Spoilers for The Gilded Age season three, episode six, “If You Want to Cook an Omelette.”
Does it count as the “bury your gays” trope if the gay guy gets hurt in a stunty manner? This week on The Gilded Age, the answer is a resounding, “Go for the slay slaying.” Oscar Van Rhijn, played by Blake Ritson, has had a close relationship with John Adams (Claybourne Elder) since the show’s start. They begin the series as lovers, and this season, John bails Oscar out of ruin. However, in the final moments of episode six, after Oscar offers his heartfelt thanks to John for the first time and gazes longingly at him as he walks away, Oscar watches his former lover get smashed by a horse-drawn carriage and flop unceremoniously onto the New York sidewalk. It’s insane.
It follows an already eventful episode for Oscar, who faced Maud Beaton for the first time since she ran off with all his family’s money last season. The Van Rhijns got bailed out, ultimately, by a death in the family (thanks, Reverend Forte!), but Oscar’s spent the season in shame regardless. When Maud pops up working in a brothel, Oscar learns she had to turn over all the money to her employer and is also penniless. And so Oscar, in a shocking display of kindness, bails her out with a one-way ticket out of town. Ritson sees a poignant connection between the big developments in Oscar’s life this episode. “His kindness to Maud is an act of redemption for him, which allows him to cast himself as the hero of his own narrative once again,” Ritson says. “Oscar learned the power of such a magnanimous gesture from John Adams throwing him a lifeline when his own prospects were so utterly bleak.”
Okay, we gotta start with the carriage. What did you think when you first read the scene?
There is a strange confluence of art and life when someone dies on a show, because it has ramifications and repercussions in the real world. Fundamentally, you won’t be working opposite this actor anymore. We started this show nearly six years ago, and Clay’s become a dear friend, so there’s an element of genuine sadness because these two characters will never interact anymore. In a way, though, that echoes Oscar’s own vision of his future self with John being cut short so dramatically and abruptly.
How was it to react to the carriage crash as an actor?
A lot of what you see is done with CGI. I’d seen a temp version of the carriage accident, but you don’t know how definitively final that is going to look when you’re shooting it. One could be struck by a carriage and survive or not. It’s not quite as dramatic as being struck by a Lamborghini.
Obviously it’s a terrible thing and the timing of the accident is disastrous for Oscar, but also kind of brilliant. It’s pure drama. The accident occurs seconds after the apotheosis of their relationship. John has completely saved him, restored his fortune, his reputation, and his self-worth. In a way they’ve never been closer, and Oscar has never been more in awe of John or seen more clearly what a beautiful soul he possesses. Their final interaction the moment before the accident is the closest Oscar has ever come to saying, I love you. And then it’s all snatched away. There’s something very poetic in the timing of it.
It played to me like he said Oscar’s version of “I love you,” anyway.
We don’t normally hear from Oscar in that way. John Adams openly says, “I love you” on multiple occasions, sometimes even in public. But Oscar never articulates this openly back to John. He’s far more circumspect. It’s easier for Oscar to see their interactions as transactional rather than a real, deep relationship, which would distort his perception of himself. You see his inclination to express more bubbling towards the surface. It’s kind of exciting to play.
Have you seen the official version yet?
I have, I think, seen the official version. I think the CGI wasn’t completely finished when I saw it, but I believe I’ve seen pretty much the finished version.
How did you feel watching it?
It is just horrendous. I mean, it’s brilliantly done and I think they’ve done a fantastic job with it. But it is heart wrenching to see a character so abruptly taken away, and I hope the audience will feel as ambushed as Oscar does. The pure unpredictability of fate handing this awful hand.
Do you think it’s possible for Oscar to fall in love with someone again?
He’s definitely entering a period of deep mourning and grief, and not to give too much away of where we’re going, but obviously he has to metabolize this grief in private because it’s such an unacknowledged part of his life, which makes it doubly tormenting. He would need to heal before embarking on a deep relationship again.
