The Gilded Age Season 4 Episode 1 “Ring the Bells” opened this weekend on HBO with a very special wedding. Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) marries wealthy widow Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran) in front of the who’s who of New York society.
However, Oscar and Enid’s union isn’t your typical high society match: it’s a lavender marriage. Lavender marriages were when one or both spouses in a couple were secretly gay. They married each other to maintain appearances in a heteronormative society, with an understanding that in public they would be man and wife, but they could be (with) whoever they wanted to be behind closed doors.
In Oscar and Enid’s case, their mutual understanding — he’s in the closet and she’s straight, but intent on shedding her past as a ladies’ maid to reach the top echelons of society — offers them a rare opportunity in The Gilded Age. They get to have fun.
“So many people keep saying it’s like this seems to be the happiest marriage in the show right now!” Blake Ritson said with a laugh to DECIDER.
“Yeah, yeah, it really is,” Kelley Curran said. “It’s just such a delight. It’s like these two characters that put so much energy into performing for everybody in public and finally like they get to be together, they get their own big beautiful home, and in the privacy of their home, they’re just like unleashed and all of a sudden their life is full of possibility.
“It’s a new quality for the show,” Ritson said. “You don’t feel this kind of honest dynamic between characters. They’re so open and quite often there is no one else [around], so they’re just kind of lounging, gossiping.”
“They’re kindred spirits. They really enjoy one another’s company. It’s like they married each other’s best friend,” he added.
Before the end of the Gilded Age Season 4 premiere, the newlyweds are already shaking things up. After their prim and proper reception at the van Rhijn house, they invite cousin Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) to join them downtown to celebrate at Webster Hall. Marian — the woman who broke her engagement to Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) last season when she learned he visited a similar dancehall, the Haymarket — finds herself happily sipping cocktails and reuniting with Larry on the dancefloor (and later in a hotel room). Oscar and Enid, meanwhile, are making improvements on the mazurka.
“I love the moment in the dance party in Episode 1,” Ritson said. “We’ve seen the balls, we’ve see the codified steps. There’s maximum decorum, the kind of decorous distance, and suddenly everyone was just like…”
“Party time!” Curran said.
“Loopy smooth!” Ritson said.
“Big time,” Curran said.
“Every take, you know, John Crawford, the choreographer, taught us some steps, [but] he was like, ‘Over to you. Just do what you do.’” Ritson said. “We’re just playing, and I think it’s a wonderful new energy for the show to see.”
Ritson added that the Webster Hall sequence is where you can finally see “almost a through line from that kind of party to modern day.”
“Where you go, ‘Oh, I see. I, see where there’s a glimpse of energy to it. I see where this is all heading.’”
So where are Mr. and Mrs. Oscar van Rhijn going next? Well, their current plans don’t include children, but elegant salons that will become the toast of the town.
“What they’re offering in terms of this new vision of high society, which is much more playful and ludic and spontaneous, is incredibly compelling,” Ritson said.
“They’re unafraid to subvert the culture,” Curran said.
“They’re naturally subversive. They take a glee in subversion. They’re disruptors. It’s quite purposeful disruption here, which is strategic,” Ritson said.
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The Gilded Age returns this Sunday, November 8 at 9 PM ET on HBO and HBO Max.
