The Big Picture

Season 2 of The Gilded Age focuses on the Opera Wars, highlighting the exclusivity and drama surrounding the opera scene. Ada experiences personal triumphs and love in this season, disrupting her relationship with her older sister, Agnes. The series sets up a potentially exciting third season, with storylines left open-ended and glimpses of future developments.

[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 1-on-1 interview with Collider, writer/co-executive producer Sonja Warfield talked about telling the story of the Opera Wars in Season 2, getting to see Ada come into her own, why they wanted to bring a specific Season 1 character back as a foil for Bertha, telling the stories of such a large ensemble cast, digging deeper into the Scott family, how the first season informed the second season, and wanting to take the characters to new levels in a possible Season 3.

The Gilded Age A wide-eyed young scion of a conservative family embarks on a mission to infiltrate the wealthy neighboring clan dominated by ruthless railroad tycoon George Russell, his rakish son, Larry, and his ambitious wife, Bertha. Release Date January 24, 2022 Cast Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Louisa Jacobson, Denée Benton, Taissa Farmiga, Harry Richardson, Blake Ritson, Thomas Cocquerel, Simon Jones, Jack Gilpin, Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski, Donna Murphy, Debra Monk Main Genre Drama Rating TV-MA Seasons 2 Creator Julian Fellowes
Collider: When you started figuring out Season 2, do you start with ideas or themes you want to explore or aspects of the time period, or does it always start with the characters and their relationships, and then what is going on around them?

SONJA WARFIELD: I would say it’s a little bit of both. Julian [Fellowes] always wanted to do the Opera Wars, and that really fit thematically with Bertha’s arc. At the end of Season 1, Bertha has Gladys’ debut, which is kind of Bertha’s debut. She’s up a rung on the society ladder, so she’s gotta go big or go home. And then, she starts the Opera Wars. Thematically, she just needs more power. A little bit is not enough for anyone. But absolutely, as the characters evolve and as the actors really embody these characters, we feed off of each other. There were things that we wanted to explore and themes that we wanted to explore, in terms of the characters and their arcs, but also in keeping up with the history and the historical facts that really resonated with us and fit in with our stories for our characters.

What Makes the Opera Wars So Relatable?
Image via HBO

It’s so funny to me that you can make Opera Wars so interesting and absolutely fascinating. I got so into figuring out which side to root for.

WARFIELD: Julian talks about how, as human beings, we still do that. There’s always the hip new restaurant or the club, or something. There’s always the place where people cannot get in, and there’s an exclusivity. This is just the next level of exclusivity and who’s going to get left out. This plays out in such a dramatic fashion, but it’s historically accurate and it’s the opera, so it’s decadent and so much fun.

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, it’s nice to see somebody who is actually such a kind soul, thriving in a world like this. Was that intentional? Was that a character that you just wanted to leave in a good place?

WARFIELD: Certainly, it was intentional, yes. I had a conversation with Julian and I said, “I want her to have love.” And he loved that idea because it would really disrupt her relationship with her older sister, who probably doesn’t even believe in true love and has never had it. And of course, she doesn’t like any change of any kind. She wants everything to always remain under her control, and this was something that she couldn’t control, so that makes for great drama and great television.

And I love how, to anybody else, her triumphs would probably seem insignificant, but in her little place in the world, it’s so huge for her. It’s exciting to see her finally find her own voice.

WARFIELD: Absolutely. That’s part of why I wanted her to have love. Agnes is such a bully over her, and I wanted her to come into her own. I knew that would help her mark her independent path away from her sister.

What’s the Status of ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 3?
Image via HBO

It also sets up what could be a really interesting third season. When you devise a season of a series like this, do you set up the finale so that it feels satisfying enough to be a series finale, if you don’t get to return, but also give glimpses into what could come next?

WARFIELD: Yes. That’s part of our job, right? We have such an amazing cast, and they bring these characters to life in such a way that impacts the viewer, so that you want to continue on with them. That’s why we watch television. We wanna see, “What’s this person doing tonight.” So, yes, God willing, we get a Season 3, so that we can take these characters to all new levels. They all have different places to go and grow, and explore love, and find whatever they’re gonna find.

Did you always know that you were going to bring back Ms. Turner and that we’d get to see what is going on with her and how that affects things? That’s such an interesting character to revisit.

