The Gilded Age EP Reveals a Secret to the Show’s Success Ahead of Season 4 (Exclusive)
Sonja Warfield believes timing is everything as she reflects on the show’s popularity with PEOPLE
The Gilded Age‘s success is partly due to the “community” it brings together, according to the show’s executive producer.
Speaking with PEOPLE at The Gilded Age’s Television Academy for Your Consideration Event on Nov. 18, Sonja Warfield — who has served as an executive producer and writer on the HBO series since its 2022 debut — says one of the “biggest contributions” to the series’ success is its schedule.
“It’s on HBO and it’s on one night a week,” Warfield says. “And so I think in our world, our world is very isolated and we’re in our silos and people are watching this show on this platform and people are watching another show on another platform, and they can watch that entire series, right? But our show comes out every week.”
She adds, “I think it forms a bit of a community and we haven’t had that in a long time. We don’t really necessarily have that water cooler talk because people are watching all different things at different times.”
HBO announced back in July that the series, starring Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski and Louisa Jacobson, had been renewed for a fourth season.
Season 3 came to an end in August after eight episodes, with series star Morgan Spector, who plays George, telling PEOPLE that he hasn’t “seen scripts or heard anything” about what’s to come just yet.
Still, he thinks there’s hope for his character’s “profoundly erotic relationship” with Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon). “I’m hopeful that we sort of see them work their way back together, but I don’t know, it’s not my call,” he said.
Coon, 44, similarly teased future developments to PEOPLE. “Bertha says she knows what she wants and what she wants is George back, and so I have to bet on Bertha that she’s gonna get George back,” she says.
She added of the characters’ popularity among fans, “I think respect is really sexy in a time where there isn’t much.”
Creator Julian Fellowes revealed to TV Insider in July that he doesn’t have a “final stopping place” in mind for the series, which is set in the late 1800s. As he explained, each season must “have a satisfactory conclusion given what’s taken place within the series, but an open end where we may be going to.”
Fellowes added, “That is the sort of double discipline that we write to, really.”
The first three seasons of The Gilded Age are available to stream on HBO Max.
