The Gilded Age returns this month, and there’s a new trailer for the show’s much-anticipated third season to whet fans’ appetites. The trailer promises love, heartbreak, and scandal as Carrie Coon‘s Bertha Russell continues her climb up the ladder of 19th-century New York society. The third season of The Gilded Age will premiere June 22 on Max.
As the trailer opens, “new money” social striver Bertha is ready for her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to marry the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) to assure her own ascendancy, but Gladys isn’t so happy about it. Neither is robber baron husband George (Morgan Spector), who wants more input into his children’s lives even as his family teeters on the precipice of ruin. Meanwhile, Gladys’ friend Marian (Louisa Jacobson), the penniless scion of a once-wealthy family, wants more out of life than the empty glamor provided by her dowager aunts Ada (Cynthia Nixon) and Agnes (Christine Baranski). Agnes’ secretary Peggy (Denée Benton) wants it all: she’s looking for romance, but she’s also becoming a social crusader, looking to secure the vote for women. They’re all living the American dream…which Agnes hopes, wryly, that they may someday wake up from.
What Is ‘The Gilded Age’ About?
Set in New York City in the 1880s, The Gilded Age centers around the clash between the established “old money” families of the city and the “new money” that seeks to both join them and replace them. It also centers around the attempts of women and minorities to find a place in a world that is brutally white and male. The Russells — George, Bertha, Gladys, and younger son Larry (Harry Richardson) — are part of the latter, newcomers to a social scene that needs their money but doesn’t want them. Ada and Agnes and their niece Marian are part of the latter: while Ada and Agnes want to cling to their old ways, Marian wants something new. Caught between both worlds, and truly in neither, is Peggy, Agnes’ ambitious Black secretary who wants to make a better world. Amidst them all are the servants, unseen and unnoticed, but with their own social strata and personal dramas.
The Gilded Age was created by Julian Fellowes, who originally intended for it to be a prequel to his most popular creation, Downton Abbey. This is shaping up to be a busy year for Fellowes; it will also see the release of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the big-screen conclusion to the Downton Abbey saga, in September.
The third season of The Gilded Age will premiere on Max on June 22.
via Collider