‘The Gilded Age’ Is No Longer a Show Where “Nothing Ever Happens,” Says Morgan Spector: “The Stakes Are Life or Death”

“It’s hard to look at this season and say this is a show where nothing ever happens,” Morgan Spector points out when The Gilded Age actor joins me over Zoom from his home in upstate New York for a look back at the HBO drama’s latest installment. Indeed, while the initial years of the series could have been described as having somewhat lower stakes — who other than Julian Fellowes could make something as innocuous as the wrong spoon set out for dinner so gripping? — The Gilded Age decidedly moved into much darker territory with its return for Season 3 earlier this year. While there were still some trivial sideplots that had viewers captivated (and led to plenty of new memes), no one could have expected that the season’s penultimate episode would culminate with none other than Railroad Daddy himself, Spector’s George Russell, being shot in his own office, leaving his life hanging in the balance heading into the finale.

While George is ultimately saved by way of a risky operation on the Russells’ own dining room table, a place where his wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon), has hosted many an opulent meal, the couple’s future together is left unknown in the season’s very last scene. George, who still harbors regrets over insisting that their daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), marry a man she doesn’t love, finds it even more difficult to forgive Bertha for her role in orchestrating the match. It’s clear, in speaking with Spector now, even weeks removed from the Season 3 finale, that he has just as much love for the husband-and-wife pairing that has rapidly become a fan-favorite relationship on The Gilded Age — even if he has to remain tight-lipped about what the future holds.

COLLIDER: Season 3 is where The Gilded Age has started to push into decidedly darker territory. Now that the characters and the setting and this world have all been so established, it’s allowing the show to really break new narrative ground. I’m wondering if you felt the same when you were reading the scripts for Season 3 and saw where George and the Russell family’s story was going.

MORGAN SPECTOR: It’s hard to look at this season and say this is a show where nothing ever happens. It doesn’t feel like that. This is a season where there’s constant plot development, and there are real stakes, and the stakes are life or death. When I saw that I was going to get shot — and not just that I was going to get shot, but that there was going to be a surgery performed… Somebody dies by suicide in the first season, but it’s all kind of off-camera, right? It’s very discreet. There’s the fact of a suicide, but there’s not the gory reality of that. In this season, yes, I get shot, but then we’re dealing with the race home to get a doctor and this bloody surgery on a table. That, to me, also felt like the show kind of leaping into new territory.

And that’s not the only thing. I think bringing in Phylicia Rashad to do a whole exploration of colorism inside the Black elite in Newport is also tricky, sophisticated, uncomfortable stuff. As you said, the show has established its characters, it’s established its world, and now it can really grow thornier branches, and it’s exciting. It’s harder to predict where we’re going to go over any subsequent seasons than it used to be.

‘The Gilded Age’s Brutal Bertha/George Breakup Almost Doubled as the Series Finale

“It was out of filming order and all of those things, but it was [also] a way to potentially say goodbye to those characters in that scene if we had to.”

Image via HBO

Even less predictable is what the future holds for George and Bertha in particular. In another version of this show, George being shot would be an event that might bring him and his wife closer together. You’d see them forge new ground. But instead, the shooting really feels like it prompts George to take another look at his life, and he doesn’t like what he sees. That leads to the scene that you and Carrie have in the finale, before Gladys comes in, and Bertha has to basically juxtapose one of the hardest conversations that she’s ever had with her daughter’s most joyous announcement. What do you remember about gearing up to film that scene and thinking about what George’s headspace is for that conversation?

SPECTOR: For Bertha, the process you described has happened. She’s almost lost her husband, and it’s forced her to really reckon with what she would be losing if she did, and she doesn’t want him to go. She’s really realized what she wants; she needs to reinvest and figure out her relationship with him, and she thinks that’s happening. She thinks that process is underway. For George, it isn’t at all. What’s different between the two of them is that for Bertha, they’ve had a patch of bad communication, but ultimately, things have worked out. For George, he’s really failed his daughter. He thinks he’s a man of his word. He’s told his daughter he’s going to make sure she can marry for love, and he doesn’t do that. I can’t imagine that George has had too many failures in his history. He’s been a guy who’s moved from strength to strength and from victory to victory. I’m sure there were failures early on, but not as intimate and not as painful. That’s the thing he’s really reckoning with.

The thing about that scene that was tough was that it needed to work both as a potential ending for the series and also as an ending for the season, but it also needed to leave the door open if we did get another season. That was the balance, was to try to say, “This is an okay place for this couple to leave each other if we never see them again, but also maybe it’s a jumping-off point for another season if we get one.” Even on the day of shooting, right up to the moment where we were working on that scene, we were trying to figure out the tone of that because we wanted to make sure that we left them in a place that was respectful to the relationship that they had had. Because they have always been a relationship where ambition is respected and supported and facilitated by both partners.

A lot of that had fallen away over the course of the third season, that George wasn’t really supporting Bertha’s ambition, and that he had suddenly become troubled by the way she was willing to sacrifice her family’s stability in order to achieve her various social goals, and so we wanted to circle back to some of those themes, and just touch, again, this mutual respect that they had for each other — even just to refer to it, even though it’s not really there in that scene. Like, “Yes, we did have an understanding, but you violated that.” It was out of filming order and all of those things, but it was [also] a way to potentially say goodbye to those characters in that scene if we had to.

We talked in Season 2 about the fan response to your character, to this marriage on screen, and the fervor with which people have really latched on to that relationship. Are you and Carrie still surprised by how much people are still rooting for these characters, and that you two have become a fan favorite in that regard?

