‘The Gilded Age’ Cast on Returning for Season 4 After a Ratings Surge: ‘It’s Go Big or Go Home’

The women of “The Gilded Age” are assembled in the lavishly appointed drawing room of the Fifth Avenue Hotel for a postmortem.

“I’m still buzzing from the other night,” Marceline Hugot, who plays Mrs. Foster, the director of the Heritage Society, says as she rises to address the group. “Despite some hiccups, President Cleveland was charmed.”

With that, the camera pulls back, and Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) enters, eliciting upturned eyebrows and side glances as she makes excuses for her absent mother, Bertha Russell, whose rise to the top of society has consumed much of the HBO series’ three previous seasons. But as she begins to describe the headache that has waylaid Bertha, Farmiga’s words grow entangled, and she blows her lines.

“Damn it,” Farmiga exclaims, using a word that would cause any one of these ladies who lunch to stagger back toward their settee in shock.

Cut.

Farmiga grabs her script. Races through the dialogue out loud. Then exits the room to make her entrance again as a makeup artist appears to administer touch-ups and a wardrobe assistant swoops in to adjust one of the women’s hats. As fans of the show know, every detail on “The Gilded Age” has to be just right. Bringing the 19th century to life requires a small army of costumers, builders, technicians, and researchers. And Season 4, which debuts on Nov. 1, is the biggest yet. There are multiple weddings, a party at a dance hall, a parade, an inventors’ convention, the dedication of a national monument, and, yes, a presidential visit.

“Usually we have two or three events like this in a season,” said Bob Shaw, the show’s production designer. “This is the season where we keep saying, ‘it’s go big or go home.'”

The larger canvas is the reward for a ratings surge that saw “The Gilded Age,” which had languished on the bubble for its first two years, finally become appointment television. Cast members first noticed the rising interest on social media, then grew accustomed to strangers approaching them on the street to share their thoughts on Gladys’s relationship woes or George Russell’s latest corporate battle.

“It’s so rare that you let a show be on the air for a few years to find its audience,” Carrie Coon, who plays Bertha, told IndieWire. “Our attention moves on more quickly now, and I have friends on amazing shows that no one’s watching, so to know that people are actually consuming the thing you’re making is very gratifying. There’s been this uptick in people recognizing us and saying how much they love the show. It’s all over the world. It’s all socioeconomic classes. It’s every end of the political spectrum. There are fans in every corner.”

Taissa Farmiga at HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ New York Premiere on October 26, 2026 in New York, New York.Kristina Bumphrey/Variety

Co-creator Sonja Warfield realized “The Gilded Age” had broken through after her parents attended a funeral.

“All these people were hovering around my dad and mom,” she said. “And they didn’t want to talk about the deceased; they wanted to discuss ‘The Gilded Age.'”

There was certainly plenty for fans to unpack. After working in tandem to bring New York to heel, the Russells’ marriage came undone, with George (Morgan Spector) furious that Bertha had manipulated her daughter into marrying a duke. There was also an assassination attempt, multiple engagements, a Newport ball, and several changes in fortune (families are always rising and falling in Julian Fellowes‘ America). Online, the conversation intensified, and thirsty memes sprouted (George was dubbed “Railroad Daddy,” and Ben Ahlers’ servant-turned-inventor was christened “Clock Twink “). Warfield has a theory for why it took fans a few years to catch up with the period drama.

“Season 3 is the sweet spot for TV series,” Warfield said. “Season 1, you’re establishing the world. Season 2, you’re starting to build out the plot lines. And Season 3, the actors really know the characters and the writers know the nuances of the actors. We can write to their strengths. And that gives us more real estate for their characters’ journeys.”

‘The Gilded Age’HBO

For the first time, Warfield and Fellowes are entering a new season with confidence it won’t be their last. They haven’t mapped out where the Russells, the Scotts and the van Rhijns go from here, but they believe there are more stories left to tell as America enters a new age.

“We have a Season 5 in us if we’re allowed to do it,” Fellowes said. “But when you write a TV series, you have to finish every season so that it could be the end, because one day it will be.”

There’s plenty of backstabbing, social snobbery, and romantic complications to go around this season. Coon and Spector choose their words carefully, hesitant to reveal anything that flirts with being a spoiler, but they promise that the Russells’ marital problems won’t be resolved any time soon. Without his wife by his side, George, so confident in his business dealings and so adept at outmaneuvering the old-money elites whose hold on American enterprise is loosening, is unmoored. As his empire begins to teeter, he turns to dangerous ways of coping.

“George is a disaster without Bertha,” Spector said. “He’s doing everything he can to fill the void.”

