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\n \u201cWe filmed the ball in January, so I had already been doing Gypsy for a couple of months. When I did that first line, we had to go back and do it again because I was in it. I was a little too Momma Rose.\u201d
\n Photo: Karolina Wojtasik\/HBO\n <\/p>\n
The Gilded Age<\/a> has no greater secret weapon than Audra McDonald. As the Scott family matriarch Dorothy, one of the most esteemed theater actresses of her generation was mostly confined to the sidelines through her first two seasons on the show: Secrets were kept from Dorothy, like the marriage and annulment of her daughter Peggy (Den\u00e9e Benton<\/a>), along with the birth and adoption of Peggy\u2019s first child, and she rarely got a chance to take center stage. That changed with the show\u2019s third season, which focused attention on the Scott family, bringing them to Newport and introducing them to a whole new faction of the Black elite, including the judgmental Mrs. Kirkland, played by Phylicia Rashad. McDonald and Rashad went after each other with minor snipes all season, but it came to a head in the finale<\/a>, when Mrs. Kirkland walked into a dress shop and insulted Dorothy\u2019s daughter to her face. Finally, Dorothy snapped, telling her foe that she has acted \u201cwithout grace, manners, and impunity,\u201d which, while delivered with McDonald\u2019s customary poise, is still basically the 19th-century equivalent of a bitch slap.<\/p>\n \u201cKnowing that it was going to be a very slow boil for Dorothy, I had to navigate how much I would allow her to show how she was feeling, because she was trying to keep it all together,\u201d McDonald says. \u201cI knew that Dorothy was going to get to a boiling point, and she was finally going to blow. I made a conscious effort to keep it in check but protect my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n Den\u00e9e Benton said that for her, this season felt like a culmination of a lot of work for a lot of people. Did you get that sense? Obviously, you\u2019ve worked with Christine Baranski a lot before; how was it to work with her here? Your biggest scene this season came in the finale, where you dressed down Phylicia Rashad as Mrs. Kirkland, but you\u2019ve been mad at her all season. How did you think about building to that point? During the monologue, you get the sense that Dorothy doesn\u2019t know what she is going to say next. Audra McDonald could never choose words as beautifully and as pointedly as Dorothy does in that moment. Audra McDonald, when she gets angry and in the moment, most likely just starts crying and screaming. But not Dorothy Scott. Sonja Warfield and Julian were very smart to put it in a public place, so it couldn\u2019t get too big even for the time.<\/p>\n Obviously, you\u2019ve known Phylicia Rashad for a long time, having starred in A Raisin in the Sun together. What was it like to go at her? One of the nice things for Dorothy this year was that, after being out of the loop in earlier seasons regarding Peggy\u2019s traumas, she got to protect her this year. How did that feel? She\u2019s more of a doer.
I think so. In the first season, Peggy\u2019s story is a mystery. Some sort of break has happened within her little family, and it takes until the end of that first season to get any idea of it. The whole world Peggy comes from is very small compared to what else is going on in the show. I love that, over the course of the three seasons, we\u2019ve been able to open up the aperture to see how the Black elite functions as a society. Peggy is the glue that glues the two sides of the story together, but I have just loved widening the world to the point where finally, in this season, our family is in Agnes and Ada\u2019s house. The world is mixing and getting messy as the world is and was.<\/p>\n
It was so great to finally get a scene with her, but it was a little odd just because we worked together for years and years on The Good Fight<\/a>. Every other scene I did on The Good Fight was with Christine. I was so used to being on-camera with her as Liz and Diane that the first couple of hours when we were Agnes and Dorothy, I was a little thrown. During the second season, I begged Julian Fellowes, \u201cPlease give me a scene with Christine. I don\u2019t know how you\u2019re going to do it, but please, please, please.\u201d In between scenes, we were just our normal selves \u2014 running our mouths and chitchatting and talking about this and singing that, like we always do. It took a minute to get used to who we were as characters. And now I want more. I\u2019m hungry.<\/p>\n
Talk about a slow boil! Mrs. Kirkland is sort of a mixture of Bertha, Agnes, and even Mrs. Astor in terms of what she deems right and acceptable. Meanwhile, Dorothy, we learned this season, went against her parents\u2019 wishes in marrying Arthur. I think it\u2019s wonderful that we start to hear more of their backstory, with Arthur being a former slave and how Dorothy had to bring her family around to loving and accepting him. So she immediately triggers something in Dorothy. Dorothy\u2019s only child is Peggy, and they\u2019ve already experienced the loss of what would have been their grandson. So Dorothy is always in protection mama-bear mode. The Kirklands have this yin and yang: Wow, look at this wonderful doctor who seems to really have an interest in Peggy and would be an incredible catch. Then there\u2019s the yang of this awful, vindictive, snotty woman Mrs. Kirkland, who thinks that we are less than for our color.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t. It just flew out. She\u2019s been sitting on it since they met. The very first episodes of the season, it was like, Is Peggy gonna die? Then she\u2019s safe, but, Oh, who\u2019s this cute guy? Let\u2019s go to Newport. Then you know someone is telling me that my husband, my child, and I are not worthy. So she does get to the end of her rope. And it\u2019s not like Dorothy marched over to Mrs. Kirkland\u2019s house to have this conversation. This conversation may never have happened except for the fact that Mrs. Kirkland happened to see Dorothy trying on a dress.<\/p>\n
It was hard. It\u2019s Phylicia! Phylicia is my Phylicia. I love that woman so much, and I\u2019ve known her for so long and I admired her before I even met her. They say don\u2019t meet your heroes, but I met my hero, and she turned out to be one of my favorite people on the planet. I\u2019ve learned so much from working with her, a mentor at times, a friend, a sister-friend. So it was very, very hard. I was having a hard time with my lines that day, and I think it was because I had to go at Phylicia in a vicious way, and that was hard. For some reason, the way my body dealt with it is that the lines just kept going out of my head.<\/p>\n
Wonderful. I\u2019m the luckiest actor in the world, because my partners are amazing. I\u2019ve got John Douglas Thompson, Phylicia, and then of course Den\u00e9e. We do feel like a little family; we never stop gabbing once the camera is off. I hope that Den\u00e9e thinks of me as someone she can come to and talk about business things or being a Black woman in this business. I hope that I feel like at least an auntie to Den\u00e9e. So to be able to play someone whose main objective in life is to protect her and help her thrive is something that I\u2019m hoping to do in real life anyway. It was nice to be given the opportunity to do that and for Dorothy to have the tools and knowledge to protect Peggy this season. Dorothy, for the most part, was not so caught on her heels this season as she has been in other seasons.<\/p>\n
I like that given all of that, Dorothy says, \u201cHell, no, we are going to this ball.\u201d<\/p>\n