The Gilded Age Season 2 Episode 7 “Wonders Never Cease” came with some literal fireworks. While poor Luke Forte (Robert Sean Leonard) passed away in bed on 61st Street, the rest of the show’s cast was partying like it was 1883. That’s because last night’s installment of HBO‘s The Gilded Age celebrated the opening of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge. The Russells might have had VIP seats on Emily Roebling‘s (Liz Wisan) front porch, but the best party scene was definitely the Scott family’s Brooklyn roof party. Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) not only got to serve in an outrageously gorgeous butterfly-themed gown, but she also hobnobbed with her parents’ fellow Black elites.
One of the most fascinating things about HBO’s The Gilded Age is the way it constantly insists upon weaving real American history into the soap opera drama. In the second season alone, we’ve seen how Caroline “Lina” Astor’s (Donna Murphy) snobbery helped fuel the creation of the Metropolitan Opera House, met the woman behind the Brooklyn Bridge’s success, and discovered that, yes, Oscar Wilde’s (Jordan Sebastian Walle) first play was a total flop. (The celebrated wit would later find much more success writing comedies instead of dramas; go figure.) However the place where history feels the most exciting in the series is in Peggy Scott’s storyline.
Through Peggy Scott, showrunners Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield are able to explore an underrepresented side of American history: the sophistication of the Gilded Age Black elites…
“My character is actually based on the Philip White family, which was a black pharmacist family in Brooklyn,” Gilded Age star Denée Benton told the audience at a recent HBO/Metropolitan Opera event Decider attended. “There’s a party scene at the end of this season that is based on the coming out that they had for their daughter, and our own Black elite society parties.”
The party Benton referred to was, indeed, the Brooklyn Bridge rooftop party in last night’s episode. While it’s not technically Peggy’s coming out party, the setting does allow her mother Dorothy (Audra McDonald) a chance to advise her daughter on her personal life. You know, all while both women are dressed head-to-toe in dazzling outfits.
“I think Audra and all of us were really excited to get to step into that world because none of us have really seen it very often,” Benton said. “There was so much more precedent than I think any of us expected. There was a book, Black Gotham, that was really helpful in all of that study.”
In fact, Benton also discussed just how much history influenced Peggy Scott’s Gilded Age Season 2 storyline. She talked about how earlier this season, Peggy traveled south to meet Booker T. Washington (Michael Braugher) — “Peggy thinks she’s maybe going on a history field trip and gets met with some brutal reality” — and how now she’s hobnobbing with Sarah Garnet (Melanie Nicholls-King).
“We also get to meet Sarah Garnet, who was a huge public school advocate in New York, who was a black seamstress in Brooklyn. We get to really see some of her advocacy work,” Benton said.
However, it also surfaced during that Gilded Age/Met Opera event that the reality of history has actually stymied at least one Peggy Scott storyline in the show. Namely, her budding flirtation with boss T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones). The two shared a kiss in Tuskegee, but it’s a romance that’s not to be…because of history.
“I think that Julian and Sonja kind of dreamt that Peggy and Thomas Fortune would be able to actually have a longer love story. And then we ran into the fact that he was actually married at that time. And so they were like, ‘Oh, no!'” Benton said. “But I think it created a nice tension and drama for Peggy’s character this season, to not be so perfect and get to make mistakes and see her humanity a bit.”
“I think they were hoping that we’d get to run off into the sunset, but history and Google [had other plans].”
Let’s hope Peggy Scott’s next suitor gets a full background search on Wikipedia before Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield start typing their scripts…