at first, helps her get into society, much to the displeasure of the Old Money matrons.
Also, to the four hundred's displeasure, Aurora and Bertha would eventually become real friends.
According to Agnes, Aurora was known for her "social promiscuity." and "skating close to the edge." She is also instrumental in introducing her cousin Marian (both were descendants of the wealthy Livingston family) to society.
George and Bertha have two children, older son and heir, Larry (Harry Richardson), a recent Harvard graduate, looking to find his place in the new world. He originally worked at Russell, and later became an architect. Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), was his younger sister, who is longing for being a lady, but chafes at her mother's overly powerful ambition.
Supposedly supposed to have been out already, Bertha treats Gladys as if she were a child, mainly keeping a governess on staff, which annoys George, Larry and Gladys herself. This sets up conflict between mother and daughter.
Only when a housemaid offers her services as lady's maid, does Bertha relent.
Agnes has a son, Oscar (Blake Ritson), a banker at United Manhattan Trust, just as his father had been, who was intent on finding an heiress who will provide him with money and a shield for his hidden yet overt homosexuality. He is friendly with Larry Russell to his mother's aggravation.
He has a hidden sexual relationship with John Adams, IV (Claybourne Elder), a relative of the Adams political dynasty and is also one of Oscar's few stalwart friends.
He finally thought he'd find romance with a Maud Beaton (Nicole Brayton Bloom), thought to be the illegitimate daughter of railroad baron, Jay Gould, but it was not only a hoax, she was also a scammer who scammed Oscar out of his mother's fortune.
Once informed of this, Agnes was quite livid with this revelation and scorned Oscar, even removing him from making financial decisions, until news of a money windfall for his aunt Ada, by dint of her late husband, Luke, snapped her out of it.
Ada then becomes the new matriarch of the Brook/Van Rijhn family, to the dismay of the strong willed Agnes.
Both families have their share of servants, who have their own adventures.
The Brook-VanRijhn staff included Agnes' butler, Alfred Bannister (Simon Jones), the head of the staff, while Miss Armstrong (Debra Monk) is Agnes' catty and troublesome lady's maid. Mrs. Bauer (Kristine Nielson) is the family's kind and helpful combination cook/housekeeper, Bridget (Taylor Richardson) is her assistant, and is also lady's maid to Ada and Marian, and John Trotter (Ben Ahlers), called Jack, a jack-of-all-trades and an amiable footman who aspires to be an inventor, having worked on improving his old broken alarm clock.
The Russells employ Mr. Church (Jack Gilpin) as their butler, Mrs. Bruce (Celia Keenan-Bolger) as their housekeeper, Adelheid Weber (Erin Wilhelmi) as a housemaid and later, Gladys' lady's maid, Monsieur Bourdon (Douglas Sills) as their chef (he was later revealed to be Mister Joshua Borden from Wichita, Kansas! At first dismissed by Bertha, but after saving the dinner at Gladys' ball, George rehired him), Richard Clay (Patrick Page), George's secretary at the office; Clay was very loyal to George, while the same couldn't be said for Mabel Ainsley (Zuzanna Szadowskl), the stenographer who, along with another corrupt employee, George Dixon, tried to frame George for a fatal train accident in Millbourne, Pennsylvania. She was subsequently sacked after he learned about her scheme, through Marian. Mister Watson (Michael Cerveris), George's valet, who is the birth father of new money socialite Flora McNeil, (he leaves service at the end of second season and is retired honorably receiving a pension and becoming wealthy himself) a very extensive army of footmen (one of which, named Peter, along with a temporary sous-chef tried to ruin a formal dinner) and one Enid Turner (Kelley Curran), who was Bertha's first lady's maid (After Turner's dismissal, Adelheid served both Gladys and Bertha as lady's maid, until Bertha gets a replacement in the second season, a Miss André, while Adelheid still serves Gladys). It was clear that while Church got on well with most of the staff, he clearly did not like Turner.
The conniving Turner, a former lady's maid for an old money woman, who wasn't cut out to be a lady's maid to such an overtly and equally ambitious woman, would attempt to seduce both George and Larry which would send Bertha into a fury, leading to Turner's dismissal and cause her to be angry with George for not revealing what has happened.
However, she would officially be sacked after an assignation with Oscar Van Rijhn, who was looking to find romance with Gladys Russell.
She tried to seduce George, who outright spurned her advances, after she brazenly tried to seduce him; she even tried to go after Larry but that too failed.
