The Big Picture
- Season 2 of The Gilded Age sees the Opera Wars become a central focus as Bertha works to solidify her position in high society.
- Executive producers David Crockett and Michael Engler learned from Season 1 to prioritize certain elements and make the production more complex and confident.
- The challenges of filming the second season included creating the grand opening night of the opera and exploring the dynamics of various characters and relationships.
[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Season 2 of The Gilded Age.]From creator Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey), Season 2 of the HBO series The Gilded Age sees the Opera Wars move front and center, as Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) continues to work to solidify the leading role in high society that she desires. At the same time, Ada (Cynthia Nixon) finds the beginnings of a new courtship while Marian (Louisa Jacobson) questions her own feelings about romance and Agnes (Christine Baranski) just wants everything to remain as it is.
During this interview with Drumpe, executive producers David Crockett and Michael Engler (who’s also a director on the series) talked about what they learned from the first season that they could apply to Season 2, figuring out what to prioritize, working with a creator like Fellowes who understands every stage of the process, the biggest challenges in making the second season, getting to see Ada come into her own, juggling the stories of an ensemble cast of characters, and giving a glimpse into what could come next.
Drumpe: What did you learn from doing a season of this series that helped you with Season 2, or that pushed you even further?
MICHAEL ENGLER: I would say what we learned was everything. We learned much more about the world, we learned about the characters, and we learned a lot how to blend the reality of the locations we were shooting with the visual effects we were creating. The more everybody fell into it and started to have the same reference material and language information, it just became easier to realize more complex, bigger things. It wasn’t so much that we thought we had to make it bigger and bigger. We just knew more and we were more confident.
Does it actually get any easier when you learn those things, or is it always challenging because of everything this show requires?
DAVID CROCKETT: You can focus your efforts more, and we did. With the bigger scenes, we knew what was more important, as far as what we wanted to show. You learn from that. You learn a lot of the logistical side of things, like where visual effects fit in. We have Bob Shaw, our amazing production designer, who said, “You know what? I can use this to do this part. And then, if I add this to it, I can really create this. Remember how we did this last year? I can do it better and different in this.” So, everybody has their version of that. With Kasia [Walicka Maimone], our costume designer, 80% of the hero dresses were new and created for this season, but there was a small fraction, about 10% of them, that were reconstructed from last season. They took the bottom from this one that we only saw briefly and reconstructed it to something else. Every department and every group is able to do that, in their own way.
ENGLER: There are certain things, like how you light and shoot a particular set or location or actors, what they look good in, things about their character that, once you start to learn them, it’s not that the work isn’t as demanding or challenging, but it’s a lot less stressful because you have a lot of information and you know each other and trust each other. It’s definitely easier, in that sense, but I was exhausted nonetheless.
CROCKETT: It’s easier, but not easy.
What do you learn from doing a show like this with someone like Julian Fellowes? How does his approach to the story shape and affect everyone else’s approach?
CROCKETT: Some people compare this to Downton Abbey, which is, in every way, flattering but it’s very different than that. Julian has a history and, in working with him on Season 1, you also learn what stories resonate with him. We’re constantly out looking for stories with our historians and with our team. Because so much research is happening, people come across interesting things, and there are so many interesting things that so many can’t make it into the show, but we learn what resonates, what will fit best into the story, what Julian will respond to, and what we think the cast will respond to. As you go through the process, you’re learning that way too.
ENGLER: What’s interesting about Julian, and what’s very unusual as a writer, is that he completely understands the stages of the process. He understands that the script is one step and the shooting is another step, and the editing and post-production is another one. He very often will say, “We don’t need that scene, at all. Let’s just get rid of it. It’s slowing us down.” And sometimes I say to him, “Do we need that scene before we shoot it?” And he’ll say, “I know what you’re saying. We can look at it. But I’m afraid, if the audience doesn’t pick up on this in this scene, we need to really make sure it lands here. So, let’s keep it.” He thinks very much about all those stages. Sometimes a character will say a line and I’ll say, “Do they need to say that? It’s a little obvious.” And he’ll say, “Let’s have her say it. And then, if we can understand that’s what she’s thinking, just from the acting, we’ll cut it.” And he will. He has no problem with that. He’ll say, “But in the event that we don’t understand that, I want to make sure someone says it.” So, something I’ve learned from him is to just embrace that as part of the process and to actually build in opportunities and options for later because the truth about film is that you just never know, in the end, how it’s gonna come out. Or you’d love to cut a whole scene, but it has one key piece of information that the audience will be lost without, so you end up keeping a three-minute scene for one piece of information, which is just not very economical.
With so many big, epic moments in this series, what was the most challenging thing to pull off this season?
