‘The Gilded Age’ Director Unpacks John’s Shocking Death

(This story contains spoilers from season three, episode six of The Gilded Age.)

It’s hard to believe The Gilded Age is winding down. The latest episode “If You Want to Cook an Omelette” is number six of just eight, yet the drama is not de-escalating — only revving up, especially with the just-in news of a season four renewal.

In the latest episode, Bertha (Carrie Coon) traveled to England to “fix” things for Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) who expressed her unhappiness to her father George (Marlon Spector) who, of course, let his wife have it. Intriguingly, her visit made a huge impact not just on Gladys, but perhaps on how fans view her actions. Could Bertha have been right about Gladys marrying the Duke all along?

Just as Gladys and Hector (Ben Lamb) may be finding their groove towards happy matrimony, there appears to be trouble brewing for Marian (Louisa Jacobson) and Bertha, and George’s son Larry (Harry Richardson) who just became engaged, albeit not publicly. The only problem is Larry doesn’t know it yet. Ada (Cynthia Nixon) is also very active in this episode. Not only does she figure out that the fortune teller is scamming her about her beloved Luke, Agnes (Christine Baranski), in a very touching moment, comforts her sister around her grief. Ada also so kindly helps Jack (Ben Ahlers) recognize and accept his new status in the world.

Meanwhile Peggy’s (Denée Benton) world with potential mother-in-law Mrs. Kirkland, portrayed by the incomparable Phylicia Rashad, is hitting more rough patches. Women’s suffrage is just the latest bump, as LisaGay Hamilton drops in for a guest performance as real-life suffragist and writer Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. The tension, she tells her mother Dorothy (Audra McDonald), can’t make her not love the good Dr. Kirkland (Jordan Donica) and her heart-to-heart with him shows exactly why.

This episode doesn’t bode well for Oscar (Blake Ritson), either. Although he makes a surprising connection with Maud Beaton (Nicole Brydon Bloom), now professionally known as Dolly Trent whom he initially blames for leaving him and his mother Agnes penniless, he loses John Adams (Claybourne Elder), his champion, in a shocking episode-ending turn.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with director Deborah Kampmeier, whose credits also include Brilliant Minds, Star Trek: Picard, FBI: International and Queen Sugar, about all the action and hot takes, as she offers insight into how she landed in The Gilded Age fold.

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How did you become part of The Gilded Age?

I was interviewed when they were looking for a director for season two. I met with the team and was really excited. Season one had just started airing. I had been watching it pretty obsessively, because Morgan Spector was in it, and he had been in a feature I directed (Split, 2016), so I was really engaged already when I had the interview. It was amazing to connect with that team and be able to share my passion for the project and Edith Wharton in that period.

So you did season two, and then are among the only three directors for this amazing season three.

That’s right. I was very excited to go from directing in season two to directing three episodes in season three, and moving away from being a guest director into being part of the family.

The episodes you’ve directed include two, five and six. Share a little bit about your role in directing those episodes? What do they represent in the overall story?

Each episode has its own sort of arc. We have these really fun cliffhangers at the end of each one. Each have ended with a really exciting moment and a turning point. Whether it was at the end of episode two, when suddenly Gladys has been promised to the Duke, or the end of episode five, where we have this huge conflict with Bertha and George, or the end of episode six where John Adams has that horrific accident, they all are building to a moment of conclusion that’s quite dramatic. My job is to follow those arcs and elevate the characters and where we’re leading that in each episode.

Let’s talk about John’s death. It comes out of nowhere. One moment, he and Oscar are talking and are optimistic about everything in Oscar’s life turning around with John’s support. Just as it seems that Oscar will land back on top, the next moment, it’s all gone.

It was a shock when I read it. I remember jumping in my seat and gasping. I wanted to deliver that shock to the audience to experience in the same way. So we devised a shot that would use this high-speed special motion control rig, called the Bolt, that could be programmed and move fast to see the hit of John Adams by the carriage and then circle around and down to reach him when his head hits the ground.

It felt like keeping it all in one shot, rather than in cuts, would feel more real and shocking. Once we got the stunt we liked, in which our actor Clay Elder did the stunt himself in a harness, we could then repeat the exact move and shoot all the other background elements to layer together in post-production. Our visual effects supervisor, Douglas Purver, made it possible to build that moment. We started with a previs (previsualization) of how we would accomplish it, and then the building to the final scene. It (took) a lot of technical elements to make that moment of shock really pop.

