When Glamour first interviewed Denée Benton about playing Peggy Scott on The Gilded Age, before season one had even aired or the show became the pop-culture phenomenon it is today, she called the role a “manifestation” of everything she’d been dreaming of.
If only she’d known then what was still to come: After two seasons spent unearthing the character’s tragic backstory, grieving the death of her son, and narrowly avoiding an affair with her married editor, Peggy Scott got something of a glow-up in season three. Her clothes and mood are lighter, her career is taking off, and she’s found love with Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica), a handsome doctor from a well-to-do family who genuinely supports her ambition. Of course, this being The Gilded Age, their romance isn’t without some drama—mainly in the form of his disapproving mother, played by Phylicia Rashad.
But then! In the season-three finale—spoiler—Dr. Kirkland finally stands up to his mother and decides to put his and Peggy’s happiness first with a proposal. He gets down on one knee at a ball, in the kind of big, public romantic gesture that feels like a dream. Or maybe put another way, a manifestation.
“Jordan just handled it so beautifully, and I was able to feel so deeply how Peggy would feel,” Benton tells me about filming the scene. “It also felt like a moment that was bigger than me. I know how I would’ve felt watching a scene like that growing up, and seeing someone who looked like me inside of that moment. So it was infused with all the emotion of that too.”
Ahead, we asked Benton all about Peggy’s main-character moment, what she hopes to see for the character in the (now confirmed) Gilded Age season four, and so much more. Read on.
Glamour: I have to tell you, this has been my favorite season yet of The Gilded Age. Peggy in particular has gotten some really juicy storylines. How did this season feel differently for you compared to the past?
Denée Benton: I feel like our show has all always been a slow burn of us just kind of building and not knowing if audiences were going to stick with us. We joke, with our castmates, we’re always like, “I think we’re the last to know we’re on a hit show.” We just had no clue until this season, getting to really interact with everyone. And so, it feels really special that Peggy’s sort of blossoming and her arrival to taking a bit more center stage is happening in conjunction with the show’s arrival and feeling like it’s broken out, in a way. I’m just thankful. It’s kind of rare for a third season of a show to be the one that everyone’s talking about.
You’ve had time to build the foundation of the characters. Now, we’re invested.
People are so proud of Peggy. I’ve gotten picked up on the street by aunties and uncles, who aren’t my aunties and uncles, but it feels like surrogates. I’m letting the love sweep me away, which is nice.
Before you started filming this season, what were some initial thoughts? Did you have any input into Peggy’s journey and where she’s going?
Season one was really us advocating to make sure that the infrastructure of the show made it so that I didn’t necessarily have to have a lot of feedback on every script. That was part of getting Sonja Warfield, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar to be executive producers alongside Julian Fellowes and Michael Engler. So by the time we got to season three, I’ve gotten to be pleasantly surprised and be on the ride with everyone else. And I was so thrilled to learn about the way we were going to go to Newport and how they were expanding the Black elite houses. We have the Russells and the Van Rhijns and the Scotts, but now we have the Astors and the Kirklands and all these kind of parallels.
And I was excited to see Peggy giggle and fall in love and see her lightness, because she’s carried a lot of the weight in seasons one and two. The other characters were talking about spoons and placements, while Peggy was grieving her child. So it’s been fun to see her go on a date on a promenade.
In the finale, she has a big moment with a romantic proposal at the ball. It was everything you want in a period romance, with Prince Charming swooping in.
Yes, with the slow motion. It’s like suspended in time. She really gets to be a Jane Austen character in that moment. I think it’s a rite of passage for any period drama ingenue or leading lady, and Peggy hadn’t gotten to have her moment just yet. So getting to see her have that this season felt like.… I was cheering too. I was like, “Hell, yeah. Peggy, go take your moment.”
How was it filming that scene?
The ballroom days were like 20-hour days. They’re really involved, meticulous orchestrations of every department pulling off these moments. You really feel like you’ve been in a three-day play production. Jordan and I got engaged probably, I don’t know, 73 times that day? We were getting that moment from every different angle, but every time felt special.
The crew guys were crying, Audra [McDonald] and John [Douglas Thompson], everyone just was.… Jordan [Donica] just handled it so beautifully, and I was able to feel so deeply how Peggy would feel. It also felt like a moment that was bigger than me. I know how I would’ve felt watching a scene like that growing up, and seeing someone who looked like me inside of that moment. So it was infused with all the emotion of that too.