SPECTOR: Initially, I was surprised. I wasn’t surprised that the relationship connected, because the relationship was written in such a way that it’s very appealing. She is this big, brash, ambitious character, and her husband supports everything she does and loves her. In Season 1, Episode 3, he goes and buys out the charity ball so that she can have a victory. Here’s a man who’s willing to rewrite the rules of society and behave completely irrationally so that his wife doesn’t suffer humiliation. Obviously, that’s very romantic, but you never know that anything’s going to connect, especially a relationship inside a show this big with as many different aspects of the world to embrace. So, it’s been really satisfying that that happened.

I really have deep affection for this relationship. I care about it. I have always respected that Julian [Fellowes] and Sonja [Warfield] have chosen to write about, for the most part, up until this season, a relationship that works, trusting that even a relationship that works can be exciting and interesting and have a dynamic that makes it dramatically compelling. I think the audience connected to that because it is kind of a rarity. Often, we see marriages portrayed where one party is being quietly stifled. There’s stewing. I mean, that’s true. That’s realistic. People experience those kind of relationships, for sure. But there are also happy marriages, and they’re not all happy because the people have accepted some kind of banal, ordinary life. You can have ambition. You can have those things. I think that’s exciting for people to see.

It’s not like George and Bertha are this picture-perfect fantasy, either. We do see them having disagreements and reaching impasses in private moments when they’re together. Carrie is literally dressed down, with none of Bertha’s big outfits. It feels very vulnerable and intimate in a way that speaks to the realness of this marriage.

SPECTOR: That’s really true. I love those scenes because it feels like it’s the backstage, right? It feels like it’s behind the scenes of the Russells, and the audience gets access to that. And probably, on a structural level, that’s part of what lets the audience have affection for them, because there is this sense of what they present to the world and the way that they’re both engaging in these machinations in their respective spheres, but then we also get to see them just like a couple who loves each other, trying to figure out what’s going on with their kids and this event coming up this week.

Also, they are set up as outsiders. No matter how much wealth and power they have in an absolute sense, relative to the society that they’ve been trying to enter, they are sort of despised people who don’t belong, and I think that’s part of the masterstroke. How those characters are drawn is that they’re both powerful and not accepted.

Morgan Spector Thinks ‘The Gilded Age’s Outspoken Cast Actually Helps the Show’s Popularity

“We want you to enjoy the show, but also we’re not unaware of its implications.”

Image via HBO

The show is sitting in an interesting intersection with the time that we’re currently in, because as much as the show is escapism, and a world that people can lose themselves in, there’s also the other, harsher reality of that. I know that Carrie and you and many of the other cast members have no issue with being outspoken about the billionaire problem in our society, and thinking about some of those uncomfortable real-world parallels. Is it nice when they make these characters a little less sympathetic, because you almost don’t want viewers to prop them up too much?

SPECTOR: You don’t want to be making pro-billionaire propaganda, but I also think it is a pleasure to be in these luxurious worlds, and to be in these visually sumptuous spaces, and to engage with characters who have a lot of agency, who have a lot of power. It’s dramatically exciting. Whether it’s a mob boss or a powerful meth dealer or any number of things, we like to see people who have the capacity to do things on television. So, there’s something about that. Because I think in reality, in many of our lives, we don’t feel that we are free to act. We feel acted upon by a society that is very unequal in myriad ways. So, a fantasy that you can enter into, where you can imagine yourself as one of these characters who has tremendous freedom to act, I think that is really exciting.

Maybe this is totally wrong, but I have sort of been playing with this pet theory that the fact that there are so many outspoken leftists and progressives on our show makes it more enjoyable for the audience. It gives people permission. Obviously, some people are like, “I’m never watching that show again! I saw what Cynthia Nixon said about this.” I’ve seen that, and that’s whatever. But I also think that there are a lot of other people who see the problem of oligarchy in our society as a real political issue that needs to be addressed, to see wealth inequality in our society addressed.

And the fact that there’s this fourth wall-breaking space in social media, etc., that allows the people who are the actors in this show to say, “Hey, we’re doing both things. We want you to enjoy the show, but also we’re not unaware of its implications.” I think it enriches the overall experience. Maybe that’s not true for everyone, but I do think that that kind of meta-theatrical quality that’s now unavoidable with social media… Part of what continues to tell the story of any project now is what’s happening in public with that actor. It’s impossible, I think. And this is good and bad.

In some ways, this is terrible. In some ways, you want to just be able to disappear into a fictional world and not think about who someone is in reality — and often, that happens, right? Often, something is able to just draw you in, and you forget about the real world. But sometimes, also just as often, you watch something, and you’re thinking of who this person is, what their story in public is, and you’re bringing that to bear on the fiction that you’re participating in. There’s this synergistic effect in terms of meaning, and I do think it’s actually helpful for our show that we have all these outspoken progressives talking about some of these issues of class and inequality publicly, while also helping to create this big, sumptuous, very unequal world.

We’ve touched on it just now in speaking about your castmates, many of whom have a theater background; Carrie has often said that it feels like going to theater camp every time you come back for a new season. I know she’s in the process of doing a new play, and you got your start in the theater, so have you found yourself thinking about going back recently?

SPECTOR: I miss it a lot. Some things have come up, and the truth is that I don’t live in the city anymore. I live a few hours away, and it weirdly makes it very difficult to do theater. Because if I’m in the city six days a week — I have a child in school up here in upstate New York — it means that my family, my whole support system, has to kind of reorient itself around me doing a play, and that’s a lot to ask of everyone in my life. My wife is very busy. She has her own career and her own things that she’s doing. So, it’s just a matter of logistics, really, that has kept me from doing it. But I’m hoping to do it again soon. I’m sort of thinking about something right now, actually, but we’ll see if I can make it happen.