[Spoilers ahead for season 3, episode 4 of The Gilded Age.]
Well, it happened. The wedding of the year (decade? century?) has actually occurred on The Gilded Age: Gladys Russell is married to the Duke of Buckingham. In a show that can tend to shy away from creating real consequences or conflict for its characters, it’s somewhat surprising that Gladys actually made it down the aisle to marry someone that was not her choice. Not even her father was able to get her out of this one.
In an interview with Cosmopolitan, actress Taissa Farmiga weighed in on her character’s journey, saying Gladys didn’t have enough life experience to really know what she wanted in a partner in the first place.
“In that time period, it’s not like you really had all that much room to date, to get to know a person. Bertha has a list of of things that are requirements for a husband of Gladys, but personally, I feel like Gladys just wants someone who makes her feel safe and makes her smile, and I don’t think she cares if they have the biggest bank account,” she said. “But I also think she doesn’t have the awareness to know what it’s like to live in any form of of poverty. She’s very naive.”
Luckily (or unluckily) for Gladys, her new husband does not have a big bank account, which is the whole reason why he wanted to marry her. Farmiga also empathizes with her fictional parents’ tension on this issue.
“As Taissa, I can understand why Bertha has such high expectations for her daughter. I think George also has high expectations, but he still takes into consideration her emotional welfare, whereas Bertha’s just by the book, you need to do this, this and this, and then you can be happy because you have this,” she said.
It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out the rest of the season. Gladys is based on Consuelo Vanderbilt, a real-life heiress from New York who married the Duke of Marlborough and was famously unhappy in her marriage. They eventually divorced, which was a huge deal for the time period. Will Gladys have the same journey? Will she ever speak to her mother again?
→ Continue reading at Cosmopolitan
