Spoilers follow for The Gilded Age season-three finale, “My Mind Is Made Up.”
The Gilded Age doesn’t do slow-motion shots. But for Sunday night’s finale, in which three seasons of romantic turmoil end in Peggy Scott’s (Denée Benton) engagement to the dashing Dr. Kirkland (Jordan Donica), EP and director Salli Richardson-Whitfield needed something extra special. “We’ve been waiting for Peggy to have her happy ending, and I wanted you to cry once you knew what was going to happen,” she says. “We’re doing it in his POV, and we’re floating into this new reality that’s about to happen for her. I wanted it to feel like Cinderella — it’s the most romantic way you could think of the man you love walking towards you.”
Across town in Newport, Bertha Russell is hosting the season-ending ball, her biggest event yet — and one that needed to outshine the opening of a new opera house and a royal wedding. Usually hosted by Mrs. Astor, this ball presents an opportunity for Bertha to take her rightful place at the peak of high society, where she’s not just participating in tradition but defining it. Bertha takes a risk, as she is known to do, by welcoming divorced women, and the momentous occasion becomes even grander when Mrs. Astor arrives, signaling that even the power players of old-money New York are willing to follow her as society moves forward. “Bertha Russell’s ballroom is full of the future,” Mrs. Fish later tells Mrs. Astor. “Don’t hold so tightly to those of the past, or you may be swept away when they are.”
In a series where each event must be bigger and bolder than the last, the goal for The Gilded Age’s season-three finale was to meet that norm and double it — creating two balls that attained new heights of pomp and circumstance, felt connected yet distinct, and ensured various storylines reached a satisfying conclusion. “How do we wrap up these little things while leaving tidbits for the future?” Richardson-Whitfield says of the questions she needed to answer. “How do we make all these stories interesting? Where do we put them, and how do we connect them? That all becomes part of the puzzle.”
Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO
It was important to Richardson-Whitfield that the balls looked as similar as possible. “You’ll see a lot of shots that mirror each other,” she says. “I want to be able to intercut, and also show that symbolism of ‘same but different.’ Same music, same setup of orchestra, same shots for both, but a few little special pieces.”
True to its Newport location, Bertha’s ball was filmed at The Elms, the same preserved Gilded Age mansion representing the Russells’ Newport home in season two. “Part of it is practical,” says production designer Bob Shaw. “You need a grand ball space, but you also need somewhere people can have believable private conversations.” Equipped with multiple spaces that would meet the high standards of a character like Bertha Russell, The Elms is also the site used to film the Russells’ New York City kitchen and Gladys’s bedroom. “I’m always having to tell people when we’re in Russell New York versus Russell Newport,” Shaw adds.
Finding the right venue for the Kirklands’ ball, however, came down to the architecture of the building and its proximity to New York City. “It was important to us that they were similar in standing so that both would look opulent in their own way,” says director of photography Manuel Billeter. “They’re at a high economic level, but not at that rarefied level of the Russells and the Astors,” Shaw adds. The goal for his team was to make sure the space could be designed to look elevated and elegant while minimizing travel time for Audra McDonald, who was filming season three while in rehearsals for Gypsy. Production ultimately filmed at Sleepy Hollow Country Club, a Vanderbilt mansion in Westchester County about an hour north of Manhattan that was also used for Mrs. Chamberlain’s house and a charity auction in season one.
Photo: HBO
“Please, make your way to the terrace and enjoy our magnificent display of illumination,” Bertha tells Mrs. Winterton as guests arrive. The deliciousness of this line wouldn’t be effective without the presentation of lights that appear when Mrs. Winterton walks into the courtyard. The camera pulls back (via a drone shot) to reveal a large, illuminated red archway and the garden entirely lit with electric lights. The decision to use electricity for Bertha’s ball was a natural follow-up to the lighting of the Times building in season one, and it felt like the right time for this particular “wow factor,” as Billeter puts it. “It was a marker of wealth that one could actually showcase and utilize this new technology in their own private homes,” he says. The lighting allows Bertha an avenue to continue topping her own previous spectacles, but Billeter also viewed it as an opportunity to deepen the contrast, visually, between the season’s ups and downs. “Introducing electricity gave us a natural way to make the moment brighter.” Billeter explains. “It was a fitting end to the season after so many darker moments.”
