Bertha Russell did the damn thing. In The Gilded Age’s second season finale, Carrie Coon’s ruthless robber baroness emerged the victor in the great war between her beloved Metropolitan Opera and The Academy of Music, championed by old-money society queen Lina Astor (played by Donna Murphy). Even those casually acquainted with American history most likely had an inkling as to who would reign supreme—these days, the Met is arguably New York’s grandest cultural institution, while the Academy of Music has gone the way of the dodo. Still, the battle was thrilling all the same.

“The stakes come from not knowing what the cost will be to each individual person,” Coon says over Zoom. “Also, a lot of people in the audience don't know any of this history. They don't know there's a Metropolitan Opera in New York. I mean, that's stuff that I didn't know growing up in Ohio. I didn't know there were mansions in Newport people lived in for six weeks in the summer.” She laughs at the extravagance. “Bananas.”

What’s bananas is Coon’s ferocious performance as Mrs. Russell, loosely based on historical millionaire-wife and Anderson Cooper relative Alva Vanderbilt. In a cast absolutely stacked with theater luminaries —including Murphy, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald—Coon still stands out, enough to land a spot on Vanity Fair’s list of the best performances of 2023. She credits the love of her character partially to Bertha’s relationship with her husband, Mr. Russell, played by Morgan Spector, which she cheekily calls “#couplegoals.”

“I think people have found themselves rooting for robber barons in spite of themselves on the show, partly because Julian [Fellowes] has written such a solid, cohesive, sexy marriage,” says Coon. “Even as they are ruthless in the world of business and in their social climbing, they are ultimately looking out for their children. Bertha can't be a senator. She can't be a CEO. She's not the president of anything. This is her purview.”

Below, Coon goes deep on filming season two’s grand finale, Gilded Age: The Musical, and potentially saying goodbye to the series for good.

The season finale seemed to strongly imply that Bertha offered up her daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), as a sacrificial lamb to get the Duke in his seat. Did she promise Gladys’s hand in marriage just to get him to come to the Met?

It's not explicit, but we know how George feels about it. And we've seen many, many times that Bertha has done something in spite of George's counsel. I think we can absolutely assume Bertha would, in a heartbeat, trade Gladys for that status.

Now, Bertha doesn't see herself as any kind of villain. Bertha is gifting the city of New York a brand new opera house with the best singers in the world, and an entertaining evening with a Duke. And they were all anglophiles. Everyone was obsessed with British status. It’s the reason Mrs. Astor had the families of the 400—all the rules were social constructs designed to catch people out so they wouldn't get entree into this society. You had to really learn those rules before you could play the game.

Bertha is a quick study, and she's also willing to call bullshit when she sees it. She believes that people should be able to earn their way in. She believes she's earned her way in, and she believes that she's living in a meritocracy. For her, that's true. For people of color and the immigrants being crushed under the capitalist machine, that was not true—but she really in her heart believes that. I think that's why the rise of Turner (Kelley Curran) is so interesting, because, given the same circumstances, I think Bertha is not sure she could have accomplished what Turner has accomplished. I think that's very intimidating for her.

It was exciting to see the Russells fight about Mrs. Turner’s indiscretions earlier in the season. During their fight, we saw a rare crack in Mrs. Russell’s emotional armor.

Vulnerability always complicates a character, and we have seen Bertha be pretty invulnerable. She's very tough and she doesn't show her cards.The only person she's really able to do that with is George. We very rarely see her crack in public. George is that safe space for her.. It's a credit to Julian and Sonja Warfield, our other writer, that what she's upset about is not infidelity. She doesn't think George cheated on her. It's not about what he did with Turner; she believes him. It's that he lied. He didn't tell her the whole truth. And that to me feels very real. That feels like the stakes of a real highly functioning relationship which they do have. It makes her human.

I’d love to talk about the cast. I'm a huge theater guy.

So, this is real porn for you, then [laughs]. Theater porn.

Yes, it is literal porn. Is there a difference acting on screen with theater actors than acting with other screen actors?

Sometimes I think I should be more different. The main difference is when you're acting with a bunch of theater actors…they can comport themselves in the clothes, they can handle the language—all of that is just a given. The best part is that they also understand what ensemble means. Movies and TV are much more stratified, it's more of a star system. Broadway is becoming that too, let's be honest—but we have our own stars we've minted on Broadway that are theater people. But that sense of ensemble really permeates every moment of the day.

Our favorite scenes are the days when everyone's there, and it really is, I'm sorry to say, nerdy theater camp. People are singing. Kelli [O’Hara] is doing Days of Wine and Roses [on Broadway], and she's practicing. Denée Benton is singing in her room. Cynthia [Nixon] and Christine [Baranski] are talking about back in the day when they did The Real Thing together when [Christine] was playing Cynthia's mom. Robert Sean Leonard and Cynthia worked together decades ago—I think Cynthia's first job was with Robert. There's a lot of history and intimacy, and it's wonderful to be around because ultimately what theater people are is grateful to have a job. No day is taken for granted.

