Cynthia Nixon is shedding light on one of the more curious decisions her character makes in the new season of HBO’s “The Gilded Age”: hiring an inexperienced, chatty footman named Oliver over more qualified candidates.
In Season 4, Nixon’s character, Ada Forte, takes charge of the van Rhijn household and begins making her mark — swapping out the curtains and replacing footman Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers) with newcomer Oliver, played by Taylor Trensch. The choice puzzles longtime butler Bannister (Simon Jones), who had lined up more experienced applicants, but he has little choice but to accept it now that Ada runs the house.
Nixon told Decider the decision reflects Ada’s own evolution over the course of the series.
“I think that if you think back to Ada in the first season, or second season, I think this is a woman who had to, in order to survive, stay on her sister’s good side and have to always be deferential and always play the long game and never antagonize,” Nixon said. “This is a woman who almost gave up being with the love of her life because it made her sister mad.”
Now, Nixon said, Ada is testing the limits of her new standing.
“And so now she’s feeling herself a little more, she’s feeling her wealth, she’s feeling her power, and she is experimenting in small ways and in bigger ways, listening to her own opinion, even if it contradicts what those around her with more experience are telling her.”
The show has leaned into a running joke that Ada’s biggest exercise of her new authority has simply been redecorating. But Nixon suggested hiring Oliver may prove to be a bigger gamble.
“The drapes, that was a win,” Nixon said. “I think hiring the new, somewhat incompetent, talkative footman, perhaps not the wisest [decision], but she saw something in him that she liked and believed in. I think she saw a version of herself; someone with great potential who wasn’t there yet, but was gonna get there.”
Whether Oliver proves up to the job remains to be seen as the season continues on HBO.
Who plays Oliver?
Oliver is played by Taylor Trensch, a Broadway actor who was nominated for a Tony Award for Featured Actor in a Musical last year for his role as Skeets Miller in “Floyd Collins.” Trensch has also appeared in productions of “Bat Boy,” “Camelot” and “Dear Evan Hansen.”