The biggest execution challenge for Shaw’s team was delivering the grandiosity of how electric lights would’ve appeared at the time without depicting too accurately how they actually looked — much harsher on the eyes, and styled in a way that would look to today’s viewers like tacky Christmas lights. To avoid this, the production team used oversized, clear bulbs, some of which were nearly a foot tall. “The historical design of these bulbs would have been extremely difficult to source in those quantities,” explains Billeter. “We had to test numerous LED bulbs, and then we narrowed down to the ones that suited us.” Hundreds of yards of cable later, the stage was set for Mrs. Astor’s well-lit grand entrance and a very public win for Bertha Russell.
Illuminating the Kirklands’ ball was an easier task by comparison, but required a meaningful level of planning to ensure that it looked equally elevated and festive. Historically, the Kirklands would be using gaslight, so production presented their lighting at a lower visual level, using gas-era torchères. From there, VFX extended the lighting in strategic places to make the space feel bigger and more romantic, setting a dreamy ambience for Dr. Kirkland’s proposal.
And Billeter did find a way to use those Christmas lights after unearthing some unexpected inspiration in 1890s articles from the New York Times: “They described rhinestones, diamonds, sparkles everywhere — exactly what I knew Kasia, our costume designer, would incorporate,” he says. “I leaned into that by lighting with Christmas lights off-camera so that the gemstones and fabrics would catch tiny glints in a festive way.”
Photo: HBO
“As long as it resonates with history, it works,” costume designer Kasia Walicka Maimone says of her inspiration when working on such an enormous scale. “What I felt I needed to do was give significance to both of those balls, creating similarities and differences so they would feel like equal partners while having meaningful variations.” While certain Gilded Age looks (Gladys’s wedding dress, for example) directly reference a historical source, the costuming for the Newport balls was more generally inspired by the most glamorous looks of the period, with Walicka Maimone’s team pulling inspiration from the show’s library of historical research, including more than 40,000 photographs.
Honoring Bertha’s determination to push boundaries and usher in new social norms, her ball was filled with gowns that represented the newest fashions arriving in America at that time. The guests don rich silhouettes and bold new colors, styles Walicka Maimone admits were tricky to execute given the many lighting considerations tied to the production design. “In daylight they popped, but in evening light they behaved differently. We strategized a lot about what would present well on camera.” In contrast, the Kirklands’ ball was outfitted to embody the commitment to tradition the Black elite would’ve honored at that time. “The glamour of pale colors was justified for those balls because it allowed fabrics to shine and reflect the light without disappearing in candlelight or gaslight.”
Finally, Walicka Maimone had to consider how the gowns moved during the dances, and that the actors and dancers could successfully execute precise choreography without, say, tripping on one’s own dress train — a lesson learned early on in the first season. Fortunately, the large ensemble cast, many of whom are trained dancers and theater performers, were all used to being corseted or wearing tight-fitting clothes. Adds choreographer John Carrafa, “The old-fashioned waltz is built so that no one steps backward — especially the woman — so they don’t step on their dresses. Fashion and dance evolved together, and the steps were designed to accommodate the clothing of the time.”
Photo: HBO
While working on season one, Carrafa learned that most historical knowledge of the era’s dances comes from contemporaneous dancing manuals. “These dancing masters would come over from Europe and say, ‘I know the latest dance,’ and teach it to everybody around the country, and that’s how it would get disseminated.” Carrafa explains. “We did the same thing — looked at the literature, descriptions, photographs — and put together our version.” Informed by the research, but ultimately determined by the music, Carrafa decided the dancers would perform a waltz at both balls.
