Morgan Spector On George Russell’s Negotiations, Romanticism, and Reconciliation for ‘The Gilded Age’

George Russell is a man who lives to negotiate. It doesn’t matter if it’s an exchange with a union in his railway company or if it’s aiding his wife, Carrie Coon’s Bertha Russell, in climbing the ladder of high society, George Russell has that quality in his bones. He might, perhaps, not even know he’s doing it, but it’s one of his strongest qualities. Morgan Spector embodies this railway tycoon with an unshakable confidence but in the second season of HBO’s The Gilded Age, that confidence is tested both in his business and in his marriage. Can George Russell, a titan among men, learn from these dangerous encounters?

Spector and I immediately started talking about restraint–I, admittedly, haven’t been able to stop gushing about how much I adore how the Julian Fellowes drama keeps its cards close to its chest since the show began. The second season is more comfortable with itself and its characters to the point that it revels in how it holds those emotions at bay. It’s something that Spector loves as well.

“With any drama about this period, restraint is part of the joy,” Spector says. “If you watch The Age of Innocence, they squeeze so much eroticism out of the way someone peels a glove off someone’s hand. It’s incredible. Everybody is so corseted, so you always wonder how you get out of those things.”

George learns of the formation of a union near the top of the second season, and his concern is one of two major arcs for his character. When speaking about Bill Henderson, the head of the labor foundation, George tells Clay, his loyal secretary, that ‘every man has a price.’ We haven’t seen a younger version of this tycoon, so one might wonder if George Russell, himself, ever had a price when he was coming up in business. Would George Russell work for a man like George Russell?

“I think about the fictional people that George is modeled on–a lot of them did work for a man like George Russell,” he says. “That’s how they learned their trade, but some of them didn’t. Some were business geniuses, and I was told that George was modeled on [Jay] Gould even though, narratively, a lot of the facts of the plot correspond with Cornelius Vanderbilt. In terms of his character, it’s more about Gould. He had mentors but he also destroyed them as he came up in the business world. I suspect that if George had people who were his father’s teachers, George would, ultimately, devour them as he came up in business.

In terms of if George has a price, I suspect George’s moral code, honor, and sense of pride probably means that if he does, he would have to walk away from everything level high. I don’t think that’s something that he would ever want to do. In the abstract, he may have a price, but, in practical terms, it’s too dear to him.”

Oscar van Rhijn has his sights on Gladys Russell for marriage, but George can see right through him. He rejects Oscar’s proposal, and Marion Brooks, upon hearing of George’s decision, voices her surprise that Mr. Russell is a romantic. We sometimes forget how the time period doesn’t allow for public flourishes of emotion. When George kisses Betha in their own home, they fold themselves behind a corner so the servants don’t see. Even if George felt comfortable to express that romanticism publicly, one might wonder if his fellow railway men would look at hi in a different way.

“The nature of social interaction in that period means that public displays of affection are not de rigueur,” Spector explains. “In the first season when George goes to the bazaar and buys out every stall in order to protect his wife’s honor, and that’s very romantic even if it doesn’t make sense financially. It’s a pig-headed, I’m-going-to-crush-you kind of move, and I don’t know how you can’t read that as someone who is enormously protective of his partner. At the same time, their intimacy is something the audience is privy to in a way that no one else in the world of our show would be.

George has a delicate sensibility about certain things like Gladys marrying for love. That profoundly, for the period, egalitarian marriage that he has is not something that he talks about with his colleagues and peers in the railroading world.”

When Mrs. Winterton (formerly Turner) reveals to Bertha that she tried to seduce George in their home, it causes a huge rift in the household. Bertha believes her husband was faithful, but she feels betrayed that he didn’t tell her first. In that first fight, every time George takes a step towards his wife, she takes a step back. In the days that follow, he tiptoes around her like he’s trying to make sure he can approach her without causing another fight. That blocking might seem small to some viewers, but it’s a fantastic exampled of how a director works with his actors to establish that tension with physicality.

“The movement and blocking was something that was important to how we built those scenes,” he says. “There couldn’t be closeness, and they couldn’t get to each other, especially in his refusal to acknowledge how justified her sense of betrayal is. Maybe this is totally for me, but their sense of intimacy is so strong that if they let themselves get close, they will fall into it–there’s gravity there. Whether they are mad at each other or not, it’s operational, and she’s cutting herself off from that. He’s just hoping that if he can just touch her hand or get into the rhythm of their intimacy, she will forgive him. That blocking was modulated over a few episodes. It’s unbridgeable at the beginning, and she won’t let me near her, and then I get closer and closer as the days go on. You can see how we use that space.”

Towards the end of the second season, the union negotiations inch closer and closer to violence. George visits Mr. Henderson in his home, and he can see how the living conditions of his workers are vastly different than his own. As he leaves, he seems to shuffle his feet before he closes the door behind him. Spector gives us some insight about how worried George Russell actually becomes.

“For me, there is a moment where George visits Henderson and he sees his humble circumstances and he knows that his children are not in school,” he says. “Right after that, he’s in the carriage with Clay and he asks if there are no schools and it reminds of A Christmas Carol when Ebenezer Scrooge says, ‘Are there no work houses?’ It is a moment where George is having to assimilate how squalid that he is forcing his workers to live in. I don’t think it really necessarily transforms his vision of the world, but I do think there is a cognitive dissonance in that moment. He cannot reconcile the man he wants to be with the structural position that he has in this society. There’s something about that whole situation that he can’t quite face.”

One of George’s best lines comes in a conversation with Gladys when he says, ‘Marriage is not a place to look for freedom.’ I couldn’t help but wonder if that was something that he truly believed to be true or if that was another negotiation tactic that a father employs to point his child in the right direction.

“I like that line a lot, and it resonated as truth in the moment for George,” Spector says, thoughtfully. “Particularly with Gladys, he finds himself running up against an irreconcilable conflict. His wife wants a certain life for her and George wants something else–only one can win. If his daughter falls in love with a man who could provide for her in a way that Bertha wants, that’d be the most ideal win-win situation. That’s what I had in mind in that moment. There are certain conflicts that are baked in. As a married person, I think marriage is a great place to find freedom because you have to be comfortable and happy with yourself and with your own pursuits in the right kind of partnership. They can believe in you when they don’t believe in yourself, and that’s something George and Bertha have.”

The Gilded Age is streaming now on Max.