Bob Shaw (‘The Gilded Age’ production designer) on how his lifelong ‘love of opera’ resonated with Season 2 [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Bertha is a woman of boundless ambition and if she’s a social climber, she still hasn’t reached the summit,” explains production designer Bob Shaw about the every-expanding scope of the HBO series “The Gilded Age.” Now in its second season, the series centers on Bertha (Carrie Coon), the wife of industrialist robber baron George Russell (Morgan Spector), who attempts to elbow her way into the moneyed society of “old New York.” The designer explains that the biggest challenge of this season versus the first “was to try to be a little bigger.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Part of that expansion is exploring in detail the summer getaway of Newport, Rhode Island, which was only just introduced in the final episodes of the first season. “The Gilded Age” often shoots on location in Newport, and Shaw had previously used some of the historic mansions “to represent parts of New York houses that we didn’t build.” When it came time to depict these New York characters in their Newport homes, he says it became “tricky because we had already used parts of certain mansions to represent New York.” The production designer cites The Elms as an example: he used it in Season 2 for the Russells’ Newport home, but he had previously employed its basement as their New York kitchen and one of its second-floor rooms as Gladys’ (Taissa Farmiga) New York bedroom.
WATCH our exclusive video interview with costume designer Kasia Walicka Maimone, ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2
Shaw calls the show’s ability to shoot on location in Newport “a tremendous luxury,” in part because of how easy it makes working on multiple sets at the same time. “The Gilded Age” shoots at least three episodes simultaneously and the production made two trips to Newport to shoot the second season. He notes that he can “walk down Bellevue Avenue” — the historic district in Newport — “and visit six sets that are being prepped at the same time.” The second episode of the season also features two elaborate scenes shot on location at the Newport Casino, a historic landmark and tennis club.
The main arc of the second season concerns dueling opera houses: the established Academy of Music, supported by the old guard like Lina Astor (Donna Murphy) and Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski), and the new Metropolitan Opera, which Bertha Russell is championing. The plot line is inspired by the real “opera wars” in New York during this period of history, and Shaw believes his existing knowledge of this battle might have secured him the job on “The Gilded Age.” “I actually got into being a designer because of a love of opera,” he explains, continuing, “When I interviewed for the job before Season 1, I actually said to them, ‘Are you planning on getting into the opera wars?,’ and they said, ‘We’ll get into that in Season 2,’ so I think the fact that I even knew what the opera wars were maybe helped put me in the position.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with director Deborah Kampmeier, ‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2
To bring the original Metropolitan Opera to life, Shaw and the visual effects team had to make an amalgam of two different locations and some new construction. He and his team “used bits and pieces of an old movie theater in Albany,” they “built opera boxes on stage — they were like 20 feet in the air and there was a big curve with five opera boxes,” and then the VFX team took the set and added it “between the first and second balconies of the Philadelphia Academy of Music,” which is an “European-style opera house.” The production designer also reveals, “When you see how the opera house pays off eventually, I was very happy, very excited about it.”
For his work on the first season, Shaw won the Emmy Award for period production design alongside Laura Ballinger, Larry W. Brown, and Regina Graves. Reflecting on their victory, he comments, “I don’t think I’ve ever worked with any group that was more dedicated and more committed to doing things right… It was gratifying to have the team recognized.” The designer also shares that a lot of the crew “had their pictures taken posing on the Russell staircase holding the Emmy.”
New episodes of the second season of “The Gilded Age” continue airing on HBO through Dec. 17 and stream on Max.
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