Seeing Oscar for three seasons now, I’m not like, Well, that guy’s going to be good at healing.
No. I’ve always tried to play Oscar affecting a veneer of breeziness with John Adams, keeping those big deep feelings swirling around somewhere just beneath the surface. He’s very socially adept, so he’s got an array of masks for every social event, but there’s a lot going on within him. He’s quite a troubled soul.
A lot happens to Oscar this episode, so let’s backtrack. Were you expecting Maud Beaton to return?
I really hoped she’d come back because I absolutely adored working with Nicole Brydon Bloom. There’s so much meat in that storyline. It comes from a place of such intense personal anguish and guilt that’s been stewing and fermenting for the whole first half of the season.
It’s worth contextualizing the depth of his misery. Some of this comes from social pressures, which were infinitely more exact in the 1880s than they are today. Oscar has a very keen sense of his principle responsibility in life. He says in season one that he has no choice but to be the torch bearer of the house of Van Rhijn. His family arrived in the 17th century. His father helped set up the United Manhattan Trust in 1797. Oscar’s role is to keep the house running indefinitely, expand their dwindling finances, and as the sole child, one day to produce an heir. He has failed dismally in this duty with Maud’s disappearance. He’s failed to find a wife for the second time, and this time instead of expanding their finances, he’s ruined them, leaving his prospect in tatters. Agnes explicitly says, “You’ve thrown away the work of centuries.” His bank balance is very directly linked to his sense of self-worth.
When he goes to approach Maud initially, what do you think he expects to get out of it?
I don’t think he knows. I was really keen, when we discussed the scene with Nicole and Deborah Kampmeier, the director of that episode, that we make it as dangerous and unpredictable as possible. Oscar is so self-possessed, and to play him very close to losing control entirely and doing something terrible is really fun. In fact, I had the idea on the day of him picking up some weighty object early in the scene, conceivably to be used as a weapon. I discussed this with Deborah and the producers on the day, and they liked the idea. The props department came up with a whole table of potential murder weapons. We opted for a gilded candlestick in the end, and then we did takes where the physical threat of the object was implied to different degrees. The fact that he ultimately tries to save Maud rather than cudgel her feels quite mythological. The two paths he could have taken, the light and the dark, both seem equally possible.
How did he arrive at helping her?
I love the fact that Oscar does something so wholly unexpected, this act of pure generosity where there’s no financial upside for him. It is something of a turning point for him. He’s looking for personal reconciliation with Maud and to test whether there was a genuine friendship underpinning their past relationship or whether it was all an act from her side. Oscar is honoring the commitment he would’ve made to Maud had they got married, to try to make her happy.
Is there a chance that Maud Beaton is getting one over on him again?
If we get to season four, I hope they interact more. Their dynamic is fantastic and I love those scenes. Every take evolves its own rhythm and form that is slightly different from the last. In season two, I did a scene playing tennis in Newport with the Russell siblings, and Taissa, completely by accident, hit me in the face with a ball during one take and no one shouted cut. So I responded in character and it ended up in the show. It’s a great metaphor for acting in a scene like this with Nicole, where if either of us suddenly receives a curve ball you don’t expect, we respond to it spontaneously and find something new and it results in these happy accidents. So I really hope, in a way, that she’s conning him, just so she can come back and have round three.
John Adams infers, at one point, that you both deceived each other, since you were willing to marry her despite being gay. What did you think of that?
It’s difficult. These marriages of convenience were incredibly common in this period, where families were run like business corporations and it wasn’t a given that these two people would be in love and treat each other wonderfully. I don’t think he saw any particular wrongdoing in a marriage of convenience at a time when that was so commonplace. He would’ve tried to be a good husband. He has the same speech to Gladys in her proposal: You can choose your own friends, I won’t be a bully, you won’t have to carry my own views, I want us to have fun. If you take out the exception of him cheating on them with John, Oscar would’ve done everything to make them happy. This is a world where, regardless of whether he’s married or not, that relationship with John can never be public. That’s always going to be a private part of his existence. And so I don’t think he sees the same wrongdoing that John does.