Enid was eventually fired by Bertha after hearing about her assignation with Oscar Van Rijhn, which she did not know was for him to get information about Gladys, whom he was in love with. To no avail, the romance was scotched.
It was Marian, acting on her aunt Agnes's orders, who had suggested Bertha in sacking Enid. As time went forward, Marian became more comfortable with Bertha and was able to understand her. She also got on with George, as she helped him in various ways.
In the second season, Enid would get married to a wealthy old money widower, Joshua Winterton (Dakin Matthews), and she would become an even MORE pronounced pain, but this time on equal footing as a member of the old money faction, to the dismay of Bertha.
However, the resourceful and devious Bertha would derail her former maid in various ways, starting with convincing Mrs. Astor to take their Academy of Music box from them after revealing Enid's previous work as a lady's maid.
A furious Enid would demand the center box from Bertha, but George, ever a step ahead against his former employee, would undermine her scheme.
It was Turner who schemed with a footman (the aforementioned Peter) and an oily sous-chef, who worked part-time for her husband, to attempt to sabotage Bertha's dinner in Newport, with the visiting Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb).
In the end, her schemes were foiled with the dinner, thanks to Church and Watson who blew the whistle on the sous-chef.
Then she was even more soundly defeated when she was put in a lesser box at the Met and was finished off with the visiting Duke, whom she and her husband met first, sitting in Bertha's new box with Gladys.
Miss Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) was an African American writer who helped Marian get on the train after her purse was stolen by a trio of raffish men who were fighting amongst themselves. They became good friends. Peggy was from an affluent family in Brooklyn, where her father, Arthur (John Douglas Thompson), was a pharmacist. Due to his annulling of her marriage and his adopting out of her son, who later died of scarlet fever along with his adopted mother, Peggy had a very strained relationship with her father. Her relationship with her mother, Dorothy (Audra McDonald) was less acrimonious. However, Dorothy and Arthur were estranged, due to the latter's meddling in Peggy's life, despite their marriage being solid.
She would get a job serving Agnes as her secretary, which she was more than qualified for, but made an unintentional enemy of Miss Armstrong.
After some battles (mainly instigated by Miss Armstrong who clearly despised her due to her color) which saw her leave the Van Rijhn house, she would work for the New York Globe, which would take her all over the country, including to Tuskegee, Alabama, where she, along with her editor, T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones), would meet Booker T. Washington.
However, after a promise from Agnes to clamp down on Armstrong and her racism and cattiness, Peggy returned to the Van Rijhn's employ while still working for the Globe.
Several historical people from that era made frequent appearances, including Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor (Donna Murphy), the certified leader of New York Society and de-facto leader of the Four Hundred, Mr. Ward McAllister (played by Nathan Lane) , the societal arbiter who had coined the phrase, the Four Hundred, who was often seen with Mrs. Astor, but he also became friendly with Bertha Russell; Mrs. Sylvia Chamberlain (Jeanne Tripplehorn) a socialite scorned by society for an infidelity scandal, but is befriended by Marian; Mamie Fish (Ashlie Atkinson), another socialite who was the fun maker of the circle; Carrie Astor (Amy Forsyth), Mrs. Astor's younger daughter who becomes friends with both Larry and Gladys Russell, and various others who were either alternately friendly to or outright hostile to the Russells becoming part of their society.
One of the more powerful members, a woman named Anne Morris (Katie Finneran), had a particular and pronounced dislike for both of the Russells.
She felt that George was responsible for her husband, Alderman Patrick Morris (Michel Gill), committing suicide (after a political maneuver he and the other aldermen pulled against George backfired on him, leaving him penniless).
She also had no liking for Bertha, as she knowingly and maliciously snubbed her many times. Anne was a very vengeance filled person, always bent on keeping others out of her precious society, but, she, mercifully, wasn't seen in season two as she had lost her house, all her money and all her power.
One particular snubbing was so objectionable that a furious George bought out the entire inventory of a charity bazaar that Anne and Aurora set up, to avenge Bertha being snubbed (She had offered the use of her large ballroom for the event, but was once again scorned by the scheming Anne). His antics caused the bazaar to close down and left the old money ladies utterly humiliated.
He also humiliated Mr. Morris after his train station idea was rescinded in the alderman's chamber (it was eventually resubmitted and it was passed). He relented on Aurora's husband, Charles Fane, after she started helping Bertha get into society. (Aurora had always been all for using the Russell's ballroom, but was undermined and vetoed by the spiteful Anne.)