Bertha is equally disoriented without her supportive spouse, but Coon believes that her character was justified in pressuring Gladys to marry royalty. The match may have been arranged, with Gladys offering wealth and the duke respectability, but as the season dawns, the couple is deeply in love. Bertha’s daughter’s future isn’t just secure — it’s bright.

“I’ve always maintained that Bertha was absolutely right,” Coon said. “She’s a good judge of character, and she really liked the Duke.”

Season 4 also promises big things for Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), the Black journalist who spent much of the first two seasons dealing with personal tragedy or bearing witness to racial violence, as she did during a trip to the South that ended with a lynch mob. But last season, Peggy fell head over heels for Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica), and the new episodes find the well-off Scott family navigating an even higher rung of Black society as they prepare for the kind of blowout wedding that the white characters are constantly attending.

Audra McDonald at HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ New York Premiere on October 26, 2026 in New York, New York.Kristina Bumphrey/Variety

“It’s wonderful to see Black joy on television,” said Audra McDonald, who plays Peggy’s mother. “We had a lot of drama and tragedy in the first couple of seasons for the Scotts, and it’s wonderful to see them emerge in this way. It’s exciting to see Peggy come out of this cocoon to become an iron butterfly.”

Then there’s Ada (Cynthia Nixon) and Agnes (Christine Baranski), who may live across the street from the Russells, but whose family line traces back to the Mayflower, making them ambassadors of the old order their new-money neighbors are threatening. Agnes once controlled the purse strings, but her wayward son Oscar (Blake Ritson) fell for a Ponzi scheme, costing them their fortune. In an only-on “The Gilded Age” coincidence, Ada came into a sizable inheritance at the exact same moment, allowing the family to retain their mansion. The role reversal comes to a head this season when Ada is expected to foot the bill for Agnes’ grand soirée for the president.

“She’s getting more comfortable with her stature, with being a woman of means, and with being the head of the household,” Nixon said.

And Baranski hints that Agnes, whose haughty putdowns are beloved by “Gilded Age” fans, gets to go in unexpected directions.

“It’s my favorite year in terms of my character’s narrative line,” she said. “I’ve never enjoyed myself more, and I’m just so grateful to the writers. Agnes’ sense of identity is challenged this season. I get to do some really powerful scenes.”

“The Gilded Age” has taken hold of the culture just as a new billionaire set is flexing their muscles. The characters on their show made their fortunes in railroads and oil, this new gang of robber barons controls everything from AI to electric cars and social networks. The parallels are hard to ignore, and some cast members seem uncomfortable lionizing rapacious capitalists while we are living through a new gilded age that seems nastier and more brutish.

“It’s so bizarre,” Nixon said. “These billionaires are the main story of our moment, and it is the main story of ‘The Gilded Age.” You have these people who appear seemingly out of nowhere and have so much money, and because of their incredible wealth and their quest for more, they are destroying everything from the planet to democracy to the Constitution, you name it.”

Taissa Farmiga and Cynthia Nixon at the after-party for HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ New York premiere held at The Plaza on October 26, 2026, in New York, New York.Kristina Bumphrey/Variety

Fellowes acknowledges that the show romanticizes a kind of swashbuckling industrialist, but he thinks that their legacy is complicated.

“I do feel I’m sticking up for them,” Fellowes said. “If you watch a series and someone comes in who’s a millionaire from Wall Street, you know he’s the baddie. I’m a lone voice in the other direction, because I think the Gilded Age was a very exciting time for America, and these men made it exciting. They built an economy that put America at the peace table with the loudest voice in both of the coming world wars, when it had only existed as a country for one and a half centuries. I’m perfectly happy to protect people who can’t protect themselves. So I don’t want to seem as if I only support the robber barons. I don’t. But the fashion now is to hate them, and we ought to remember that they got America ready for the 20th century.”

Back on set, the cast and crew of “The Gilded Age” are entering their third hour of capturing the post-presidential visit discussion from every angle, and they’re getting punchy. Beneath their corsets, stomachs are starting to growl, and they’re eager to break for lunch. In between setups, Baranski tries to keep her energy up, scrunching her face and blowing her lips together to keep them elastic.

“This is better than a sharp stick in the eye,” Baranski tells the table as the camera crew gets ready for another shot. “I always wanted to say that while accepting an award.”

Despite the long hours (most of the actors had to arrive just after 5 a.m. to begin the hourslong process of getting in costume), “The Gilded Age” cast can’t believe that after being counted out for several seasons, they have finally, at long last, climbed to the top.

“We hope we get a fifth, a sixth, or a seventh season,” Donna Murphy, who plays Caroline Astor, said. “There’s been this gradual kind of gelling and coalescing as a company. We just keep getting better. I remember at the end of filming the third season, Christine turned to me and said, ‘I could do this for the rest of my life.’ And you know what, she’s right.”