[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 2, “What the Papers Say.”]
Love is costing Gladys Russell all the pieces in The Gilded Age Season 3. Taissa Farmiga‘s character was dealt a heartbreaking blow in her try and get engaged to Billy Carlton (Matt Walker) within the June 29 episode of the HBO interval drama. With Billy’s failure to fulfill the second and arise for his relationship with the younger heiress, he simply cleared the trail to Bertha Russell’s (Carrie Coon) victory in her struggle to marry Gladys off to Hector, Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), who arrived again in New York on the episode’s finish. And he or she didn’t must do a lot work to make him fold. Right here, Farmiga talks with TV Insider about Gladys’ heartbreak and the looming arrival of the Duke, whom she’s nonetheless decided to not marry.
The episode picked up within the panicked aftermath of Gladys’ late-night escape from the Russell home in The Gilded Age Season 3 premiere. She hadn’t elope with Billy like Bertha feared, however relatively ran off to his home to try to present how critical she was about marrying Billy. Bertha wasn’t budging. Billy’s mom, Joan (Victoria Clark), tried to enchantment to Bertha’s good facet, assuming that she would simply come round as soon as she noticed how in love their youngsters have been. However Joan doesn’t know Bertha, and a infantile act like operating away from house was solely going to make Bertha dig her heels in additional. Later within the episode, throughout a profit hosted by Aurora Fane (Kelli O’Hara, whose character is having nightmarish relationship problems with her personal), Billy had the possibility to ask George Russell (Morgan Spector) for Gladys’ hand in marriage.
In talks with Joan, Bertha threatened to have make Billy unemployable by banks within the metropolis and to disinherit Gladys ought to she marry him, although she didn’t say this in entrance of her circle of relatives so it could have been an empty menace. George would have gladly come to Billy’s protection had he drummed up the gumption to ask for his blessing to marry Gladys. When the second got here, Billy caved out of fears of inadequacy. He willingly gave up on his pursuit of Gladys on the episode’s finish in a secret assembly outdoors the Russell house at dinnertime. Billy broke off their relationship, breaking Gladys’ coronary heart within the course of.
The tagline for The Gilded Age Season 3 is, “Love conquers all, or prices all the pieces.” Farmiga tells TV Insider that “Gladys positively experiences the ‘it prices all the pieces.’”
Karolina Wojtasik / HBO
“She tried to go after what she thought is the love of her life, and when it was time for him to face up and communicate to her father and have a little bit of a spine, Billy fails at that. I feel that proves that he isn’t the the love for her,” Farmiga says.
Being solely 18, Bertha is correct when she says that Gladys doesn’t know a lot about love and society and the way these issues mesh (or don’t). And he or she’s too younger to know if Billy actually is the good love of her life. However Gladys is the daughter of power-hungry social climbers George and Bertha, who collectively pulled themselves out of poverty and into the best echelon of Manhattan society. She possesses a pure drive to win due to that. So if Billy was what she wished, even when it will’ve panned out to be only a passing fancy within the grand scheme of issues, Billy is what she was going to get — as long as her accomplice was equally as much as the problem.
“She tried to place all her eggs in that basket and say that is what I would like, and it did, ultimately, value her all the pieces, not in the way in which that like she gave up all the pieces for him, however she would have. And he failed that,” Farmiga explains. “It’s simply heartbreaking.”
Gladys could also be extra fueled by dedication for independence than precise love for Billy. Farmiga explains, “Gladys simply desires freedom, as any younger lady in that point interval who can’t actually have entry to a lot freedom. She desires to have the ability to make her personal choices, and for her, she thinks meaning, ‘Proper now, I’m saying what I need to do and that’s that.’ It’s a bit naive, it’s a bit childlike.”
The heiress will come to be taught that she’s much more like her mom than she let herself imagine, and he or she could find yourself feeling grateful for her mom’s relentlessness in a method. “Bertha’s taking part in a protracted recreation the place she’s making an attempt to set Gladys up on a pedestal in order that she will be able to proceed to decide on the issues that make her joyful even when the primary alternative isn’t the one which Gladys desires,” says the American Horror Story alum. However Gladys nonetheless can’t see how her mom helps proper now, nor can George or brother Larry (Harry Richardson).
It’s out of the frying pan and into the hearth for Gladys after her first heartbreak. Now, she should discover one other option to keep away from marrying the Duke, a person she barely is aware of. Her father could also be her final line of protection. Although there are challenges forward, in the case of the “love conquers all” a part of the Season 3 tagline, Farmiga teases that Gladys “possibly is catching a glimpse of that in the direction of the top of the season.”
The Gilded Age, Sundays, 9/8c, HBO, Streaming on HBO Max