[This story contains spoilers form The Gilded Age season three premiere, “Who Is In Charge Here?”]
A year and a half since his final of season two, HBO’s successful drama The golden age Returned Sunday without missing a beat. By picking up where he had stopped, episode one asked appropriately: “Who is in charge here?” So far, the answer had been easy for the spectacular fraternal duo Agnes Van Rhijn and the former Brook Ada, beautifully portrayed by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon. For a large part of the series, Agnes, as older and richer sister, called the gunshots. This dynamic changed at the end of last season.
In a ploy to hide his homosexuality, Oscar (Blake Ritson), the only child of Agnes, wasted the richness of his mother pursuing a marriage to Maud Beaton. Like the family, which also includes the niece of Agnès and Ada, Marian Brook, was packing their precious mansion 61st street for sale, Ada discovered that her husband her husband Luke Forte (Robert Sean Leonard), whom she buried too briefly after being married, was not the man of moderate means. As a widow and unique heir, she became the richest sister. But, as the cliché does, old habits are difficult to break for Agnes – and this new reality is at the center of episode one. Before the first of season three, Golden age Creator Julian Fellowes explained why with a guest press group.
“I am always rather fascinated by people who claim that loss of money, loss of position, does not affect them at all, that everything can simply continue as before. So, of course, he can’t. And even today we know that. But here we have Agnes whose belief in the essentially European concept cannot be birth.
“Gradually during [this third] Season, we see Ada bringing together the confidence that belongs to him, it is his right. And I just wanted to explore this change, really, “he continued.” The English are very given to believe that the loss of money affected nothing. Of course, these are Bollocks now, and it was at the time. Nevertheless, they are more mistaken, I think, than the Americans. »»
He added that “Americans are a more realistic nation about how it is now. And that’s really what we see with these two sisters and the others, Marian and so on, they understand the change that took place, but they don’t think it’s their business to make the change obvious.[s] Between the sisters to accept what is different. »»
It takes a while, he shared, because “ADA is a person consistent and wants things to be easy and want things to happen” and “for a while, because of her nature and her generosity really, she is content for Agnes to claim that little has changed, but of course.”
Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon, right) with Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) during the first of season three.
Karolina Wojasik / HBO
Marriage, as it is customary for this genre, again plays a big role in the series. Last season, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) who, as a woman, is forced to channel her ambition to raise her social status and his family, succeeded in a major coup in her opera conflict with Ms. Astor (Donna Murphy). Not only did she excavate the house in the new metropolitan opera, but Bertha also obtained the presence of Hector, the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), who had promised to attend the opening evening of the Competitor Music Academy organized by Ms. Astor. Curiosity around the way in which episode one has not stopped. While Bertha’s daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), is getting closer to marriage, clearly preferring Billy Carlton (Matt Walker), Bertha talks more about the duke and, at the end of the episode, even announces his return to New York.
Bertha’s rebuffs on any conversation of his swollen gladys in Billy trigger a more important debate on the question of whether women of that time should marry for love or position. Gladys is convinced of the contrary and awaits the return of his father, George, an aspiring titan of the industry far from the family trying to manage and develop his empire, to give his blessing to his choice and not to that of his mother.
The prefiguration of one of the main conflicts of season three, Coon, who masterfully embodies Bertha, explained why the Matriarch and the Patriarch of Russell will disagree on whom Gladys marries. “The scope of the woman is very different. He does not understand our instinct for survival, which is, in this case, by marriage, and that Bertha really believes that she does is an existential question. She wants her daughter to be safe,” she said. “She also wants her to be fulfilled and has a sense of goal, because I think Bertha knows what it feels to have this thwarted capacity, she wants her daughter, she is hungry for her daughter, to have a kind of power that she did not have.”
So, the next episode, Bertha will go from the leash by referring to Gladys marrying the duke to make sure she does it.
By authorizing Larry, Bertha’s son who was entangled with an older widowed woman, to prosecute Marian (Louisa Jacobson) romantically, Fellowes and Warfield have set up a counter of Bertha’s vision on marriage. This is a perspective that Harry Richardson, who plays Larry, cherishes. “I think what is really special in their relationship is that they have the opportunity to grow as an older, what, I think that socially, at that time, they did not have the space to be able to get out in town or to know each other before starting to see themselves in a romantic light and I think their dynamics have written very well that they are really starting with Richard.
The dissolution of the niece of Agnes by marriage Aurora Fane (Kelli O’Hara) Union, caused by a divorce request from her husband Charles (Ward Horton) who wishes to marry her mistress, illustrate what is at stake for women of this socio-economic level. As a divorced woman, she will become a social pariah. Men do not undergo the same fate. And, as a continuous scenario of Van Rhijn / Brook Forte House Footman Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers) and his patented awakening that his new commercial partner Larry hopes to sell, illustrates, men have additional outlets for economic elevation.
The very popular character of Dené Benton, Peggy Scott, has not seen much action in episode one. But Peggy’s disease at the end will prove an even more robust gateway to an even more robust world while the actors Phylicia Rashad, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Jordan Donica help to extend his world beyond Audra McDonald and John Douglas Thompson, who play his parents Arthur and Dorothy Scott, and Sullivan Jones, who play a newspaper History T. Interest in love.
During the discussion, the co-collaborator of Fellowes, Sonja Warfield, also noted that the question (and the title) (and the title) of the ONE episode of “Who is in charge here?” Don’t stop here. All the season, she shared, “who is in charge: who is in charge in society, who is in charge of weddings, who has power”.
New episodes of the third season of the age of Gilded were created on June 22 and continue each week until August 10, streaming on HBO Max.
