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[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 4.]
The dreaded day arrived. Gladys Russell’s (Taissa Farmiga) wedding to Hector, Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), was the main event of The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 4, and it was far from a happy day. Gladys spent the week leading up to the nuptials arranged by ambitious mother Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) in her room in protest of her being forced into the union. Father George Russell (Morgan Spector) was against the match from the start because Gladys wanted to marry for love, but he ended up reluctantly siding with Bertha on the day of the ceremony because jilting her betrothed at the altar (or even just the day of the wedding) would kill Gladys’ reputation forever.
His support for the union was for Gladys’ own good, and Gladys eventually agreed it was the only way. Gladys was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the 18-year-old, George, and brother Larry (Harry Richardson) all resent Bertha for orchestrating this situation. The family will continue to feud moving forward now that Gladys has left for England to begin her life as a duchess (Farmiga isn’t leaving the series — Gladys’ life in England will be depicted in the season’s second half). And as seen through Larry and Marian’s (Louisa Jacobson) engagement in the episode, George and Larry are starting to push back against Bertha’s control.
Bertha, meanwhile, can’t understand why her family sees this as such a bad thing. In her mind, Gladys is being given the most powerful life a woman can have. And in fairness, George and Larry’s privilege as men of means, combined with Gladys’ youth making her naïve to the limitations on women in this era, make all three of them blind to the inherent truth in Bertha’s argument. Bertha’s fatal flaw was her lack of consideration for her daughter’s feelings through all of this. While she has prepared her daughter for this moment over the years through education, she failed to nurture her through it, making the whole ordeal quick and painful.
Here, the Russell family actors from The Gilded Age — Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Taissa Farmiga, and Harry Richardson — tease what happens next now that they’ve passed the point of no return.
Gladys Russell’s Feelings About the Duke of Buckingham May Change
Karolina Wojtasik / HBO
Gladys’ life is changing forever. The next episodes will show her adjusting to life as the Duchess of Buckingham, and Hector’s sister, Sarah (Hattie Morahan), is going to make that very difficult. Taissa Farmiga tells us where Gladys is at emotionally after Episode 4, revealing that there are actually happy times ahead for the ingenue.
“By the middle of the season, Gladys has pretty much hit rock bottom. She’s a bit numb, she’s a bit depleted, and I think she doesn’t really know what happiness she’s searching for anymore. She feels like she doesn’t really have much of a say in her life,” Farmiga says. “That’s been the case for the past several seasons, but the second half of the season, everything burns down and then there’s the tiniest little like sproutlings that grow, and that’s Gladys’s happiness that’s just starting to pop out. Luckily, she’s fortunate to come back from the terrible blow at the middle of the season.”
That’s thanks to her father’s smart negotiating of her dowry. “I give thanks to George Russell for that in terms of he made the Duke’s extra payment be through Gladys’s allowance and because of that, that makes the Duke have to work at a partnership with Gladys,” Farmiga teases. “George was really trying to make the most of the situation and try to plant the seed to resemble his own relationship with Bertha, how it’s a partnership and they rely on each other. Even though George kind of effed up in the middle of the season by not keeping his word and forcing her into their arranged marriage as well, he’s trying to fix that mistake that he feels he’s making.”
Larry Russell and Marian Brook’s Engagement Will Face Challenges
Karolina Wojtasik / HBO
Larry proposed to Marian in this episode, and she said yes! But he also had to leave for Arizona the very next day on a business trip for his father, and Larry had a birthday dinner to attend that night with friends, so their celebrations were cut short. Larry’s night out will be a point of contention later on, but for now, Richardson tells us how Marian is the ideal life partner for Larry. He wants what his parents have — a love match and true partnership — and Marian making that feel possible helps inform his love for her.
“I don’t know if he’s conscious that he’s going after someone who might be like his his mother, but he does really love their dynamic of being equals and being a really powerful union together,” Richardson tells TV Insider. “He’s really aspiring to that. He’s not going after someone particularly submissive or at a different power dynamic to him. He really wants someone to meet him head on and to be in like a harmonious and mature and respectful communication.”
On how Larry and Marian are uniquely suited for each other, Richardson says, “Larry needs someone who is quite sure of themselves and an equal partner to face up against,” noting that the couple will face serious challenges to their relationship moving forward. But it’s “the complexities and the things that are making them suffer and struggle” that are “exactly what he needs, because he needs this equal partner.”
