The series has received positive reviews, with particular praise for the costumes and performances of lead actors Carrie Coon , Morgan Spector , Cynthia Nixon , and Christine Baranski. At the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards , the second season received six nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series and acting nods for Coon and Baranski.
The series follows Marian Brook, a young woman entering New York City's rigid social scene who is drawn into daily conflicts surrounding the new money Russell family and her old money van Rhijn-Brook family.
The series explores conflicts of new money, who made their money through industrialism, and old money, who have inherited wealth, the African-American upper class , and the domestic workers who tend to all of their needs. Salli Richardson-Whitfield will direct the last two episodes of the season. Initially conceived as a book, it was then planned for pick-up by ITV. At the time, Fellowes planned to focus the show around Lord Grantham and Cora's romance and eventual marriage as the Earl and Countess of Grantham.
Production and writing for The Gilded Age was updated in January Asked whether he'd written the script yet, Fellowes said, 'No I haven't, no. I'm doing that this year', before adding: 'And then hopefully shooting at the end of the year. These people were extraordinary. You can see why they frightened the old guard, because they saw no boundaries. They wanted to build a palace, they built a palace.
They wanted to buy a yacht, they bought a yacht. And the old guard in New York weren't like that at all, and suddenly this whirlwind of couture descended on their heads. They redesigned being rich. They created a rich culture that we still haveβpeople who are rich are rich in a way that was established in America in the s, '90s, s. It was different from Europe. Something like Newport would never have happened in any other country, where you have huge palaces, and then about 20 yards away, another huge palace, and 20 yards beyond that another huge palace.
