The Gilded Age Season 3 reached its halfway point Sunday night with a big episode centered around Gladys’ (Taissa Farmiga) wedding to The Duke od Buckingham (Ben Lamb), and key in the lead-up to the nuptials is the arrival of Merritt Wever’s character Monica O’Brien.
Monica is Bertha Russell’s (Carrie Coon) sister, but Bertha does not make the fact that she has a sister known, and it’s her son Larry (Harry Richardson) who ultimately invites Monica to Gladys’ wedding, surprising Bertha, and not in a good way.
“I do believe that Bertha comes from a more working-class background than [George], one that she doesn’t like to let on,” Coon told Deadline ahead of the show’s release. “We always joke because Kelly Curran, who played my maid [Turner] in Season 1, has such beautiful hands. We’d always joke [that] I have these potato digger hands, and whenever they were on camera at the same time that you could see who was more elegant. I always felt like Bertha feels a little bit exposed anyway like I feel exposed playing these kinds of characters, But having Merrit was such a delight. She’s so deeply truthful.”
Monica O’Brien arrives to Bertha’s mansion in a calm manner, but she can immediately read that Bertha isn’t exactly happy to see her. George (Morgan Spector) and Larry are. She doesn’t shy away from the big questions at dinner, either.
“[Merritt] just walks in and she’s a person, and it puts everybody, I feel a little bit of shame when she’s acting, because I feel, suddenly, like you could see my acting from space when she’s there, but she was, of course, wonderful,” Coon added. “And also, there’s a real learning curve when you come into the set, because the world has some size to it, and you have to figure out just what the camera can withstand, and when you’re kind of shrinking away from it and not being vivid enough for the world that you’re in.”
At one point, the stark contrast between the lifestyle Bertha has chosen for herself and that of her sister shows when Monica matter-of-factly states that she will wear the same dress to dinner the night before the ceremony and to the wedding. Bertha may or may not have engineered some coffee spillage to remedy that, which she saw as not right for their audience.
“She was very self deprecating, and she was beautiful in the part, but she was kind of walking that journey with us, and I loved hearing her express it. But of course, we have all kinds of people guesting this year that are just marvelous, and everybody from the from the theater community that’s been able to join us has been such a treat,” Coon said. “I find that I I learn from people like Merritt when they come on set. They make us better at what we’re doing. First they make us feel ashamed, and then they make us better.”
Merritt Wever in ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 3
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