The most challenging aspect of starring in a period drama like The Gilded Age isn’t memorizing the dialogue or mastering the etiquette — it’s using the bathroom while wearing ball gowns.
At HBO‘s recent Season 4 press conference, cast members Carrie Coon (Bertha Russell) and Louisa Jacobson (Marian Brook) shared some gown-forward advice they’ve learned along the way. Costume-drama performers, take note!
“Going to the bathroom backwards is a hack I like to suggest for any woman wearing a voluminous gown with things sticking out the back of it,” Coon explained, “because you don’t want to have a dip [into the water].”
Jacobson nodded, revealing, “I wear boxer briefs underneath [my gown]. There are a lot of layers going on. You have got to keep it breezy.”
Coon and Jacobson were joined by Ben Ahlers (Jack Trotter), Denée Benton (Peggy Scott), Kelley Curran (Enid Winterton), Taissa Farmiga (Gladys Vere), Audra McDonald (Dorothy Scott), Cynthia Nixon (Ada Forte), Harry Richardson (Larry Russell), Blake Ritson (Oscar van Rhijn), and Morgan Spector (George Russell) for a lively discussion of what fans can expect in Season 4, which premiered Sunday night with an episode titled “Ring the Bells.”
The third season ended with George and Bertha’s relationship in crisis, particularly after George’s assassination attempt and Bertha forcing Gladys to get married. Season 4 picks up with the fan-fave characters still at odds. “George needs to get his act together,” Coon quipped, as the rest of the cast chuckled.
“George is living a very unexamined life right now. He’s really going through it. He hasn’t quite metabolized what has happened to him, and therefore he cannot communicate it to Bertha. People say that time heals all wounds, and that just proves to be not true this year. It’s going to take a lot more work than just time. But Gladys is doing great, and Bertha feels vindicated about that,” Coon said.
“I don’t want to seem too diplomatic here, but I do think George and Bertha are kind of both right,” Spector responded. “The thing Bertha fails to see is the influence of her own ambition and desire and lust for power. Yes, she’s broadly vindicated by the fact that Gladys and the Duke’s relationship seems to have flowered in a nice way. It’s a total life reset for George.”
The lead actor continued, “Without Bertha, George is lost. That’s what we see play out over the whole season. Without that central relationship structuring his life and providing real meaning to everything he does, then he really is adrift. Filling that void is kind of what the rest of the season is about.”
Are the kids all right? Farmiga said, “This season, [Gladys and Larry] are adapting their parents’ principles more so than ever. For the first time, Gladys is becoming a woman who’s commanding authority and respect — including from her mother. It’s beautiful that they’re starting to see eye to eye, and a mutual respect is growing.” In her eyes, Gladys has evolved from a “shielded, naive adolescent” to “someone who understands her mother and the choices she is making.”
Richardson joked about his character’s lineage, “Why wouldn’t you want to be a bit like Railroad Daddy?” In the fourth season, Larry will be “witnessing the problems that are coming for his father and for both his parents. He’s facing the responsibility that comes with the shoulders he stands on, and it’s really interesting to see what problems that brings up for him.”
The subject of parents and children continued with McDonald and Benton, with McDonald saying, “Everything that Dorothy has is being poured into Peggy at every single moment. Dorothy will have to start to realize that perhaps she can’t just be fighting Peggy’s battles anymore, that she’s got to figure out who she is.”
Benton said about her character’s forward progression, “Peggy is a trailblazer in the sense that she doesn’t have a lot of people to model her dreams off of. I do think that, this season, seeing her attempt to balance love and work becomes a modern struggle that I think the audience will relate to. To see her be so ravenous for what she wants is kind of radical in its own way.”
Jacobson believed that Peggy is “Marian’s immediate example of a woman who is choosing to take her life into her own hands, and to do something other than just be a wife and mother.” She said, “Marian wants to have a purpose in her life and be of service. Marian’s struggle is a period struggle, and particularly of its time. You have to watch it without a 2026 lens, and you have to remember that these people were living in 1886.”
Ritson felt a direct connection to Jacobson’s comment, since his character came out as gay in Season 3. “There are still many, many cultures and contexts where coming out is not an easy thing,” he stated. “It is painful. It’s illegal in some countries, obviously, to this day. It was interesting they seeded the meeting with Oscar Wilde earlier because, obviously, in 1895, he was imprisoned for being gay. So, there was a very real threat.”
Nixon got a big laugh from her castmates when she claimed she “thought about bringing a hand puppet” to sub in for the absent Christine Baranski, who plays Ada’s older sister, Agnes van Rhijn.
“These two are sisters and have lived together for so many decades, they’re like a married couple,” Nixon proclaimed. “One of the delightful and hilarious things that we get to see this season is unhinged Agnes. Agnes no longer has her power base, her money base. And so, what are essentially small things grow in importance — to the point of mania.”
Ahlers and Curran have the distinction of playing the characters with the biggest societal shifts, as they started out as common workers who now have power of their own.
“Jack was never seeking the sort of inherited social desires of power and fame and money,” Ahlers noted about his character’s newfound fortune. “Jack says, ‘I saw a problem in front of me, and I tried to solve it.’ He’s having to decide for himself how much he wants to play in that space, especially with how much he’s already sacrificed to be here.”
Curran, whose Mrs. Winterton is now married to Oscar, said, “She has the full support of the van Rhijn family name and this partner who’s really her best friend. It’s an incredible trajectory. Not only can she feel that security and support for the first time in her life, but now she can do something with it. She has a vision and she has taste and she plans.”
The Gilded Age Season 4 airs Sunday nights on HBO and streams on HBO Max.