Tell me about working with Jordan. He came in as a new leading character in an established crew and cast. How did you guys build that relationship and chemistry working together?
It was so easy and special. We have such great chemistry. We did Into the Woods together before it transferred to Broadway, so we were already sort of in community in that way. He folded in so seamlessly, and I think we both are just kind of big-hearted tenderonis and felt really excited about the legacy we were holding by bringing characters like Dr. Kirkland and Peggy Scott to the mainstream in this way, into pop culture. Every time we worked together really did feel like a celebration. Almost like, “Oh my God, we’re getting to do this, and this is going to matter.”
The storyline I found most compelling this season was the parallels and differences between Mrs. Kirkland and Peggy. Dr. Kirkland has such a strong-willed mother, and he’s fallen in love with Peggy, who is a strong woman herself. Yet the two are at odds. What about that storyline was most interesting to play for you?
Obviously, Mrs. Kirkland and Peggy have such different political views, but they really are women who are holding together and pushing forward the society that they’re a part of. I think that’s what attracts Dr. Kirkland to Peggy. It’s funny that he kind of keeps putting his mom in these situations too.
It seems almost a bit naive that he’s like, “She’ll come to the suffragette tea and totally be fine.”
Or like he gets a kick out of it, showing Peggy off. I think he’s just really proud of her, and that’s maybe a part of what makes Peggy fall in love with him—she sees how much pride he takes in her work.
How was it filming with Phylicia Rashad as Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkland?
A master class. I mean, they’re like the best living actors of our time, and when you work with them, you see why. It’s the commitment, the way she drops in immediately. And also her context—she really is a living historian. It’s kind of the great equalizer that we are all truly just theater nerds who want to geek out about the craft and what the characters are going through and the dynamics. We spoke so much about colorism and the ways it showed up in her life growing up, and the ways that it even shows up with me being chosen to play Peggy. It was a lot of enriching, artistic conversations off the screen as well.
Is there anything specific you learned from her that you’re going to take with you to season four?
I spoke about this a bit in another interview, but she really contextualized for me the legacy that I was walking in. I got to ask her who she fell out about getting to work with, because I was falling out about working with Audra [McDonald]. And Audra talked about falling out getting to work with Phylicia for the first time, and Phylicia talked about working with Diahann Carroll. Diahann Carroll was the first Black woman to really be number one on a call sheet on television and also played a character who wasn’t a domestic worker and was the highest-rated woman on television. The next woman to hold that title would be Phylicia Rashad. And so, it felt like this direct line and like they’re all different versions of Peggy. It deepened even more my pride for getting to be the vessel for who she is.
What are you hoping to see continue with Peggy’s story in season four?
Peggy is the American girl of my dreams. It’s like, we had Addy, but Addy did not get the shine she deserved. Peggy is our multihyphenate writer, she’s an activist, she’s a creative, she’s a journalist—she’s all the things. I love that within all of that, we’re getting to see her be just a girl. So, I want her big juicy wedding episode. I want her to keep having her sweeping, majestic Jane Austen moments. I’m excited about a wedding episode and how they’ll fold it in and if it’ll match up with the Larian [Larry and Marian] wedding, if they figure out their love story. We’ve got to get Marian back in a place of trust with her man! But I am excited for all of the ways that Peggy gets to keep integrating her softness.
I noticed that in her style this season too.
There was more light, there was color, there was vibrant…like the poppy-red dress on the cliff walk.
Did you have a favorite scene to film this season?
Honestly, the cliff walk was so beautiful to film, seeing all of those costumes and imagining what it was like to see in 1883, what it would’ve been like to see all these different Black people from that time having a picnic on the cliff walk.
And I loved filming the ball. The ball felt like a culmination of six years of dreaming, so every day felt like a victory, like, “Yes, we did it.” We have made it so this is one of the great kingdoms of the Gilded Age, in the way that Game of Thrones had all of these different lands, and we got to take up that space. That was special.
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Do you have any little rituals or things that help you get into the Peggy mindset?
It’s interesting. As actors, we were given such juicy stuff to work with on this show. We have really specific dialects, and the costumes are so specific that they do so much of the work. As soon as I have my first session for the season with our dialect coach and lace up the corset, I’m really in.
