31 Broadway Stars That Make ‘The Gilded Age’ Must-See TV
If you’re a theater lover, The Gilded Age is for you.
The cast of the HBO period piece is filled to the brim with some of Broadway’s biggest stars. In fact, nearly every single cast member is a stage actor and more Broadway vets have been added to the cast for The Gilded Age Season 3, currently in production in New York.
From theater veterans (including one of the most awarded stage actresses in history) to Broadway and the West End’s younger faces, The Gilded Age is like The Avengers of theater. Fans can thank the COVID-19 pandemic for the stacked cast. Co-creator Julian Fellowes said the theater shutdown opened up a lot of availability for these actors.
“Michael Engler, who’s one of the producers and one of the two directors of the first series, reminded us that because of COVID, the whole of Broadway was dark and all these marvelous actors were sitting at home in New York where we were,” Fellowes told ELLE.
“There was no immediate prospect of the theaters reopening so we looked to the Broadway actors for our supporting cast and a wonderfully rewarding number of them said yes,” he continued. “We had these stars of Broadway, and I think they’ve enriched the show wonderfully. I think they’re a marvelous group of players. We’re the winners on that one.”
While Marian Brook actor Louisa Jacobson hasn’t made her Broadway debut, she is a stage actor. Jacobson attended Yale School of Drama like her mother, Meryl Streep. And she has performed in multiple productions since. The Gilded Age is her breakout TV role.
Here are all of the Broadway stars seen in HBO’s The Gilded Age Seasons 1 and 2 — plus the ones to come in Season 3 — and what they’re known for in the theater world.
The Gilded Age, Season 3 Premiere, TBA, HBO
Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijn
Baranski won a Tony Award every time she was nominated. She won for the first time in 1984 and again in 1989. She also has a slew of movie musicals under her belt. Mama Mia, of course, is a fan-favorite.
Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook
Most people know Nixon for Sex and the City, but she also has two Tony Award wins and four nominations under her belt. In fact, Nixon got her first Tony nomination three years before Sex and the City debuted. She won in 2006 and 2017. In 1984, Baranski and Nixon played mother and daughter in Broadway’s The Real Thing, the show that won Baranski her first Tony.
Audra McDonald as Dorothy Scott
McDonald is the Broadway legend. She has won six Tony Awards, has been nominated for nine, and is the only person in Tony history to win every single acting category. She won for Carousel in 1994, Master Class in 1996, Ragtime in 1998, A Raisin in the Sun in 2004, Porgy and Bess in 2012, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill in 2014.
Donna Murphy as Mrs. Astor
Murphy is a five-time Tony nominee and two-time winner. She won for Stephen Sondheim’s Passion in 1994 and The King and I in 1996. She also was the speaking and singing voice of Mother Gothel in Disney’s Tangled.
Kelli O'Hara as Aurora Fane
O’Hara is a seven-time Tony nominee and one-time winner. She and Murphy both played Anna in The King and I on Broadway and won Tonys for their performances.
Nathan Lane as Ward McAllister
Lane is a six-time Tony nominee and three-time winner. He won Tonys in 1996, 2001, and 2018. He was part of the original Broadway cast of The Producers, which holds the record for most Tony wins in history. Hamilton has the most nominations in history, but it didn’t beat the Mel Brooks musical’s win record.
Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell
Coon has appeared in a handful of Broadway and Off-Broadway productions in her career. She was nominated for a Tony in 2013 for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Her husband, actor and playwright Tracy Letts, won Best Actor for that play the same year. He won the Tony for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize for his play August: Osage County. He and Coon are both nominated for 2024 Emmy Awards, Coon for The Gilded Age and Letts for Winning Time.
Morgan Spector as George Russell
Spector made his Broadway debut in 2010 in the revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge. He co-starred with Scarlett Johansson, Liev Schreiber, and Jessica Hecht. He’s appeared in a handful of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows since.
Denée Benton as Peggy Scott
Benton made a splash of a Broadway debut in Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 opposite Josh Groban. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance. She played Eliza Hamilton in Hamilton from October 2018 to December 2019.
John Douglas Thompson as Arthur Scott
Thompson is a seasoned Shakespeare actor and has appeared in numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. He was nominated for his first Tony Award in 2017 for August Wilson’s Jitney.
Robert Sean Leonard as Reverend Matthew Forte
One of Season 2’s newcomers, Leonard has been acting on Broadway since the 1980s. He’s been nominated for three Tonys, winning once for The Invention of Love in 2001. Other Broadway credits include the 2001 revival of The Music Man, 2017’s Sunday in the Park With George, Candida, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the 1999 revival of The Iceman Cometh with Tony Danza and Paul Giamatti, and more.
Laura Benanti as Susan Blane
Also a new addition in Season 2, Benanti has been nominated for five Tony awards and has won once for the 2008 revival of Gypsy, in which she starred opposite Patti LuPone. She also starred in revivals of She Loves Me, My Fair Lady, and Into the Woods, and more. At 18, she made her leading role debut in a revival of The Sound of Music, making history as the youngest actress to play Maria on Broadway.