“He’s very attracted to the fact that she speaks up for herself and she does her own thing,” Richardson continues. “That’s the thing that he’s trying to do in his life, so he’s very drawn to her. He’s not drawn to someone who might be playing the game as much or going through the societal should-ness. They’re very drawn to each other because they’re both rebellious, and that also brings up their complexity.”
George and Bertha Russell’s Marriage Is in Jeopardy
Barbara Nitke / HBO
George and Gladys have a moving scene in Gladys’ room before the wedding where they get candid about their situation. George feels profound guilt for making his daughter go through with this, but he also tells her that if she decides to cancel the wedding after all, he’ll support her through it. Spector says that scene is the “last chance to really say, ‘I’ve blown this, but I love you and I’m here for you.’”
“On the one hand that’s very sincere and that’s all I’m really playing in that scene,” Spector adds, “but I also think George really has blown it, and he has participated in forcing Gladys into this choice that is impossible. She has to go through with it at that point otherwise she’ll be humiliated, and her mother will be humiliated. She’s not willing to do that, and George knows that. It’s a little bit disingenuous, although emotionally, it’s not at all, but I do think it is a little bit unfair in how that scene plays.”
George and Bertha have had their disagreements before, but never one that they couldn’t work through. This rift over Gladys’ future is the first time that’s changing, and it’s destabilizing this once impenetrable bond. This trouble at home, compounded with the stress of Russell Industries being in real financial trouble due to this flailing transcontinental railroad plan, has George on edge like we’ve never seen him before.
“This rift around Gladys has really made [George] feel like they aren’t on the same page,” Spector tells us. “That’s something in a relationship that you really come to rely on, that you just see the world the same way. You may have differences, but there’s a sense that you’re going to be speaking the same language. Because of this rift with Gladys, he has a sense that maybe they’re not speaking the same language. And so as his life begins to unravel and he’s feeling actually quite vulnerable, he just doesn’t feel like they can talk about it.”
George fires his righthand man, Clay (Patrick Page), in this episode for his rejection of George’s railroad plan. Clay warns that he’s burning through money he doesn’t have. George sends Larry to Arizona to find a solution, but the robber baron going scorched earth on his closest relationships is going to continue to make him suffer.
“Clay, for instance, who he sort of banishes from his life, it’s Clay’s lack of confidence in Georgia’s judgment which is really the final straw,” Spector adds. “That’s precisely what’s at issue between George and Bertha. It’s interesting the way that one conflict and one relationship can create a sensitivity that can play into another another relationship, which is what happens with Clay.”
Carrie Coon says that Bertha is blind to the seriousness of her family’s displeasure over Gladys’ fate until after the wedding.
“It’s true that her relationship is very strained by what she’s doing with Gladys, but she doesn’t notice for a long time. She takes her eye off that ball,” Coon explains. “Now, to be fair, George isn’t operating at full disclosure, so she doesn’t know exactly the stakes that he’s dealing with because he’s not really telling her. He doesn’t even tell her that he fires Clay, which is startling. One of the consequences of that is that we’ve always seen when Bertha reveals her vulnerabilities, it’s always to George, but she loses that space and she’s really spinning out and very isolated in this.”
Moving forward, “we see [Bertha] really feeling the weight of her choices that has left her really alone with friendless, and now losing a grip on her family, even though she still feels very confident that she’s right,” Coon adds. “And it even bears out that she is right, that Gladys actually maybe is in a position where she’s very well suited and will have power and influence and maybe even purpose and fulfillment. And yet the cost is great. But I don’t think she is far enough along where we meet her to understand psychologically what’s going on with George.”
“She doesn’t have all the information and so she’s really left stymied by what has occurred because she feels like it all worked out,” Coon says. “It’s really confusing for her.”
Bertha’s Feelings About Larry and Marian’s Engagement
Bertha was not pleased to find out that her son got engaged with her knowledge beforehand. George basically told her to deal with it, just like he had to with Gladys. Can Bertha accept have no control over who her son marries?
“I was really curious to see what the writers would do with that plot point,” Coon shares, “because for me with Marian, I’ve always felt that Marian is so much more a Bertha than Gladys is, that Bertha would have a lot of respect for Marian’s desire for freedom. She’s very plucky and she does things on her own and she breaks the rules, which Bertha also does. And yet it was a bridge too far for Bertha. [Marian] didn’t have enough status for her son ultimately. But I do think she thinks Marian has good taste. She really respects her.”
Will respect be enough for Bertha to stop herself from meddling in her son’s future like she did her daughter’s?
The Gilded Age, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO
