SPOILER ALERT! This story contains details from the latest episode of The Gilded Age titled “If You Want To Cook an Omelette.”
So much for a breezy and joy-filled engagement!
During a conversation with the footman Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers), Marian (Louisa Jacobson) discovers that her fiancé Larry (Harry Richardson) may have left out key details about his evening out on the town.
When she discovers that Larry had actually visited a house of ill repute, she makes the hasty decision to end their engagement via a Dear John letter while Larry is off in Arizona making deals to save the family business. Here, Louisa Jacobson explains her character’s impulsive behavior and how she ultimately persuaded the writers to better explain why Marian chose to end it with her dapper neighbor.
DEADLINE Let’s start right off with Marian’s decision to call off the engagement. Does she fully believe Larry had sex in that place?
LOUISA JACOBSON Yes. She fully believes that. It was a challenging track for me because the audience is ahead of me and already knows that he hadn’t done anything. So Marian doesn’t know. Her only solution was to double down on the fact that any woman in her situation would assume that’s what happened, because that’s what happened at those places. Men would engage in behavior with sex workers. I did some research and the American Health Association, which had just sort of begun around that time, issued a statement about the dangers of what they called social diseases or venereal diseases, and the dangers of men bringing them into the home. That was an issue that was coming about at the time. And so I thought, oh, wow, it’s not just a jealousy issue. This is a health issue for Marian. Her health is directly implicated. If Larry did this, if he went to that place, he engaged in that behavior and who knows what he could be bringing home?
DEADLINE That’s understandable.
LOUISA JACOBSON I think it’s also unfair. I think that men and women at the time, because of patriarchy and the rigid rules that everyone had to abide by at that time, men and women both suffered. And I think that men, in a book that I read called Gay New York, men often went downtown to places like the Haymarket and around the Bowery to escape from these rigid marriages and whatever that they didn’t want to be in. They had the ability to go and do that. It was very frowned upon for a woman. I mean, some upper class women would tour these places for fun with their male counterparts, but it really wasn’t proper for a woman like Marian to be seen down at the Haymarket. So it’s not like she had an outlet to get away from the pressures of society. There were no bars for her to go to or anything. So I think that’s also where the frustration comes from for her.
DEADLINE And he did it on the night they were engaged!
LOUISA JACOBSON That added to all these things that collectively make a perfect storm for her to be like, I can’t do this. At the heart of it, I think, is trust issues that have arisen from her past with her father who died. He left nothing for her. He had lied to her, and she found out that her childhood home she grew up in was rented. After that, I think because of the vulnerable situation she found herself in, she was susceptible to falling for men who were rakes. So I think that she has a lot to fear when it comes to making a commitment to a man. On top of that, the fact that Larry lied, it is assumed that he wanted to keep something from Marian that he was ashamed of. So that gave her further evidence of like, ‘okay, you lied, so that means you did something wrong, and this is what men did at these places.’
DEADLINE What was your reaction when you first read this in the script? Did you worry that today’s viewers would think that Marian was overreacting?
LOUISA JACOBSON Yeah, absolutely. It was the biggest challenge for me. And I knew that most of the audience would feel this way, so I actually advocated for more. The writers were very receptive to my thoughts. The scenes that I pushed for [gave] specific reasons as to why Marian did this and what the root of it is so that we don’t just write her off as a prudish, jealous person. It really has to be seen in the context of the time and as a trauma fear response. She thinks it’s a logical decision, but it’s not a logical decision. It is an emotional decision. But that was a big challenge. We see Marian as this person who is not judgmental of many people that she comes across. She’s very open-hearted. She doesn’t judge a book by its cover. She’s sort of, I don’t know, just very understanding.
DEADLINE How does Bertha feels about Marian? Does she dismiss her because she sees her as poor?
LOUISA JACOBSON Yeah, I think she sees her as poor. She’s orphaned, so she doesn’t have impressive parents or parentage. She has her aunt, but Agnes lost all her money. Ada has money now, but they’re not necessarily what Bertha has in mind for progress. They’re old money. That’s not quite impressive enough for Bertha’s standards. Until she gets to know me, I think she doesn’t really know me very well.
DEADLINE And Agnes? How does Marian feels about her?
LOUISA JACOBSON I think Marian knows that Agnes is fully in her ways. Marian can’t change a person if they’re that far along in their life. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I guess. But I think Marian understands Agnes’s core values. Agnes is pro women’s suffrage. I think that that is something that Marian admires and is surprised by, as we see in episode one. I think that Agnes has been proven right these few times with Marian’s love interests. I mean, maybe not about Larry because he didn’t do anything wrong, but whatever. I think Marian is coming to the point where she’s like, maybe I actually do trust Agnes’s judgment. Maybe life would be simpler if I just trusted Agnes’s judgment as opposed to going my own way. Because going my own way has led me to get involved with these men who lie to me or fall short of my expectations.