Patrick Page as Richard Clay
Page got his first Tony nomination in 2019 for his performance as Hades in the Tony-winning Hadestown and has a knack for playing famous villains. He played Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Scar in The Lion King.
Sullivan Jones as T. Thomas Fortune
Jones made his Broadway debut in Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play in 2019.
Kelley Curran as Turner
Curran made her Broadway debut as an understudy in 2017’s Present Laughter and has appeared in a handful of Off-Broadway shows in New York City, the most recent being 2020’s Dracula.
David Furr as Dashiel Montgomery
Furr joins Season 2 as Dashiell, Agnes’ nephew by marriage. Furr has appeared in eight Broadway shows and in 2016 received a Tony nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for Noises Off.
Michael Cerveris as Watson
Cerveris (above center, sitting at the table) is a two-time Tony Winner and six-time nominee. He won in 2004 for Sondheim’s Assassins and in 2015 for Fun Home. He also starred in the 2006 revival of Sweeney Todd.
Simon Jones as Bannister
Jones’ stage credits go back to 1977. He’s appeared in a long string of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows since. His credits include Trouble In Mind, Farinelli and the King, Blithe Spirit, and more.
Douglas Sills as Monsieur Baudin
Sills has been in the original Broadway productions of The Scarlet Pimpernel (for which he was Tony-nominated), Living on Love, and War Paint. He was also in the Little Shop of Horrors revival in 2003.
Celia Keenan-Bolger as Mrs. Bruce
Keenan-Bolger recently won her first Tony Award in 2019 for playing Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird opposite Jeff Daniels’ Atticus Finch. She was previously nominated for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Peter and the Starcatcher, and The Glass Menagerie.
Debra Monk as Armstrong
Monk has a slew of stage credits to her name and four Tony nominations. She won a Tony in 1993 for Redwood Curtain and was most recently nominated in 2007 for Curtains.
Kristine Nieslen as Mrs. Bauer
Nielsen has been working on Broadway since the 1980s. Her credits include You Can’t Take It With You, Present Laughter, and more. She co-starred with Lane in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus in 2019, for which she received her second Tony nomination. Her first was in 2013.
Ashlie Atkinson as Mamie Fish
Atkinson returns as Mamie Fish in Season 2. She made her Broadway debut in 2007 in The Ritz and in 2005 won a Theatre World Award for her performance in the Off-Broadway play Fat Pig. She was also nominated for an Outer Critics Circle award for the same performance.
Claybourne Elder as John Adams
Elder is currently in the Broadway revival of Sondheim’s Company starring Patti LuPone. He was also in the original Broadway cast of Bonnie & Clyde and was part of Sondheim’s Sunday In the Park With George revival starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford.
Linda Emond as Clara Barton
Emond has appeared in famous shows like Cabaret, Death of a Salesman, and Life (x) 3. She received a Tony nomination for her performance in each of those productions.
Bill Irwin as Cornelius Eckhard
Bill Irwin is an actor, playwright, and director. He’s a five-time Tony nominee and won in 2005 for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He won a Special Tony Award in 1999 for Fool Moon, and got four nominations for writing, directing, choreographing, and starring in Largely New York in 1989.
Katie Finneran as Anne Morris
Finneran won a Tony Award for Noises Off in 2002 and Promises, Promises in 2010.
Phylicia Rashad as Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkland
Rashad joins Season 3 as Mrs. Elizabeth Kirkland, a woman from a prominent family in Newport with ties dating back to the American Revolution.
Rashad has won two Tonys: Best Actress in a Play for A Raisin in the Sun (2004) and Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for Skeleton Crew (2022, see her with her second Tony above). She has four career total Tony nominations and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2016.
Brian Stokes Mitchell as Frederick Kirkland
Stokes Mitchell plays Frederick Kirkland, the patriarch of the Kirkland family, husband to Elizabeth Kirkland (Rashad), and father of Dr. William Kirkland (Donica, below), in Season 3. He is the pastor of a prominent Black church and a leader in the Newport community.
Stokes Mitchell starred in the original Broadway cast of Ragtime with McDonald and has four Tony nominations with one win (Best Actor in a Musical for the Kiss Me, Kate revival in 2000). He was the recipient of the Isabelle Stevenson Award at the 2016 Tonys.
Jordan Donica as Dr. William Kirkland
Donica plays Dr. William Kirkland in Season 3, the son of Rashad and Mitchell’s characters. He’s kind and more open minded than others in his elite social circle. Peggy’s father inspired him to become a doctor.
Donica was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for his performance in the 2023 revival of Camelot, which starred Hamilton‘s Phillipa Soo. He also played Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway from 20016-2017 and was in the My Fair Lady 2018 revival.
Victoria Clark as Joan Carlton
Clark plays Joan Carlton, a kind, genial woman from the old money side of New York high society who appears to be the mother of Billy Carlton (Matt Walker).
Clark is a five-time Tony nominee and two-time winner. She won Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical in 2023 for Kimberly Akimbo and won the same category in 2005 for The Light in the Piazza.
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