The season 4 premiere of The Gilded Age finally brought Marian Brooke (Louisa Jacobson) and Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) together, and the show’s writers spent years figuring out how to make it happen.
Now, with episode 2 airing Sunday, November 8, Marian must deal with the consequences of spending the night with Larry, while the Russell and van Rhijn families face more problems of their own.
Spoilers ahead for The Gilded Age season 4, episode 1, “Ring the Bells.”
In the premiere, Marian and Larry sleep together after a storm leaves them stranded overnight at a hotel. Although the couple has separate rooms, Larry visits Marian, and they finally take their relationship to the next level.
However, Marian immediately regrets the decision the following morning because of the damage it could do to her reputation.
Co-showrunner Sonja Warfield told Deadline that she began discussing the possibility of the characters sleeping together with creator Julian Fellowes several years ago.
“I had talked to Julian probably a couple of years ago about what would happen if they had had sex, and he would explain to me how they wouldn’t really ever have sex,” Warfield said. “Nor would they have a chance to because they were always chaperoned, and in my head, I started thinking up reasons and ways in which we could engineer a situation [where] they were alone and there were elements that were out of their control.”
The writers eventually used a real historical event to make the encounter possible.
After attending a brothel bar following Oscar van Rhijn’s (Blake Ritson) marriage to Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran), Marian runs into Larry.
The two dance before Larry offers to share his carriage home. A severe storm frightens the horses, causing the carriage to lose a wheel and leaving them unable to continue their journey.
Warfield explained how the writers developed the scenario.
“So then I started thinking, what would be their equivalent of a flat tire? The wheel would break, but if you’re in New York, you would just get another cab. Why would there be a reason why they couldn’t get another cab?” she said. “What if there’s a really bad storm? Then I started talking to Dr. Dunbar, who did research and found out that there was a tropical storm in 1885. Then we were off to the races.”
Warfield also revealed that HBO encouraged the writers to take Marian and Larry’s relationship further after their romantic moments in season 3.
Jacobson told Deadline that she was excited about the development but frustrated when she read what happened the next morning.
“It’s simultaneously so magical and so cathartic to finally see them physically express love to each other,” Jacobson said. “Then, as I kept reading the script, I read the next day, and I was so frustrated. But I actually really welcomed the challenge. I knew that Marian’s reaction to having recognized this grave transgression, which it was in the time period, I knew that the morning after was a very, very important scene to set me up for the rest of the arc for the season.”
Marian wakes Larry the following morning, already dressed and ready to leave. She worries that their night together could ruin her standing in New York society.
When she returns home, her aunts, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Forte (Cynthia Nixon), notice that she is upset. They received a telegram explaining that she would be staying at a hotel, but Marian doesn’t tell them what happened.
Jacobson explained why Marian’s reaction was so important to the storyline.
“I felt a serious responsibility on my shoulders to convey the stakes of the 19th century, the consequences of premarital sex for a woman being so high, and so much higher than they were for [Larry] and for any man in that case,” she said.
“It’s playing with this tension between knowing it was probably the best night of her life, and living in a world where she’s taught to understand the best night of her life [is] a thing that is so shameful and so terrible and impure and could, if anyone found out, cast her out of society and ruin her life.”
Richardson also discussed how Larry begins to understand the consequences Marian faces.
“He’s quite happy-go-lucky and ignorant to how intense this is for Marian, and the thing I was excited to dive into is: he has all of this love and this adoration and this wish to connect, and they’ve had so much fear and they’ve been miscommunicating over the previous season and not quite coming together,” Richardson said.
“He’s just like a puppy. He wants to be with the person who he adores. Then we get this one night shift where seeing the heartache that it’s now causing for the person he loves the most and how serious that is is an awakening for him and a maturing for him.”
Richardson added that Larry has to confront the fact that he faces fewer social consequences than Marian.
“He hasn’t contemplated that the stakes aren’t as high for him. The risk to be shunned out of society and to really damage his future isn’t there, and I think he gets a really humbling awakening and self-confrontation,” he said.
Meanwhile, episode 2 will bring several other developments.
Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) returns to New York after helping her daughter Gladys through a difficult childbirth in England. However, she arrives home to a strained household and a tense reunion with her husband, George Russell (Morgan Spector).
Bertha must also deal with Enid, her former lady’s maid, who is now married to Oscar van Rhijn.
Elsewhere, Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) continues pursuing her professional and personal ambitions while dealing with the expectations of New York and Newport society.
Agnes also finds herself in an uncomfortable position when she reluctantly agrees to an interview.
The Gilded Age season 4, episode 2, airs Sunday, November 8, on HBO and HBO Max.
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