The final straw was Bertha becoming a member of the Red Cross board, put up by Clara Barton (Linda Emond), herself. Upon that happening, Anne stormed out of the meeting, berating everyone for their admiration of a new money socialite and new rules and traditions.
Other battles involved a battle between the Academy of Music and the new Metropolitan Opera which pitted old against new money yet again.
Eventually, the new Met Opera House would win the day with the new and the old getting together, effectively putting an end to the Academy of Music. At the academy, only Mrs. Astor, Mr. McAllister, and Agnes were in their boxes along with a sparsely populated orchestra floor, while everyone else were at the new Met and enjoying Faust.
Another incident had the Duke of Buckingham being invited by the Russells to their recently built Newport house, which sent the snobbish Enid Winterton into a hilarious temper tantrum. She screamed that she would humiliate Mrs. George Russell, "if it was the last thing I do!"
This led to her attempt to sabotage Bertha's dinner, which, fortunately, failed miserably. The chef was wrathfully dealt with by Mr. Borden, while Peter, the footman, who was in cahoots with Enid, was possibly and wrathfully dismissed by Church.
The Duke would eventually attend the Met after Bertha promised Gladys' hand in marriage for him to be wealthy again.
This would later be found out by George who would be furious with Bertha. He wanted Gladys to marry for love and not just as an excuse to escape Bertha.
Either or, scheming or no, Bertha proved herself and came out on top. She even begrudgingly earned the old money's respect by her social triumphs.
Gaining new friends in Mrs. Fish, who came to the met, where all the fun was. This also solidified a firm friendship with Charles and Aurora Fane.
This would possibly set up tensions between Aurora and her aunt Agnes. As Agnes would NEVER allow Mrs. Russell in her home, EVER!
But, how will neighborly relations on 61st Street last with a possible new relationship on the horizon?
After becoming good friends through the first two seasons, Larry and Marian share a kiss on her aunt's doorstep after the wildly successful opera evening (plus a subsequent feast which lasted well into the morning) and they finally realize their hidden feelings for one another.
Both had their share of bad relationships, for Marian, losing two men, her father's lawyer Tom Raikes (Thomas Cocquerel) who dumped her for one Cissie Bingham, the niece of Henry Flagler, whom he eventually married, and distant cousin, Dashiell Montgomery (David Furr), who had never gotten over his late wife, Harriet, and only saw Marian as a replacement for her. She still maintained friendship and contact with his daughter, Frances (Matilda Lawler).
Meanwhile, Larry had a disastrous May-December romance with a widowed socialite, Susan Blane (Laura Benanti), which had been scotched by the snide and very overbearing Bertha.
With all that had happened, maybe a new romance between the two well matched neighbors will bridge the gap.
CAST
CARRIE COON -- Bertha Russell
MORGAN SPECTER -- George Russell
LOUISA JACOBSON -- Marian Brook
DENEÉ BENTON -- Peggy Scott
TAISSA FARMIGA -- Gladys Russell
HARRY RICHARDSON -- Larry Russell
BLAKE RITSON -- Oscar Van Rijhn
CLAYBOURNE ELDER -- John Adams, IV
THOMAS COCQUEREL -- Tom Raikes
SIMON JONES -- Alfred Bannister
JACK GILPIN -- Mr. Church
BEN AHLERS -- John "Jack" Trotter
KELLEY CURRAN -- Enid Turner Winterton
KATIE FINNERAN -- Anne Morris
ERIN WILHELMI -- Adelheid Weber
CELIA KEENAN-BOLGER -- Mrs. Bruce
TAYLOR RICHARDSON -- Bridget
DOUGLAS SILLS -- Monsieur Bourdon
MICHAEL CERVERIS -- Mr. Watson
NATHAN LANE -- Ward McAllister
JEANNE TRIPPLEHORNE -- Mrs. Chamberlain
KELLIE O' HARA -- Aurora Fane
WARD HORTON -- Mr. Charles Fane
DONNA MURPHY -- Caroline Astor
DEBRA MONK -- Miss Armstrong
PATRICK PAGE -- Richard Clay
SULLIVAN JONES -- T. Thomas Fortune
ROBERT SEAN LEONARD -- Rev. Luke Forte
KRISTINE NIELSEN -- Mrs Bauer
JOHN DOUGLAS THOMPSON -- Arthur Scott
AUDRA MACDONALD -- Dorothy Scott
CHRISTINE BARANSKI -- Agnes Brook Van Rijhn
CYNTHIA NIXON -- Ada Brook Forte