‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2 Begins Production — See First Set Photo

Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector as Bertha and George Russell in The Gilded Age Season 1 Episode 5
Alison Cohen Rosa/HBO

The Gilded Age Season 2 has officially started production. HBO shared the update on Monday, May 16, along with the first look photo of Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector as Bertha Russell and George Russell.

“The rumors are true. #GildedAgeHBO has begun production on Season 2,” HBO tweeted Monday. The photo shows Coon and Spector in the Russell mansion. Coon wears a white, striped ruffled dress opposite Spector, who dons a navy blue suit. Two crew members are seen catching the moment on camera. Season 2 will film in New York state and Rhode Island.

“The Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of huge fortunes made and lost, and of fierce rivalry between old money and new,” the Season 2 logline teases. “Nowhere is that rivalry more apparent than on East 61st Street, where Marian Brook and her thoroughly old money aunts, Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook, live opposite the stupendously rich George and Bertha Russell.”

“The Russells are both fiercely ambitious, he financially, she socially, and they are determined to reach the highest echelons of New York,” it continues. “Meanwhile in Brooklyn, Marian’s friend and confidant Peggy Scott forges her own path in the world of the Black elite. In this glittering world on the brink of the modern age, will the established rules of society prevail, or will the game change entirely?”

The Gilded Age Season 2 picks up where Season 1 left off. And with a litany of new cast members joining the cast (most of them keeping with the show’s trend of hiring Broadway actors), Season 2 of the the Julian Fellowes drama is bound to be filled with the campy, low-stakes high-society drama fans have come to love.

Laura Benanti (Life & Beth) and Robert Sean Leonard (Dead Poets SocietyHouse) have been cast in recurring roles in The Gilded Age Season 2. Benanti will play Susan Blane, a woman “recently widowed by a rich, dull man many years her senior,” per to the character description. Susan is a beautiful, glamorous woman from Newport who hires Bertha and George’s son, Larry Russell (Harry Richardson), as her architect.

Leonard will play Reverend Matthew Forte, “a jovial, congenial man, and recent transplant from Boston.” He is the new rector of high society’s most popular church.

Other new cast members for The Gilded Age Season 2 include Christopher Denham, David Furr, Ben Lamb, Matilda Lawler, Dakin Matthews, Michael Braugher, and Nicole Brydon Bloom, with Rebeca Haden, who will return in an expanded recurring role.

Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Louisa JacobsonDenée BentonBlake RitsonTaissa Farmiga, Simon JonesHarry Richardson, and Jack Gilpin return as series regulars in Season 2 with Coon and Spector. Kelli O’Hara, Donna MurphyDebra Monk, Kristine Nielsen, Taylor Richardson, Ben Ahlers, Kelley CurranDouglas Sills, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Michael Cerveris, Erin Wilhelmi, Patrick Page, and Sullivan Jones have been bumped to series regulars. And Nathan LaneAudra McDonaldJohn Douglas Thompson, Ashlie Atkinson, Claybourne Elder, and Ward Horton will return in their recurring roles.

The Gilded Age is created, written, and executive produced by Fellowes (Downton Abbey). Gareth Neame directs and executive produces Season 2. Michael Engler, David Crockett, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and Bob Greenblatt also executive produce. Sonja Warfield serves as writer and co-executive producer, and Erica Dunbar also co-executive produces. The series is a co-production between HBO and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.

The Gilded Age Season 2, Premiere Date TBA, HBO