Laura Benanti’s Susan Blane is the Perfect Hot Widow for ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2

HBO‘s The Gilded Age is a drama set in a time of financial excess and personal restraint. Wars were fought over opera boxes and palaces could be called “cottages,” but a passionate love affair of the heart could sink a person’s reputation and destroy their life forever. So it’s rather exciting that national treasure Laura Benanti has joined The Gilded Age Season 2 as one of the rare women of the time who is as free to spend money liberally as she is to invite handsome, young Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) into her bed. Benanti plays Mrs. Susan Blane — note it’s Blane, not Blaine — in The Gilded Age Season 2. She’s a beautiful young widow who is enjoying life now that her much older, and not much fun, husband is dead. Even though there’s a sense that Larry is playing with fire by accepting Mrs. Blane’s offer to accompany her inside after a “date” at the local Newport tennis club, you can’t help but root for this latest development on The Gilded Age. Laura Benanti’s hot widow Mrs. Blane is adding a welcome bit of sudsy, romantic drama to a show that could use it.

The Gilded Age is Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes’s ode to the apex of American luxury. No, not the 1980s, but the late 1870s-1900. While it was an era of rapid economic growth, spurred by financial monopolies and industrial expansion, the Gilded Age was also a time of massive inequity. While The Gilded Age Season 2 touches upon the poverty afflicting the masses, the bulk of the storyline focuses on the petty social rivalries of the wealthy women who ruled society at the time. Most of these grand dames either fell in line behind Mrs. Caroline “Lina” Astor (Donna Murphy), who represented old money New York, or the social climbers invading the city with their robber baron husband’s fortunes like Carrie Coon’s fictional Bertha Russell. Upending all expectations? Mrs. Susan Blane.

We first meet Mrs. Blane in The Gilded Age Season 2 Episode 2 “Some Sort of Trick.” Social fixer Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane) introduces Bertha and Larry Russell to Mrs. Blane knowing that Larry is a talented young architect looking for work and Mrs. Blane is eager to update her Newport House for entertaining. We quickly figure out that Mrs. Blane was married young to a much older, wealthy husband, and has spent the best years of her life under his thumb. His death isn’t a tragedy, for her, but cause for celebration. She not only has full access to his assets, but because she is not a blushing debutante, she can maneuver through society without a chaperone. That is, she can pounce on Larry.

Laura Benanti is sort of the perfect actress for a role like Mrs. Blane. Like most of The Gilded Age‘s incredibly stacked cast, she is a beloved Broadway star. Benanti is particularly known for her ability to thread together pristine vocals, exquisite technique, and joyous humor on stage. So much so, Stephen Colbert keeps enlisting her to hop on The Late Show to play Melania Trump in a series of irreverent sketches. Benanti is just a likable presence on screen, which makes her relationship with Larry feel the opposite of predatory. We, as viewers, can sympathize with Mrs. Blane and understand she is a woman attempting to enjoy herself for once in her life.

As for the other side of Mrs. Blane’s story, there’s something also deliciously fun about The Gilded Age illustrating through architecture just how quickly the wealthy were both amassing money and spending it on opulence. Mrs. Blane’s house in The Gilded Age is the Newport mansion of Kingscote, which set designer Bob Shaw chose for the show on purpose because of the historical significance.

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You, too, can visit Bertha Russell's new house in Newport.  By Meghan O'Keefe @megsokay

“Kingscote was once considered the grandest mansion in Newport in the 1850s, but by later standards, it’s actually rather small,” he said. Shaw divulged that he not only had fun mocking up illustrations of how Larry would have changed the iconic Newport house, but that Julian Fellowes had to change the original script to nod to the location itself.

“Dialogue was changed based on having chosen Kingscote because [Fellowes] had certain things [in the script] that did not apply to the house,” Shaw said. “So then Julian rewrote the dialogue to say, ‘There’s too many little rooms, you need to open up the space and all that.’ So his dialogue was very much based on what we reported to him about the location.”

It’s still far too early to know if Larry Russell and Mrs. Blane’s romance will have a happily ever after, but one thing is for sure: Laura Benanti is bringing a welcome jolt of fun to The Gilded Age Season 2.