'The Gilded Age' Star Kelli O'Hara Was 'Constantly Pinching' Herself on Set of New HBO Drama (Exclusive)
The Gilded Age cast is overflowing with theater veterans, including Broadway legend Kelli O'Hara. Even O'Hara was "constantly pinching" herself to make sure she was really in a show alongside Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Morgan Spector, and other stage stars. O'Hara, who recently spoke with PopCulture.com for an exclusive interview, has a recurring part in the show as Aurora Fane, who hopes to help bring Louisa Jacobson's Marian Brook into society.
The new series is very much in the same vein as creator Julian Fellowes' most well-known show, Downton Abbey, except it is set in the U.S. The Gilded Age takes place in 1880s New York City, where the wealthy Bertha Russell (Coon) hopes to break into established society and Marian is under the watchful eye of her aunts Agnes van Rhijn (Baranski) and Ada Brook (Nixon). Since the show's first season was filmed while Broadway was shut down, Fellowes stacked the cast with experienced stage stars. Many of them knew one another before going before the cameras, so there was already some built-in chemistry.
"I think there was so much joy on that set," O'Hara told PopCulture.com. "We said it was a little bit like being in repertory theater. We were all there together, continually rejoining each other, coming back, but we all sort of had a previous history with each other." Although O'Hara could be considered a hero herself for Broadway fans, O'Hara said some of her co-stars were her idols. "To be working in this way, at this level with these people, I was constantly pinching myself," she said. "So, the whole experience was a gift."
While there were plenty of veterans on the set, Jacobson and Denee Benton bring a youthful enthusiasm to the main cast. O'Hara shares scenes with both stars in the early part of Season 1 and she "really enjoyed" working alongside them. "She's worked very hard, she went to Yale drama school," O'Hara said of Jacobson. "She works very hard on set at all times, really worrying what she's doing and how she's doing it, and if she's doing it well, correctly, deeply, and honestly. I was there to watch that. I appreciated that in a younger actress [who is] very respectful of the process. I think everybody was, and you had a lot of big personalities, as you can imagine."
In The Gilded Age, Aurora is playing a balancing act, because she doesn't want to "be on the bottom" of society, as O'Hara put it, but she also wants to help Bertha and Marian find a place in society. "As hard as it is to erase the past, we kind of have to go forward and Aurora Fane has reasons to go forward," O'Hara said. "Some of them, have to do with blackmail, but I'd like to think that Aurora Fane also wants to buck the system a tiny bit, but very, very carefully. And she's been around long enough to maybe do it right."
O'Hara was also impressed that The Gilded Age used the "tools and the voices" co-writer Sonja Warfield and director Sally Richardson-Whitfield brought to the table. They helped the show tell diverse stories "in a respectful and realistic way," O'Hara said. The Gilded Age might not be "telling anything new, we're just telling it." She "wanted to be a part" of a series that wasn't afraid to shy away from telling darker stories in favor of pure escapism.
In the end, O'Hara agreed that making the show was a very cathartic experience for everyone on set, considering the real drama playing out in the world. She's also hopeful that Aurora will make waves on the show in the future. "I think that her story continually gets more interesting as we go through Season 1... Then we'll see what the future holds," she said. The Gilded Age airs at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Mondays and is available to stream on HBO Max after it airs.