But I also have had the same notebook, this prop that I’ve had since season one, that Peggy takes all of her notes in when she’s working for Mrs. Van Rhijn and when she’s on her journalism bag. So I can look back to season one and see different notes I’ve taken the whole time. It’s been fun to track things that way. Some of it is beautiful character development, and some of it is just chaotic doodles.
Do you think Peggy’s going to leave her job with Mrs. Van Rhijn behind when she marries?
I’m so curious. I’m so curious about how those worlds are going to intertwine. I don’t know. I truly don’t know what the Van Rhijn household will look like for Peggy after she gets married, or if she’ll move back to Brooklyn, and what will still bring their worlds together. Will it just be truly a choice of friendship between her and Marian? And will we get to see the Van Rhijns choose to continue to have Peggy be a part of their community? Maybe Peggy will keep her day job, because she’s like, “Listen, men have let me down before, and I’m going to keep my bag.”
Now that Mrs. Van Rhijn has the historical society, she might be busy and need help.
Right, exactly. Peggy might be her co-chair, who knows. It’ll be interesting, her being a married woman in society now and all of the different things that comes with it.
Has doing the show and learning about the history behind your character, the influences that have come into creating her, sent you down any rabbit holes? Is there something where you’ve gone off to do more research just because it’s been so interesting to you? At least, that’s how I would be if I were on the show.
The introduction of The Globe was such a special victory for the show, because I’ve gotten to learn about how vital the role of Black journalism was in all of the liberation movements at that time. Because you had this community of free people, and then you also had the integration of people who were emancipated, there was a different level in literacy. And so, a lot of these publications would host read-ins where they would invite people from the community who weren’t literate, and they would read together what was happening in the community and what was happening regionally and what movements they were fighting for. I thought that was really special. That was in one of the books that I read about this time—that The Globe would host read-ins—and I thought that was powerful.
Looking ahead to season four, besides seeing Peggy as a married woman, are there any other storylines with her career that you hope to see?
I think it would be really amazing to get to see Peggy have a book release. She really is a working Brooklyn artist; Peggy’s sort of an amalgamation of a few different characters of that time. She’s a bit of Ida B. Wells, but she’s also a bit of Julia C. Collins, who was the first Black woman to publish a novel. She’s also a little bit of Philip White’s daughter, who was having her big coming-out ball at that time. I think it would be amazing to see Peggy do a book tour, or what a version of that would’ve been for that time. She starts writing in season one, up in her room at the Van Rhijn’s house, essays for her novel. So I think it would be cool to see it all come together, and the precedent for like, “Well, what do we do with this woman who’s trying to go on a book tour and her husband’s a doctor….”
Right. It ends up with his mother as her chaperone.
Can you imagine? And then Mrs. Kirkland completely drinks the Kool-Aid.
It’s like a buddy road-trip comedy, suddenly.
Or the odd couple. I can see it.
For the other characters on the show, any storylines from this season that you loved as a fan?
Oh, God. I hate that George and Bertha are fighting. I hate it. I love them so much. I know Bertha’s toxic, but I love her. Her voice, Carrie’s voice as Bertha, “George.” It’s so delicious and hot. And then, we all know that Morgan is the perfect railroad man. They are the characters that I watch purely as a fan. When Larry and George were staying at the club, I was like, “But Bertha’s at the house by herself!” I also loved the moment where Bertha and Gladys got to finally become allies. I thought that was special.
Hot off the buzzy third season of The White Lotus, Coon returns to the screen as Bertha Russell in The Gilded Age.
It’s been such a rich season, so I’m excited that we get a season four and what comes.
Thank you. I’m excited too. It feels like we’re the big little show that could. Obviously, not little at all, but every season, especially coming out during a pandemic, during a strike, we just haven’t known. Now it feels like it’s really kind of taken its place in the culture.
Has there been a noticeable shift in people coming up to you, recognizing you?
Yeah, it was always kind of giving, “If you know, you know.” I would get stopped every once in a while, but now I get stopped almost every day in New York. They gush, but then they actually really just want to gossip about the show. That’s the difference. It’s not like, “Oh my God, it’s Denée Benton!” They’re like, “Girl, what is Peggy going to do? She needs to talk to Marian.…” They really are locked in. This is what it must’ve been like when people were watching Dynasty and ER and had these communal moments.