It popped.

It’s pretty devastating, right?

Yes. There are quite a few revelatory moments in this episode, with Bertha going to visit Gladys, and seeing Gladys easing into the role that she didn’t want, and the audience perhaps realizing that maybe Bertha was right.

It’s really the most maternal we’ve seen Bertha. I think there’s something very tender about how she guides Gladys into her role as the Duchess, as the woman of the house, into womanhood. We’ve never really seen Bertha do that before, and I think it’s very lovely. Carrie (Coon) plays it so beautifully with Taissa (Farmiga). I just love that moment when Gladys stands up to Lady Sarah (Hattie Morahan), and the play between her and Bertha. The wit she has in that moment, you really see she gets it now. I love what we get to feel between them in this episode.

The way Gladys does that is subtle but yet powerful.

She is suddenly her mother’s daughter in that moment.

This episode also shows George’s empire really being challenged.

I think the game he knows how to play isn’t going the way he’s used to it going, and you see the stress around what’s usually just very intelligent ambition being shaken.

Oscar also confronts Maud.

Blake’s (Ritson who plays Oscar) amazing, and we really wanted to lean into how far can we push the element of danger that he brings into the scene with her. She destroyed his life. So he picked up that candlestick, and we want to feel that he has the potential to kill her. It was really fun with Blake to see, how far can we lean into his rage and see it in a way we haven’t seen it expressed before, that he actually really is undone in this moment? That was a really powerful scene to play with him.

But it has the powerful twist of him displaying kindness?

Which is so beautiful. I think having the juxtaposition of the kindness with how much rage is there really plays beautifully.

In this episode, Jack’s wealth is also revealed to everyone.

That’s such a fun moment when (Mrs.) Bauer accidentally says too much and then turns it around and shares the total number and Bannister (Simon Jones) drops his book and Armstrong (Debra Monk) was speechless. Then I just love how it plays out with Agnes. It is so fun to just watch Christine do her thing in that moment. Just delicious.

Christine Baranski is always exceptional, but poor Agnes has been a hoot. Her one-liners?

They’re zingers, right? And Christine’s a genius at delivering them.

We can’t leave Ada out, especially since she has two very shining moments in this episode. One in her revelation that the gypsy woman is a fraud.

That moment was so painful for Ada. And the way that Cynthia plays Ada, it’s all heart-centered, right? And so you just go on this ride with Ada, of her heart opening so wide in this new hope. In the midst of all of her grieving, to have this hope. That moment of knowing and just the center she plummets into in herself, I found it so powerful and moving and devastating. I think we all are hoping she actually gets to talk to Luke on the other side. I just thought that was brilliantly played the way Cynthia did that.  

And the way Agnes comforts Ada about grieving Luke.

It is such a beautiful and tender moment between the sisters. You feel such a deep love between them. Agnes is so generous and kind to Ada in that moment. I love this side of Agnes that is revealed.

Then there is how Ada handles Jack in getting him to leave the comfort of the house and the life he’s known for the life he now needs to create.

Her strength really lives in her heart. She brings that to everything she does, and so her holding that immaculate space for Jack (Ben Ahlers) to stand up and walk out of the only place he’s known as home. It’s so powerful. She doesn’t have her own children, but it is that moment of, as painful as it is, sending your child off into the world, into their own life. It’s so beautiful what she does for Jack. I also think that that performance there of Ben’s is so poignant as well.

He’s done a really good job of embodying maybe the shock of now being a person of means. We’ve seen the Russells in these last three seasons as new money trying to penetrate that blueblood society. And that’s been a very powerful trajectory. With Jack, it’ll be interesting to see if power corrupts him or will his humble beginnings help him maintain this heart?

He really is the American dream, right? That you can be in America and come from nothing, and through your own creativity and intelligence, and hard work, you can actually rise up through the levels of class in our society. I think there’s something very compelling about Jack that touches a lot of people who watch this show, I think more people who watch this show identify with Jack than with George, right?

The aftermath of Jack leaving and his generosity is so sweet. Mrs. Bauer is just so proud of him.

