The air felt different as I sat across from Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Denée Benton. I was lifted simply by being with these women, three generations of Broadway royalty. (Of course, as the former Clair Huxtable, Rashad qualifies as TV royalty as well.)
Now they are together on “The Gilded Age,” the HBO drama about late 19th-century New York City and the old-money elites, arrivistes and workers who live and clash there.
I was initially worried about the show when it debuted in 2022. As a long-term fan of the creator Julian Fellowes’s more homogenous hit “Downton Abbey,” I feared this American counterpart would similarly overlook the racial dynamics of its era. But I was pleasantly surprised by the nuance of the character Peggy Scott (Benton), an aspiring journalist and secretary for Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and a member of Brooklyn’s Black upper-middle class.
An early version of Peggy had the character posing as a domestic servant to gain access to Agnes. But Benton and the show’s historical consultant, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, pushed for a more multifaceted exploration of the lives of Black New Yorkers, who often interacted with Manhattan’s white elite even as they lived separately. (Dunbar and I were colleagues at Rutgers University.)
This season, “The Gilded Age” has its most diverse and in-depth portrayal of Black high society yet, often pitting Peggy’s mother, Dorothy (McDonald), against the aristocratic Elizabeth Kirkland (Rashad), who arrives on the show on Sunday. Like other wealthy mothers on this show, Elizabeth spends most of her time trying to control the marital fate of her children and discriminating against other families, like the Scotts, that she believes to be socially inferior.
Based in Newport, R.I., the Kirkland family also enables viewers to glimpse more progressive racial dynamics than those of New York City.
“Because it’s so small, what was interesting about Newport in that time period was that Black and white communities mixed more than they did in other areas,” said Sonja Warfield, the other showrunner (with Fellowes). “The school system was, in fact, integrated. If you were Black or white, you could have neighbors around the corner from you who were Black or white.”
“Elizabeth Kirkland is the Mrs. Astor of Black elite society in Newport,” she added. “So often when we see Black characters depicted in this time period, it’s just one story, and it’s all in relation to slavery or sharecropping. What people don’t know is that, in fact, these people existed.”
In late June, the three actresses gathered at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a former Gilded Age mansion, to discuss their characters and how the colorism and classism of the 1880s continue among some African Americans today. They also talked about how excited they were to work with one another — a reunion for Rashad and McDonald, who won Tonys for their performances in the 2004 Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did you approach creating these late 19th-century Black women?
PHYLICIA RASHAD The concerns of an era might be different, but people are still people.
AUDRA MCDONALD To a degree, the concerns are different. But where we are right now, some of them are quite similar.
DENÉE BENTON I always felt a deep spiritual connection to Peggy; she’s walking the rope that I would’ve walked at that time. It also feels not dissimilar to being a first-generation child of parents who were raised in the Jim Crow South. Peggy’s the first-generation daughter of parents who were raised in the relationship to enslavement. [Peggy’s father, Arthur Scott, played by John Douglas Thompson, was formerly enslaved.] So she doesn’t feel distant from me at all. I’m like: “Oh, I understand the Black daughter you are. I understand the sovereignty you’re searching for, and how you’re trying to claim your own space in places that didn’t imagine you there.”
MCDONALD I feel similar in terms of Dorothy, who has been introduced mainly and solely as Peggy’s mother. I know what “mother” means in all of its iterations. Especially when Dorothy is introduced in Season 1, and there’s this deep, dark secret that is ripping at the very fabric of this family. [Arthur betrayed Peggy by having her marriage nullified and by telling her that her son, Thomas, died in childbirth while secretly arranging for him to be adopted by another family.] Once she figures out her husband’s betrayal and her marriage starts to fall apart, Dorothy’s all about saving family and protecting her child.
BENTON From the alliances that happen inside of patriarchy, which I think all Black families understand.
MCDONALD Yes, and she has a lot of pride in Peggy too, that she’s moving toward the future. Dorothy is doing everything within her power to protect her as she sees her doing it, and yet still holding it all inside, as women of that era were supposed to do. She is old guard. Yet once Elizabeth comes in, she makes Dorothy looks modern.
