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‘The Gilded Age’ Explores a Rarely Seen Chapter of Black History
The HBO period drama wanted to depict an elite class of 19th-century Black New Yorkers with historical accuracy. Its cast and creative team worked to portray them with dignity.
Denée Benton stars in “The Gilded Age” as Peggy Scott, a secretary and daughter of a prosperous Brooklyn couple. She successfully pushed for changes to the role.
Feb. 14, 2022
In this week’s episode of “The Gilded Age,” the HBO period drama set in late 19th-century New York, the young aspirant Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) makes an unannounced visit to the Brooklyn home of her new friend, Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), hoping to surprise her with a gift of sorts: a bag of old used shoes.
But Marian, who is white, receives the real surprise. She discovers that the Scott family, which is Black, is wealthy and educated. Peggy’s parents, Arthur (John Douglas Thompson), a pharmacist, and Dorothy (Audra McDonald), a pianist, live in an opulent brownstone with its own staff, and they are definitely not in need of the shoes.
The existence of an elite Black population in this era of the city — Black men and women who had careers, money and influence — is a factual reality, though one that is not often explored in popular culture.
As the show’s historical consultant, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, said: “What does the average person know about the Black elite in New York in the 1880s? The answer is very little if anything.” To look at how film and television have generally treated this era of Black history, she added, “There’s this huge gap between the Civil War and slavery and then, maybe, the Harlem Renaissance — as if nothing happened in between.”
For the people who produce and perform “The Gilded Age,” the Scott family represented an opportunity to dramatize this overlooked chapter — to transcend enduring stereotypes and give these characters inner lives and a surrounding world as rich as those of their white counterparts. (Brooklyn, where the Scotts live, was a separate city in the 1880s; it became part of New York City in 1898.)
Peggy’s parents are a pianist, played by Audra McDonald, and a pharmacist, played by John Douglas Thompson.Credit...Alison Rosa/HBO
While these intentions were present from the inception of the series, they took on a particular urgency during a pandemic-imposed shutdown, beginning in March 2020, and amid the nationwide period of racial justice protest and reflection that followed a few months later — events that had an impact behind the scenes of the show as well as in front of its cameras.
Julian Fellowes, the creator of “The Gilded Age,” said in an email that “it seemed dishonest to set a show in 1882,” less than two decades after the abolition of slavery in the United States, “and not have characters who have been affected by this directly.”
Fellowes, who previously created the British period drama “Downton Abbey,” said that including characters like the Scotts in his HBO series “also allowed us to make some points about the challenges of being African American, even successful and affluent African American, in New York at that time.”
Dunbar, the Charles and Mary Beard Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University and the author of books like “She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman,” started consulting on “The Gilded Age” in August 2019.
Black New Yorkers of the era “go to Brooklyn because they’re running from persecution,” she said. “They’re running from the Draft Riots of 1863. They’re looking for a place to build their homes, to build their businesses, to create a life that was as free as possible from humiliation and violence.”
In the first episode of “The Gilded Age,” Peggy befriends Marian and follows her into the Manhattan home of her aristocratic aunt Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski). Fellowes said the Peggy character was drawn from research he had done on this time period and from books like Carla L. Peterson’s “Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City.”
Benton, who joined “The Gilded Age” in the fall of 2019, was among the earliest actors cast in the series, having previously starred in Broadway musicals like “Hamilton” and “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.”
“If you’re looking for a period drama Black woman, I guess that’s who I am now,” Benton said. “Which I’m not mad about.”
McDonald, a six-time Tony Award-winner who was hired several weeks after Benton, said that when she learned Benton had joined “The Gilded Age,” she was happy for her industry colleague but also concerned that the series was looking to fill a quota.
“When I heard that Denée was cast, I was like OK, that’s the one Black person they’re bringing into all of this white space,” McDonald said. “I think Denée is such a light and such a talent, I hoped they gave her a lot of stuff to do. But I didn’t in a million years think that there would be more of us.”
In Monday’s episode, Marian Brook, played by Louisa Jacobson, makes a surprise visit to the Scotts’ home and is surprised by the family’s evident wealth.Credit... Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO
Benton said that she had also had reservations about how her character would be presented.
“The heart and the intention of Peggy were always there,” she said, but “there were some nuances to the way her story played out” that bothered her, and she expressed these apprehensions to “Gilded Age” producers and HBO.
“What excited me and made me want to advocate for more change was because of what was already there,” Benton said.
An early concern arose from a narrative puzzle presented in the first episode of the series: How would Peggy gain permission to stay with Marian in her aunt’s home?
One solution presented in an early draft of the script was that Peggy could pretend to be Marian’s domestic servant. But while this might have made logical sense, Benton said she found the idea uncomfortable.
“The one Black person that you’re going to see regularly, does that need to be a trope?” she said. “Have we not seen enough Black women play that role on television?”
Fellowes said that Peggy “was never going to be a real servant, but even pretending to be one took us in the wrong direction.” He said that other producers had expressed similar misgivings, adding, “Denée’s concerns were a useful and productive contribution to this debate, but once the idea had been voiced, I don’t remember anyone disagreeing.”
Benton said producers were receptive when she would flag issues like this in the period between the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020, while “The Gilded Age” was preparing to shoot its first season.
“I was at the mercy of people choosing to listen to me,” she said. “I was like, look, even though you guys are listening — it’s amazing — there needs to be more.”
The onset of the pandemic in March 2020 forced “The Gilded Age” to halt production before filming started. Later that spring, the police killing of George Floyd led to weeks of social protest, and it also prompted a widespread re-examination about the presentation of Black people in theater, film, television and throughout the media.
It was a national conversation that played out in its own way at “The Gilded Age.” In June 2020, Benton sent a letter to HBO asking for further changes at the show. Her central request, Benton said, was that “we now have time to really add some Black women to the central nervous system of the creative team.”
Benton said she felt an expectation to speak out during this time. “I could feel the pins and needles of everyone waiting to hear from me in some capacity,” she said. “In the way I think all corporations were like, oh God, are we next?”
(She declined to provide her letter for this article. “In one world it would be beautiful for everyone to see that letter and see what’s possible,” she said. “But I want the focus to be on the fact that the changes did occur.”)
By that time, HBO and producers at “The Gilded Age” were already in the process of recruiting and promoting women of color at the show.
Salli Richardson-Whitfield, the actor (“A Low Down Dirty Shame”) and director of TV shows like “Queen Sugar,” “Black-ish” and “The Wheel of Time,” was initially hired in November 2019 to direct two episodes of the series.
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