(upbeat pop music)
- [Christine] New York is a collection of villages.
The old have been in charge since before the revolution,
until the new people invaded.
- [Tamsen] HBO's "The Gilded Age" features a who's who
of Tony Award-winning Broadway stars
including Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon
and Kelli O'Hara.
Let's send it out to Paul Wontorek.
- You've done a lot in your career,
but I feel like this is the first time
you've been a part of a TV show
that everyone is sort of talking about every week
and it's building buzz and it really,
it's kind of like, part of the conversation,
the what we used to call, the water cooler conversation,
Right? - Right, right.
- Well, you know,
I don't let myself get too big-headed
about that 'cause I think,
is it what everyone's talking about or just our community?
Because it is packed full with all of our friends, right?
- But the ratings are there,
people are eating up "The Gilded Age"
I mean, there's something about this show
that people are really ready for this story right now.
- You know, as we were unfolding the script last,
in the last two years really,
I started to think, "Oh, it's grossly timely."
You're right about not being part of that type of thing.
In most of my career, you know,
Broadway has been and theater is
and will always be sort of my main love,
but I cannot tell you what a gift this has been,
not only because it is something
that we were able to do over this pandemic,
but also because I feel like
it's like this part of theater as well
and yet it's a television show.
That's what it felt like in a way,
it was all my friends.
For the first time I sort of felt like
I fit in, in a television show,
where I usually, when I do TV I'm always like,
this is, you know, foreign territory
and this time it felt really at home.
So it was great.
- We know that you know how to rock a period gown.
You've done that before.
We've seen that many times on Broadway.
So, let's talk about Aurora.
She, we don't love her right off the bat.
She's icy, she's a society lady.
She is not welcoming necessarily
but I feel like I'm seeing little hints
that she might warm up a little.
- You know, it's so funny with television
and episodic television.
It's not like theater or a play.
It's not where you have this arc and you go in
and you know the backstory and you know the ending.
We are living moments in this show
and so I don't, I cannot tell you honestly
what they intended for Aurora, but what I know
is what I want for Aurora, you know,
we put it upon ourselves to sort of
build that as we play it
and my hope and my fantasy is that as he's writing it
which he was writing it as we shot, you know,
we didn't have all of this, the episodes of the 10 episodes.
- [Paul] Right.
- But they start to,
that they start to see something
that might just live on the edge a little bit
for this society woman
because I want her to have that
but I really desperately want, as we go forward,
for Aurora to be surprising and not just typical,
I don't want that.
- You called the wrong number.
You have to call back (gun firing) (Kelli gasps)
- [Phone] Help, tell her.
- I feel like "The Accidental Wolf"
was sort of a great bridge, right?
Between your theater work and now your TV work
and because that started as a short film,
and now you're about to shoot a third season, right?
Of this show now.
- I think the gift that Arian Moayed gave me
from that we did "King Lear" together, it was 2012.
He didn't know me as a musical theater person.
He'd never seen me in a musical, never heard me sing
and so, those little things that happen in life,
where you just come across somebody
who's willing to make all these efforts towards something
and I learned so much about camera.
I learned so much about, you know,
being on set and in those spaces,
it's almost like I need,
I had to have that before I could have anything else
and he, the fact that they're happening
at the same time now being, you know,
this is season number two is released at the same time
and to be honest, we've shot season three
and it's my favorite.
It really has been an enormous gift
that I don't think was an accident.
- You recently shared a photo
of you in "Follies" that I loved
of you as one of the show girls in "Follies."
What do you think when you look back at that girl
and how much that girl's been able to accomplish
in these 20 years?
- You're a good, you're good at your job.
I just almost got a little tear in my eye.
When you look back at that girl.
I had no idea what my future was in this town.
I had come out of my first Broadway show pretty down.
It was not what I expected
and then I joined this group
of really, really beautiful people
and I just remember thinking, if it's like this,
I am more, I am everything I risked
and everything I sacrificed, leaving my family
and having no connections,
it's all happening right here
and if I have, never have anything else, that's okay
and I didn't even understand when we were not a success.
I didn't even understand
because to me it was the most beautiful experience
of my life.
- [Tamsen] And we can also tell you,
HBO has just picked up "The Gilded Age" for a second season.
New episodes from season one are streaming now
on HBO Max with the season one finale airing March 21st.
(upbeat music)