Few would call “The Gilded Age” a gay show, but the HBO drama’s high camp factor has earned it plenty of queer cred. Julian Fellowes, the Oscar and Emmy Award-winning creator of the series, is no stranger to incorporating gay characters into his period dramas. His scheming butler Thomas Barrow (Robert James-Collier) in “Downton Abbey” emerged as a key below-stairs figure. In “The Gilded Age,” Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Kitson), the gay son of acerbic aristocrat Agnes (Christine Baranski), stirred intrigue that promises to continue into the second season of Fellowes’ New York and Newport-set tale of old and new money in the late 19th century.
“I usually have a gay storyline because a great many people are gay and there’s absolutely no reason to believe that same percentage in 1890 or 1750 was any different from the percentage now. The difference is the tolerance, or lack of it, in society,” said Fellowes at a press event last July at Newport’s Marble House, one of several mansions in the Rhode Island city that serve as shooting locations for “The Gilded Age.” For the high society depicted in the series, says Fellowes, “being gay wasn’t something that could be played out in public at all. For most people who wanted to enter society properly and have power, they’d get married and live a hopefully friendly marriage … I don’t think everyone was miserable, but it was clearly unsatisfactory. But you didn’t have an option. That’s interesting to explore dramatically.”
Fellowes mixes his fictional characters with real-life historical ones such as Ward McAllister, played Nathan Lane, the dapper arbiter of social taste, and the confidant of Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy). Lane brings a foppish campiness to Ward that seems gay, although he’s not written as such. “We never say. I have my suspicious but we’re not going to give him a storyline that can’t be justified by everything we know officially,” said Fellowes.
Fans of “The Gilded Age” this spring and summer can learn more about the many characters and the filming of the series by checking out the Newport Mansions’ “Inside ‘The Gilded Age’ tour” running Fridays from May 12 to July 14 (with no tour on June 23). Small groups limited to 12 people are led on a three-and-one-half-hour guided visit through four mansions — The Breakers, Marble House, The Elms and Chateau-sur-Mer — where filming took place during season one or that provided the inspiration for sets created in New York.
The tour takes visitors into the bedroom at Chateau-sur-Mer that stands in for the rooming house where Oscar van Rhijn sleeps with his boyfriend John Adams (Claybourne Elder) while plotting to marry the rich, unsuspecting Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga). They can walk through the opulent Marble House bedroom that served as the model for Bertha Russell’s bedroom in her Fifth Avenue mansion and where fan favorite Carrie Coon as an enraged Bertha hurled her breakfast tray onto the floor and inspired a meme.
Also at Chateau-sur-Mer, the exterior of which was used as Mrs. Astor’s Newport cottage, visitors can inspect multiple locations where scenes were shot including the hallway, dining room and ballroom that provided the setting for the doll tea party thrown by Mamie Fish, a real-life character played by Ashlie Atkinson.
Other highlights include the Breakers’ opulent mirror-lined music room, which was the setting for Bertha Russell’s lavish ball that ended season one; the kitchen in the Elms, where the Russell’s household staff cook, gossip and bicker; and the rear of Marble House, where a door was built specifically for the memorable scene in which a humiliated Bertha is unceremoniously rushed out of Mrs. Astor’s newly built Beechwood and into the yard where servants are plucking chickens. Beechwood’s exterior shot is of Chateau-sur-Mer while the kitchen through which Bertha makes her hasty exit belongs to Marble House. Completed in 1892, Marble House was the property of powerhouse socialite Alva Vanderbilt, the model for Bertha Russell, according to Fellowes.
Audiences can expect to see more of Newport in season two of “The Gilded Age.” Laura Benanti will play a new character, Susan Blane, a recently widowed socialite who moves to Newport and begins renovations on her home. Benanti is the latest Broadway star to join an illustrious cast that includes more Tony Award winners ever gathered outside of a Tonys ceremony. “The Gilded Age” had the foresight and good fortune to be casting the show when so many Broadway actors were unemployed due to the pandemic.
Besides Tony nominees Coon and John Douglas Thompson, there’s record-holding six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald as Dorothy Scott. Numerous other Tony winners in leading and supporting roles in “The Gilded Age” include Lane, Murphy, Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Michael Cerveris, Katie Finneran, Kelli O’Hara, Debra Monk, Bill Irwin, Stephen Spinella and Celia Keenan-Bolger. Whether servant or aristocrat, whether their money is old or new, these seasoned stage actors make pedestrian or melodramatic dialogue sound positively Shakespearean, or at least delightfully campy.
More: newportmansions.org/gilded-age
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