ENGLER: The opening night of the opera, for sure, and creating the sense of a comparison of the two worlds and the scale of them and the aesthetic and everything, just because it involves so many different people and so many different points of view. And there isn’t a place like that, that you can shoot in for several days. We shot that scene over a week, but we could only be at the Philadelphia Academy of Music for one day, when we had the big wide shots and for certain kinds of things. And then, the rest had to be a mixture of little sets and visual effects. Really every department had to be incredibly well-prepared because that scene was shot over months in different places.
CROCKETT: There are different kinds of challenges, and that was certainly the biggest size, scope, production, and people. It was over months, so you might shoot the cast walk down the hall, and then you might shoot them walking into the opera house a month later. There are many other scenes that were challenging for different reasons, whether it was Peggy in Tuskegee and the challenges she meets there, or George’s labor struggles, which you also really want to get right and do justice to the story of these workers and their struggle, and you want to do right by George and his perspective, whether you agree or disagree with it. So, there are these challenges where you feel a responsibility to get those things right. Overall, we are a story and we are for entertainment, but there are these pieces in between that are particularly challenging because we want to make sure we get them right.
I don’t think that it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Ada finally gets to be a bit more triumphant in her own life this season. From where she started in Season 1, to where she ends up by the end of Season 2, is it nice to see someone in a world like this, who is such a kind soul, actually thriving?
ENGLER: I think so. For me, it’s one of my favorite parts of the season. In her generation, she didn’t have the choices that Marian has now, and Marion didn’t have the choices that women today have. It’s all a continuum. And so, it’s this idea that she’s found a way to be herself, but to live within the confines of her life with Agnes in charge and control, financially, and the social structures, and all of that. And so, to see her pushing beyond that and finding herself and new experiences, is one of the most satisfying parts of the season.
Just hearing her find her own voice with Agnes is fun.
ENGLER: Yeah. And we have in a third season, if there is one, we’ve set up the idea that things are really going to change in the household and the dynamics are gonna shift, and that’s gonna be interesting to watch. The end sets it up in a way that you feel like, “Okay, now what’s that gonna be like?”
When you devise a season of a series like this, is the finale set up so that it could be a series finale? Is that something that’s talked about, in case you don’t get to return, but then you also want to give glimpses into what could come next?
ENGLER: With a series, you are telling an ongoing story. So even if it’s a finale, it’s gonna have to be something where the story will go on. With Season 2, it could go either way. You want to tell a story that’s very satisfying, but then, if there’s more of it, you’d be excited to see it.
The first season of any show sets up the world, the characters, and the relationships, and then you can really dive in and dig deeper in Season 2? Were there characters or relationships or things from the first season that you were most excited to explore in the second season?
CROCKET: One of the audience’s favorites is clearly George and Bertha, so the more we dive into their relationship and the complexities of it, it’s interesting, it’s entertaining, and there are some real obstacles there that everybody who’s been in a relationship can really relate to. And then, with Peggy and T. Thomas Fortune, we learn that he’s married. You see these two young people and you think, “Oh, maybe there’s a chance,” so to explore what happens with that was very exciting. As a viewer, I was like, “I wanna see what happens here.”
ENGLER: As we started to learn about the characters, one of the things that Julian was so excited about, in studying this era in New York, was the way fortunes came out of nowhere and people came from out of nowhere. And so, we wanted to take two characters from the first season, like Turner returning and Jack, and say, “Great, let’s give them stories like that, where they can be transformed in a uniquely American way.” We already care about them, we’re already invested in them, and we already like or don’t like them. It’s nice to have that background because then you’re not just telling the story of a guy who invents a clock and might become successful, it’s our guy, Jack, who has a certain kind of curiosity about life. It’s like your friend going through that. It’s more meaningful.
Is there an advantage to telling a story with so many characters, or is it challenging to give them all their due when they’re all so interesting?
ENGLER: It’s both. It’s challenging because sometimes we’ll go through a few scripts and say, “Hey, this character hasn’t had anything really interesting in a while.” And sometimes that’s okay for some episodes, but then you think, “Okay, we need to know what’s going on in their life.” For instance, with Agnes’ maid, it’s not just her story, because she does have stories, but it’s how her life is being affected by Agnes’ story. One of the real advantages is that it’s such a big, demanding show, and the hours are long, that sometimes it’s great to go to the downstairs servants at the Van Rhijn House for three days, where it’s just the seven of them, and we hung out and shot scenes in the kitchen. For that time, Christine [Baranski], Cynthia [Nixon] and Louisa [Jacobson] have the week off. And then, they’ll have a busy week when we’re shooting upstairs. And then, there are weeks when we have a ton of people from all the worlds. What’s good about it is that it’s almost like a bunch of little, separate acting companies, who at times come together like one big rep company.
CROCKETT: It’s a blessing and a curse. There are times that you want so much more of one character because the story is interesting. There are some of those stories that I think we could spend virtually entire episodes on, but we have to break away because everybody else has other favorite characters or other good stories going on.
The Gilded Age airs on Sunday nights on HBO and is available to stream at Max.