Have you researched what gay life was like in the 1880s?
I read some great books. I wanted a strong visceral sense of what the threat was to him as a member of the upper society. It was very dangerous. There’s the legal punishment and the social punishment. From the legal perspective, homosexual acts were criminalized. It has potentially very severe punishments including imprisonment. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice tracked and exposed homosexual behavior even among the upper class. But, in reality, very few people were imprisoned. In 1880, it was something like 63 people were actually in prison for homosexual acts, of which five were in New York.
But from a social perspective, disgrace and ruin were very real, pressing threats. There were documented cases of men from New York’s upper social classes being investigated, arrested, shamed. Even rumor was very dangerous. Society pages were discussing confirmed bachelorism and private clubs with reputations for attracting artistic men. Gossip was a potent force with a very tangible effect. There’s a famous quote from Edith Warton, who described society in the 1880s as “a small and slippery pyramid.” There was relentless social ostracism. For those who believed to be committing homosexual acts, they faced exile, families would relocate, they would cut ties with disgraced sons. They faced financial ruin. They could even be institutionalized in mental hospitals with diagnoses of sexual inversion or moral insanity. Blackmail was another major issue, where people were often extorted by those who threatened to reveal their liaisons. We touched upon the danger in season two, where he has a kind of liaison with someone in a bar and is robbed for it. There is a very tangible physical threat with every action.
We met Oscar Wilde in season two, and we’re about 10 years out from his eventual trial. What do you think Oscar Van Rhijn will think of that?
The Oscar Wilde trial was in 1895 and obviously in England, but it did have real lasting repercussions in the US. There was a whole group of society that went into hiding after that. There was no concept of sexuality as a fixed aspect of a person’s being in the 1880s. It wasn’t so clearly delineated by society as a whole. People didn’t necessarily identify themselves with a moniker or a label. And that wouldn’t be the case for quite a while, actually.
Why do you think Oscar told Marian about Larry being in the Haymarket?
He’s developed a lovely, sibling-like relationship with Marian. Even Oscar, who is very adept at covering and disguising the truth, felt deep down that this was something she should know because it may affect things. He was very keen to try and smooth things out afterwards, so in no way was he trying to break them up. He did it in the spirit of sibling love, trying to give her a holistic picture of what was going on.
Do you think he expected it to split them up?
I don’t think Oscar expected to tell her. He surprised himself. This was not a premeditated disclosure. It was something in a moment of rare honesty and openness for Oscar.
Oscar is something of a dandy. How do his clothes inform your portrayal of him?
Costumes are a real key to unlocking a character. It’s been a wonderfully collaborative process finding Oscar’s look in this. Kasia Walicka-Maimone is brilliant. In the beginning before we ever started shooting, I did a load of research. I collected a lot of images of how I imagined he dressed, which I sent over, and which played into the costume team’s ideas. Some of Oscar’s studs and couplings are actually copies from a company called Goldsmiths and Silversmiths, which was founded in 1880 by members of my own family a few generations back. It feels strangely anchoring. There’s only room for subtle variations with the accessories and you’re looking for tiny differences to differentiate. I do have an incredibly nuanced wardrobe. The costume department is very keen to have tiny metaphors. If Oscar’s on the hunt, there’ll be images of wolves or foxes or weasels on his typings. If he’s in mourning, there’ll be skulls and crossbones.
When you are wearing a starch dress shirt, you simply can’t slouch. They’re so rigidly enforced in impeccable posture. The costume department actually created a special soft-fronted variant for me so I could slouch around the Van Rhijn house, which I very much appreciated. I love the specificity of it. I remember Kasia saying during season two that Oscar now has more waist coats than I do scenes in the show.