SPOILER ALERT: This article spoils the first episode of The golden ageseason 4, now streaming.
Marian Brooke (Louisa Jacobson) has been quite unlucky in love throughout her time in The golden ageand the season 4 premiere continues to suggest that might be the case after she reunites with Larry Russell (Harry Richardson).
After Oscar van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) marries Enid Winterton, former maid of Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) Turner (Kelley Curran) in the first episode titled “Ring the Bells”, Marian is persuaded to go to a brothel bar, where she meets Larry. He’s hinting at the mess in the house related to their argument last season, in which Marian didn’t let go of the fact that he and Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers) went to a house of ill repute after Larry told Marian he was going elsewhere.
Marian and Larry start dancing, and Larry offers to share his cab with Marian in the middle of a tropical storm – based on a real storm from 1885 – that hits New York, frightening the horses pulling their carriage and causing them to break one of the wheels. This leads Larry to obtain two hotel rooms for him and Marian, and, while separation is proposed, Larry knocks on Marian’s door, finding her in her nightclothes, and the two men make love.
“It’s both so magical and so cathartic to see them finally physically express their love for each other,” Louisa Jacobson told Deadline. “Then as I continued to read the script, I read the next day and I was so frustrated. But I actually really enjoyed the challenge. I knew that Marian’s reaction after I recognized this serious transgression, which was the case at the time, I knew that the next morning was a very, very important scene to prepare me for the rest of the arc of the season.”
Marian anxiously explains how what happened could ruin her reputation to Larry the next morning when she wakes him up, already dressed to leave, and rushes home. Her aunts, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Forte née Brooke (Cynthia Nixon) were informed by telegram that she would be spending the night at the hotel. They noticed his shaken state upon his return, without informing them of what had happened.
“I felt a serious responsibility on my shoulders to convey the issues of the 19th century, the consequences of premarital sex being so high for a woman, and much higher than they were for (Larry) and for any man in this case,” Jacobson continued. “It’s about playing with that tension between knowing that it was probably the best night of her life and living in a world where she’s been taught to understand that the best night of her life is something so shameful and so terrible and impure and that could, if anyone found out, drive her out of society and ruin her life.”
Co-showrunner Sonja Warfield worked with creator Julian Fellowes to create this moment after Bertha’s new French maid caught Marian and Larry kissing in season 3.
“I had probably talked to Julian a few years ago about what would happen if they had sex, and he was explaining to me that they would never actually have sex,” Warfield told Deadline. “They also wouldn’t have the chance to do it because they were still being chaperoned, and in my head I started thinking about why and how we could create a situation (in which) they were alone and there were elements that were out of their control.”
Harry Richardson and Louisa Jacobson in season 3 of “The Gilded Age”
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Warfield thanks HBO for asking him and his writers if they could take Larry and Marian “one step further.”
“It was something that we had thought about, and I think about planting because there’s also this moment in season 3 where he pulls her into the back of the car because that’s the only place they can really have privacy,” the co-showrunner said.
“So I started thinking, what would be their equivalent to a flat tire? The wheel would break, but if you’re in New York, you’d just take another cab. Why would there be any reason they couldn’t take another cab?” Warfield added. “What if there was a really bad storm? Then I started talking to Dr. Dunbar, who did some research and found out there had been a tropical storm in 1885. Then we went to the races.”
Harry Richardson “enjoyed the challenge” of this scenario for Larry.
“He’s pretty carefree and unaware of how intense it is for Marian, and what I was excited to dive into is: he has all this love and adoration and desire to connect, and they had so much fear and they miscommunicated in the previous season and didn’t really get together,” the actor said. “He’s like a puppy. He wants to be with the person he adores. Then we have this night shift where seeing the heartache that this is now causing the person he loves the most and how bad it is is a wake-up call for him and a maturation for him.”
“He hasn’t considered that the stakes aren’t as high for him. The risk of being excluded from society and really damaging his future isn’t there, and I think it’s a really humbling wake-up call and confrontation,” Richardson continued.
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