Well, he carries all their hopes for a future that is better

Back to the matters of the romantic heart, Marian finds out the place of ill repute where Larry encounters Maud Beaton and not the restaurant he shared and is now unsure of him and their engagement. Let’s talk about Marian’s feelings and Louisa Jacobson’s performance of those complicated emotions that go into her ending their engagement, though he doesn’t know it yet.

Louisa’s performance, this arc she carries from episode five into six, where she’s so open hearted and just this incredible feeling of hope that happens around this engagement I think we’ve all been waiting for, and then that feeling of betrayal and the closing of her heart. I think she plays that move from open to close heart so beautifully. She carries with her a lot of baggage that you know she reveals to Peggy. We’ve all seen the number of times these men have broken her heart, so I think she jumps to a conclusion that we’re all wishing she wouldn’t jump to because of not just being lied to, but because what that means to her from all of the experiences she’s carried with her into this moment.

And that process of carrying baggage is very relatable today. When Marian is venting to Peggy, Peggy is kind of in this whirlwind that is also relatable because of the good Dr. Kirkland showing up.

We like Dr. Kirkland.

Yes, we do. Give us some insight into that moment of Peggy explaining her relationship with Mr. Fortune (Sullivan Jones) to him.

There’s been this build-up to that moment from the confrontation at the train station. But they’re very mature. They’re adults. They’ve both been through life, right? Like Peggy has been through a lot of life. I think there’s a maturity in their relationship. I also think there’s a vulnerability that they’re both willing to go to face what could be a big conflict for another couple, right? And so Peggy bringing it to Dr Kirkland, and Dr Kirkland saying, you know what, I don’t need to know everything, I think it’s such a beautiful, mature moment between them.

The show also tackles a big historic topic with women’s suffrage. In this episode, it becomes a backdrop to deepen the tension between Mrs. Kirkland and Peggy. But what comes to a head between the two of them also reveals a debate of the times with Mrs. Kirkland’s very subtle intersection of talking about women’s suffrage as a whole but also boiling it down to a very specific topic for Black American women in, do they support the vote for Black men and wait for themselves and all women to vote? Which is a very hard thing to do. And you, as a director, have been charged with capturing the broad coalition of women but also the specificity of Black women.

I think one of the biggest problems with the suffrage movement is how white women purposely excluded Black women following this false narrative that the inclusion of Black women would harm the movement. I just love how The Gilded Age has given the responsibility of telling the stories of real historical figures like Francis Ellen Watkins Harper and the obstacles Black women faced in trying to get the vote to Sonja Warfield and Erica Armstrong Dunbar. My job is to honor their writing and (research) and hold space for these extraordinary Black actresses — Phylicia, Audra, LisaGay Hamilton, Denée — to give voice to their characters. I am just holding the space and witnessing these women speak these stories. How powerful it was to be in the room as these stories resonated through these great actresses.

Then there is the beautiful exchange between Peggy and her mom Dorothy (Audra McDonald) when they speak about how insufferable Mrs. Kirkland is, and Dorothy asks Peggy if she’s ready for that, and Peggy just melting into the depths of feeling she has for this man.

As Peggy’s mother, she feels that heart of Peggy with her own heart, and understands from her relationship with Arthur what that means to choose love over possibly a difficult relationship with family and in-laws.

And, finally, Larry has been on quite the journey professionally and personally this season that will really unfold next episode. Or at least we hope.

(Laughs.) No spoilers. I do think there’s a beautiful way in which he’s following his own inner compass and intuition about how to pursue these things. I want to pursue this clock with Jack, and it’s successful. I want to pursue exploring if these mines have copper, not just getting the land for the railroad, and that unfolds as a big success for him as well. And I think that’s a really powerful thing we’re seeing unfolding in Larry is his trust in himself and his ambition separate from his father’s.

Between season two and three, Larry has become far more confident and is very clear about the things he wants to accomplish. And even he is astonished at how good he is in business.

And it’s so fun when he stands up to his father and George is chuckling. Larry is like “What?” and he says “I’m always surprised when I see myself in you.” And it’s really true that Larry has grown up into a man.

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The last two episodes of The Gilded Age’s third season continue weekly through Aug. 10, streaming on HBO Max. Read THR’s season coverage.