It’s easy to joke about the fact that Carrie Coon has become something akin to the patron saint of prestige TV in recent years. With a run of 2010s television that moves from The Leftovers, to Fargo, to The Sinner, Coon has consistently given some of the small screen’s best performances—to the point where it feels like a too-on-the-nose joke to suggest that, were a network like HBO suddenly forced to re-cast one of its big television projects at the very last minute, they’d just shrug and toss Carrie Coon the job.
Anyway, HBO has just shrugged and tossed Carrie Coon a job, with Deadline reporting that the actress has been re-cast as the lead in Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age. Coon steps into a part that was previously held by Amanda Peet, who was forced to drop out of the project due to COVID-19 related scheduling conflicts. (And not, hopefully, just a bad case of “Not being Carrie Coon.”) The series is being aimed at a fall production start, and hey, who knows, maybe it’ll even pull it off.
Set in 1880s New York, The Gilded Age is Fellowes’ first big project since wrapping up Downton Abbey with a movie last year, and was originally supposed to land at NBC. Coon will play Bertha Russell, an originally middle-class woman aiming to break into some of the highest society going, after years of backing her “financial genius” railroad baron husband (Morgan Spector). She joins a cast that includes Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Denée Benton, Louisa Jacobson, Taissa Farmiga, Blake Ritson, Simon Jones, Harry Richardson, Thomas Cocquerel and Jack Gilpin.
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Mark Twain had better make a cameo in this…
Or his main gal, Mary Baker Eddy!
And the Bellacourt sisters!
I’m pretty over Julian Fellowes’ whole thing by now, but when you throw the names Carrie Coon and Christine Baranski at me, I won’t lie, you have my interest.
Yeah I really liked “Downton Abbey” for the character interactions and dialogue but the plot, especially post-war, was almost always “the abbey is going broke unless one of you marries a rich person” or something. Loved the cast though. It seems he has a similarly talented one here, so hopefully “The Gilded Age” has more variety than Downton.
I watched until the infamous Anna Bates rape plot, at which point I was like, “Fuck you, you don’t get to have your cosy, luvvy English period piece where the aristocracy and the servants all get along, and a gritty drama where ugly things like sexual assault are just tossed in.” Like, I’d always been uncomfortable with Fellowes’ seeming take that the aristocracy is a fine institution as long as they’re nice about it (which seems to be the class system version of “a good guy with a gun” to me), but I was able to accept the show as more or less a fluffy fairy tale. But fluffy fairy tales shouldn’t have rape scenes.
That was where I quit Downton too. Then there’s his Netflix thing, The English Game. Complete cheese fest, no cliche left unmolested. Kind of a guilty pleasure though.
I watched some of that. It keeps talking about how important football is too everyone but can never figure out a way to actually show that in the story. I never got a sense of why people liked football enough to start a punch-up on the field.
YES! 100f’king% That was a real breaking point. Bates and Anna plotlines were always a drag anyway, but that just felt like “what horrible thing can happen to Annabates this season?” I liked, maybe loved, the show up until Sybil died. Then I mostly liked the show up until Matthew died. Then I kinda tolerated the show because I still liked aspects of it until the Anna rape. It had no place on that show.
Yeah if they’re going to explore the idea that real world ugly things can happen even in a mostly fairy tale setting like Downton then they probably should have been a bit more serious about it. I was never a fan of Anna/Bates anyway because their stories were contrived and they really wanted to hammer you over the head with how “honourable” Bates is, but that’s a side point. Anyway, I’m not saying DA needs to go all Twin Peaks with “let us explore the undiscovered dark side of an idyllic place” but they did not handle that plotline very well at all.
Also I didn’t like how perfectly nice Lavinia died oh so conveniently just so Matthew and Mary could get the wedding they were ‘destined” to have just so he could die later too.
Yeah, 2 of my favourite actors is pretty much an instant “yes”.
Baffling that Amanda Peet had to drop out for her to get this. Coon is the best actress of her generation.
This is such a weird dig at Amanda Peet’s acting abilities.Do you think they have, like, a ranked list of actors and they call them in that order to see who bites?
That’s how casting works, its always a list. I have no qualms about saying Carrie Coon is more talented than Amanda Peet.
Yeah, isnt it weird that Carrie Coon isn’t playing every female lead on tv derp derp derp?
Boo. Sounds boring. But we’ll see. Would love to see her in something that sounds more interesting.
Getting back into Boardwalk Empire period piece stuff. A bit earlier, but still.
Not gonna lie, the fact it listed Frank Capone, I mean, Morgan Spector as a cast member significantly increased my interest.
I know her roles in the films were extremely limited, but I have to imagine Carrie Coon’s residual checks for Infinity War and Endgame will at least supplement her coffee budget for a while.
Carrie Coon was super in “the Leftovers” but I think her performance in “Fargo” was the best thing she’s done so far.
She was ok in Fargo. The Leftovers is on much higher level.
The show is certainly a lot more high stakes and serious than “Fargo” was supposed to be.
Fargo didn’t ask nearly as much of her. Plenty of people have played a cop who is basically a good person, with Frances McDormand doing so to perfection in the film (which is superior to the tv series in every way, because Noah Hawley doesn’t understand it).
It’s not Fellowes first big project since Downton Abbey. He’s been involved in Belgravia out of the UK.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgravia_(TV_series)
There’s ‘The English Game’ on Netflix as wellhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_English_Game
Came here to say the same!
I guess they can’t give all last-minute recastings to Christopher Plummer after all.
Yeah, turns out just the one, eh.
Who?
This just makes you seem stupid.
Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
Finally an actor who won’t get in a snit when Christine Baranski blows her off the screen every week.I hope.
For the years this series has been talked about, I thought that The Gilded Age was a shorthand working title. This title is as generic as a Ken Burns documentary on PBS.
She’s a tweet widdle buhd in dilded tage…
Coon will be great, I’m sure, but it’s too bad about Peet. She has done surpringly great work in various stuff that has been overlooked, and I would have liked to have seen her get noticed for once.
If Carrie Coon is there, so am i..