[To Rashad] I was so excited when they brought you and that whole dynamic with the Kirkland family, so that we could understand it wasn’t just families like the Scotts walking around.
RASHAD Yes, being African American has never been a monolithic proposition, and that’s what we see. But Poor Elizabeth.
BENTON And you’re such a forward-thinking woman yourself.
RASHAD I must say, in growing up, I knew a couple of ladies who were Elizabeths, who didn’t want their children out in the sun and nobody was ever going to be good enough for their son. It happens to people today — if it’s not about color, it’s about something else. People being locked into a past that they didn’t create but that was handed to them.
When the show was being created in 2019, Denée had some reservations about how her character was going to be portrayed and approached Julian Fellowes about it. How do you all feel about the depiction of Black communities in the show today?
BENTON It makes me emotional to think about how far we’ve come since 2019 with the show. Originally, we were going to watch Peggy walk a very narrow path and see her parents sometimes. And Dr. Erica Dunbar and I were able to be like: “We have an opportunity to show something that’s never been onscreen. We have to widen this lens.” And now we have a robust Black cast on this show. We have Black writers; we have so much richness.
MCDONALD I think it’s wonderful that she went in there and advocated for herself, that character and that world. I think my generation would’ve been like, “Well, thank you so much for letting me play this part.” Or “OK, I’ll do it. Maybe there’s a way I can try and make it more.” That is new.
Denée, I don’t want to put words or thoughts in your head, but I can’t imagine that there was a part of you that thought, “Oh, this will go completely fine, and they won’t fire me.”
BENTON I was scared.
RASHAD But you did it anyway.
MCDONALD And that’s what impresses me most about Denée, in particular, and this generation coming up: They are giving themselves permission.
RASHAD With grace, and look and see what it afforded all viewers. That, for me, is the most important part.
BENTON It’s about the opportunity. It’s like, “We can make this richer, and we all will get to feast more.”
How does being in a cast with so many theater actors compare with other experiences you’ve had in television?
MCDONALD Many of us have known each other for forever. So when everybody came together, including Jordan Donica and Brian Stokes Mitchell, it felt like a repertoire company.
RASHAD Theater camp.
MCDONALD There’s a safety and a trust. We know that we most likely know all of our lines. We know that we’ve rehearsed. We all speak a very similar language and have been brought up in a certain way. That makes life easier when you get onto a television set.
BENTON It made everyone feel more accessible. On other, more Hollywood sets I’ve been on, you’re not necessarily nerding out about a play about Zora Neale Hurston between takes. Because everyone is just as voracious about that kind of knowledge, it feels like a great equalizer where there could be a lot of hierarchy because of the legends we’re working with.
What was it like to work together?
BENTON When the producer Michael Engler told me Audra was going to be playing my mother, he just handed me tissues. I didn’t realize tears had started coming out of my face. Because at 15 and in college, I studied her on YouTube. I know every downbeat. [To McDonald] I know your looks to the left; I know when you breathe on all the soundtracks. But then watching Ms. Phylicia come on set, I realized, “Oh my God, Audra feels about Ms. Phylicia the way I feel about Audra.”
MCDONALD Because Phylicia is a legend. As I was coming up in the business, I would see her onscreen or on the stage, and then when I got to know her and her family when we did a “A Raisin in the Sun,” it meant so much to me.
BENTON And then I was like: “OK, Ms. Phylicia. Who made you kind of fall apart in heroic grandeur?” And she talked about seeing Ruby Dee onstage, about working with Diahann Carroll for the first time, and that blew my mind. It just struck me so deeply that Peggy does not exist without Audra and without Phylicia’s work, and without Diahann’s work. It’s just this direct line.
RASHAD And in a minute, there will be other beautiful young women who said this about you.
Salamishah Tillet is a contributing critic at large for The Times and a professor at Rutgers University. She won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2022, for columns examining race and Black perspectives as the arts and entertainment world responded to the Black Lives Matter moment with new works.
The post ‘The Gilded Age’ Enriches Its Portrait of Black High Society appeared first on New York Times.