The choice emphasized that the Black elite at the time were successfully executing the same traditions as the white society. Caraffa paid close attention to the nuances of the research and incorporated them into each dance on screen: At Bertha’s ball, where the crowd was presumably more comfortable with their position in society, Caraffa instructed dancers to move more “swoopy,” as he puts it. “I let Bertha’s ball incorporate more of that later, freer style, as a nod to her breaking norms,” he says. The crowd at the Kirklands’ ball, however, would’ve placed a particular emphasis on dancing in a more traditional way, and Carrafa incorporated patterns from quadrilles into the waltzes to add structure, mirroring the more regimented dance formations of the period.
At one point during Bertha’s ball, Gladys waltzes in her newfound bliss with the Duke. While they twirl, the Duke asks, “What are you grinning about?” to which Gladys responds happily, “Oh, nothing.” Moments like these stand out to Carrafa when he first reads the script. “I’m looking at whether they have to talk and dance at the same time, which is really tricky,” he says. “Then, I’m figuring out, Okay, what kind of waltz can I do that will allow them to speak to each other and allow this more gentle romantic moment to happen?” From there, Carrafa considers the technical needs, including how the ballroom is built out to support the principal actors and how the cameras and the rest of the dancers can move around them.
During filming, everything has to come together with extreme precision, which meant the camera operators had their own parts in the choreography and dancers had to frame moments perfectly on cue, adjusting naturally in the moment if the actors’ pace changed. Carrafa calls the wider ensemble a “dream team” of professional Broadway and concert dancers, many of whom have been with the show since its first season. “They have created these elaborate characters for themselves,” Carrafa says. “You would never know it, but amongst each other, this whole dynamic exists so that when you’re watching the ball, it doesn’t look like you’re watching extras dancing, but members of the 400” — the term Ward McAllister used to describe the people at the top of Gilded Age society.
Photo: HBO
The arrivals are particularly important for Bertha’s ball, so Richardson-Whitfield added additional scenes to help build tension into that part of the story. “Some of the dialogue between Ada and Agnes, or Marian and Aurora, was initially going to be at home,” she says. “We changed it to the carriage so that it was happening while they were on their way.” Bertha greets the guests as they arrive, including the controversial divorcees, and to her relief, Mrs. Astor arrives publicly and on time, signaling to Bertha and her guests that the new-money matriarch’s bold moves paid off yet again. Elsewhere, Larry and Marian reconcile, Oscar and Mrs. Winterton forge a path forward together, and Mr. Russell makes an appearance, closing out a successful night for Mrs. Russell.
Photo: HBO
In the final act of the episode, Peggy’s resilience and vulnerability are finally rewarded when the man she loves proposes to her, set against the backdrop of a Black society celebration that is the first of its kind on the show. “We haven’t seen this world before,” says Richardson-Whitfield. “As a Black woman, I wanted to bring that story to life in a respectful way and give fans what they’ve been looking for.”
Dr. Kirkland arrives late to the ball, and rather than greet his parents, he makes a beeline for Peggy’s father. Peggy, assuming her relationship with Dr. Kirkland has ended after he learned about her child, dances politely with another partner. She almost stops in her tracks mid-waltz as she spies Dr. Kirkland making his way across the dance floor, the camerawork slowing down to register her surprise “They needed me to turn at the right time so the camera could see me seeing him,” Benton remembers. “The twirl was really meticulous and technical.”
The slow motion “changes the language of the scene and makes it special, drawing the audience in,” explains Billeter. “Peggy’s storyline goes from heartbreak to joy, and that moment — combined with slow motion, her looking right into the camera, and a shift in the music — puts her and Kirkland in a cocoon of intimacy. It’s a real barrier-breaker for audience connection with her character.” Richardson Whitfield recalls some of the direction she gave Benton in the moment: “‘This is almost like a fantasy dream sequence. No one else is around. At that moment, when you catch eyes and see him walking towards you, time stops. What does that mean for you?’ And you see that in her performance. The room, the sound, everything, it’s like a vacuum, just these two souls coming together until he goes down on his knee.”
“Jordan and I got engaged so many times that night,” Benton says, laughing. “But it was sweet, you know, you got all these Staten Island bros on the crew that were like, ‘Man, you made me remember when I proposed to my wife.’ Everyone just got swept up in the moment.”