Just to be on that set, and then Audra McDonald's right there, and Donna Murphy–and then it's like, "Oh, there's Laura Benanti."

Yeah, Gilded Age, the musical, would be killer. I would have to be recast, but everyone would do a great job [laughs]. I'll carry a chair for Audra McDonald.

As a theater actor, did you approach the character of Mrs. Russell from an outside-in approach or an inside-out approach? There’s so much artifice to play with as Mrs Russell, from the gowns to the way she speaks.

As a young person, I was a good student and I was a very cerebral actor. I did a lot of reading, a lot of research, which I still love because I still am a good student. But more and more, I'm so much more outside-in. In a show like this, they built that foyer, which is in my house. They put me in that first coat I appear in, and hat in with the pom-poms all over it. I mean, you walk into that cavernous room in a dress that size and you realize, "Oh, I have to fill up this dress and this room." So you can't be muttering around. You have to fill that language with, yes, size and also truthfulness. And it's a tricky balance. And I think all of us felt a little like we were getting our sea legs at the beginning and felt we settled in, and then wanted to go back and reshoot the beginning.

I always say that coming back to a character when you first start the season again, it's like putting on a wet bathing suit. You know it's yours, but it feels kind of weird and uncomfortable and gross. There's always this moment of trying to settle in. I feel we really hit our stride at some point in season two—I finally figured out where her voice was sitting. And Howard Samuelson, our dialect coach, has been with us from the first. He's always there hovering to yell at you if you do the wrong “U”” or you pop the wrong “T,” or you make a weird “eh” sound like I make because I'm from the Midwest. He’s there to beat that stuff out of us. One of the things that gives Bertha power in a room is where her voice sits. Young women in particular—but men are doing it too—they're so willing to give up their power in any room when their voice is not rooted in their body. So if you take anything away from The Gilded Age, it’s where your power is. It's not in a sexy baby voice. It's in a voice that's rooted in the body. And Bertha, really, with her walk and her voice, that's how she brings power into a room.

Can you talk about filming Bertha’s triumphant entrance into the Metropolitan Opera House? It was really stunning.

Let me tell you. They built a three-story box set in our set—in the Russell stages where most of our house is. So when you're looking out, you're looking out on the ceiling of the studio, which is just scaffolding and catwalks and lighting. The crews all down below—our wonderful, marvelous, best crew in New York—but they're eating chips in their sweats down there waiting for us in between takes. And there's one set of stairs going up and down, and there's a crane swooping in—a big crane swooping in on your face. So unlike most of the show, where we're in those Newport mansions in a very detailed set, that was one [scene] that really took some imagination. We were in that set for many days, of course. Those are more challenging days, to walk out and wave at no one. It feels more like you're doing a Marvel movie than The Gilded Age.

Do you pay attention at all to the online reaction to the show? We’re all just tweeting our little heads off…

I love all of it. I love the fun stuff. I love the fact [checkers] who come after the history. I love the cattiness. I love the mean tweets about it, too. It creates such a spectrum of response, but you're doing something right if everybody's talking about it, even if they're making fun of you.

What do you envision happening for Mrs. Russell in a third season?

Certainly the next phase would be marrying off Gladys. If I were doing it, we'd be getting ready for the big wedding. Season three would be the big wedding.

And then if you're following the story of Alva Vanderbilt, a turn that I love and what I would've loved to explore on the show is that she eventually becomes a suffragette and starts advocating for voting rights for women. What's complicated about it for Bertha, personally, is that Alva Vanderbilt famously married her daughter Consuelo off to a Duke, and she was really unhappily married. Alva herself eventually divorced her husband, remarried for love, which was something women did not do at that time—divorce or remarry—let alone another sort of well-known and flashy person in the same social circle.

Alva was very transgressive particularly late in her life, and I think really became a full-fledged feminist—for white women, you have to be honest about that. I think having [Bertha] have to deal with the emotional consequences of having so controlled her daughter's life only to then turn around and demand that women have more freedom would be a really interesting psychological ramification to explore. But I don't know if we'll get the chance.

Whatever ends up happening with The Gilded Age, do you feel Mrs. Russell's arc is complete?

It's funny. We shot it so long ago now that we had to leave it behind before it even aired. We were supposed to air in the spring, and we didn't. The strike delayed any kind of press. So in some ways, it feels like it has to feel complete.

But I'm always willing to stay open to what's next. I think that's the reason I would call my career maybe slow and steady, because I haven't had some preconceived idea about how it was supposed to look. I always move through the business with that spirit of, ‘I wonder what's coming.’ And so should I have to leave her behind, I think the opera box is a great place to leave her. And if I get the chance to do it again, I would be so privileged to be working with that group of people because they're, among other qualities, extraordinary human beings. Though there's maybe a cliche about actors being narcissistic or self-involved or whatever it is that people think about actors, I have always found them to be the most passionate, good-humored people and the best listeners. And if I could have the chance to play with that group of people again, boy, I would take it in a heartbeat.