WARFIELD: Yes, we did, and Julian wanted to do that. We wanted her to be another disruptor in this near perfect world for Bertha. Bertha is on a runaway train. She can see the mountain top, essentially, and all these obstacles come her way that are completely unexpected. It makes for great drama, and Carrie [Coon] is so fantastic on screen that we just are in that fight with her, every episode.

It never occurred to me that we might see that character again, and I thought it was such an interesting foil to the story.

WARFIELD: That’s the American story, right? You’re either born into wealth, or you can marry into it. It’s rags to riches.

Is there an advantage to telling a story with so many characters, or is it challenging to give all of them their due when they’re all so interesting?

WARFIELD: Each character is so distinct. Each episode, each character has their own narrative with a beginning, middle and end. We follow it through. We’re following the threads of the different stories. There are some episodes where we might say, “Oh, you know what? We don’t have enough for the servants to put a downstairs scene in this episode. Maybe one of their stories that we were gonna have later in the season, we’ll bring that forward.” In terms of writing, everybody says it writes itself. These characters are so great that they just tell you what they wanna do, and you do it.

Workers Are Inspired to Fight For Their Rights In Every Time Period
When we watch period pieces, it’s always interesting to realize how much history does indeed repeat itself, especially with the striking workers this season. Did you realize quite how relevant that would be?

WARFIELD: The truth is, that is based on a real historical strike that Julian wanted to have in the show. There are so many parallels right now, between the Gilded Age and our current state of affairs in capitalistic America. There’s so much income inequality, and the people who get forgotten are the workers, in both places at both times. Inevitably, the workers are going to rise up and demand fair pay, their rights, and all of it. We have set up our society, right now, where we haven’t learned from history. We’re just demanding, essentially, our fair share. We’re demanding that our wages keep up with inflation, and we have some say. My favorite part about that story is how we humanize the workers. We’re with the Gilded Age people and that whole life, but the servants in the Brook House and the Russell House have human stories, as well, and so do these steelworkers.

It’s that age old contrast between the money people who just want things done for as cheap as possible, and the people who have to do the work that keeps the country going.

WARFIELD: These are all remnants of the founding of this country, which was founded upon slavery. This is the legacy of slavery. These corporate people and robber barons, or whomever, still want slave labor. They essentially want free labor, which can’t sustain itself. Clearly, it can’t because [there was a] SAG-AFTRA strike right and I was just on strike for five months. When have you ever not worked for five months, as an adult?

Image via HBO

I love that we get to see more of the Scott family this season. What did you want to show and explore with them?

WARFIELD: The Black elite did exist back then, and when Julian created the show, he wanted to showcase a Black family that was elite, that worked, that educated their daughter, and where the mother is a musician. Those were real people, back then. Normally, when we see Black people depicted in the 1800s, it’s in relation to enslavement. This is a new story that I haven’t really personally seen. The Scott family progresses and evolves, and they have their conflicts and dramas. Peggy is really escaping to 61st Street in Season 1 because there’s a big secret that she’s escaping from her family. We find out that secret, at the end of Season 1, and going into Season 2, so we’re tying up the loose ends of that story, and then taking Peggy off to Tuskegee and lots of other places, starting her activist journey in journalism.

It’s fun to see her back in the house with Agnes and how she handles things differently this time.

WARFIELD: Yeah, she sets strong boundaries with Armstrong and tells her, “You do not want a problem with me.” Peggy has always had her voice and agency, but she’s grown into more of herself this season.

The Biggest Lesson Learned Making Season 1
What were the biggest things that you feel like you learned from Season 1, that you were able to carry over into Season 2, and knew that you could either build on or that made things a little bit easier, when it came to the storytelling?

WARFIELD: The thing about Season 1 is that, once we get to see the actors really embody these characters and they come to life with these nuances and layers and flaws, it just illuminates what we want to carry on into Season 2 and all the different places we can go. Bertha, of course, is after more power, so where do we show that off, in terms of opulence, the Opera Wars? Where are Agnes and Ada? We wanted to disrupt their power dynamics, so we do that with Ada’s story. Where is Marian? Her heart’s broken. Is she going to find love again? Does she really find love? There might be somebody, but is it the right person? And we’ve already talked about Peggy. There are just so many places to go because we have such fantastic actors and Julian has created such a rich character world that we just, hopefully, want to keep going and going with these people.

The Gilded Age airs on Sunday nights on HBO and is available to stream at Max.

Stream at Max.