Julian Fellowes deserves credit for The Gilded Age being "artful, addictively watchable television"

Variety

The HBO period drama is "a show that is less interested in dismantling power than it is in nestling up close enough to it to see everything," says Daniel D'Addario, adding: "The ease and delight of The Gilded Age lies in its absence of complication, its willingness to let things be as they are. Which may sound like — and may be! — faint praise. But this much is true: When The Gilded Age is off the air, its particular spot in this viewer’s TV diet will take a while to fill. The Gilded Age is not difficult viewing. But it is also not about nothing — its characters want and feel things that are primally recognizable."

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• Carrie Coons knew where The Gilded Age was going with the season finale before signing up for the show: "We did have many of the scripts before we started shooting, and I had received the documents from Julian (Fellowes) when I was deciding whether or not to join the show that outlined Bertha’s arc over multiple seasons, as just sort of a theoretical pitch about where this could possibly be headed, and it was very exciting," she says. "So I did have an idea of how Season 1 was ending before we started. But of course, with COVID and shooting in different cities, we were all over the place."
• Julian Fellowes always knew how The Gilded Age's first season would end: "I always, in a way, try to work out where we’re starting and where we’re ending up in a season and then work out the other stuff that comes between," he says.
• Executive producer Sonja Warfield on writing with Fellowes: "As a woman who has been jilted in love, I definitely tend to be on Louisa's side," she says. "I had a lot of fun writing Aurora's lines, when she sees him at the ball and she comes over and she tells Louisa, he's here and he's with Sissy Bingham. When he approaches, and Aurora says, 'Well, you're certainly the man about town.' Those are all the things you want to say to a guy when you catch them doing something wrong. My empathy was definitely with Marian's character. I felt as if he should have been stronger and he should have told her the truth and he should have been upfront. That came across, but one of the reasons why Julian and I worked well together is because he could see Raikes' side of it."
• Fellowes on The Gilded Age's future: "Tomorrow is as far as you can look with any authority. I love the idea of the show having a long life," he says. "That would give me pleasure. But the immediate ambition was a second series and we got one. That’s enough for now."