‘The Gilded Age’ Stars Carrie Coon and Taissa Farmiga Break Down the “Magical Moment” Bertha and Gladys Defeat Hattie Morahan’s Lady Sarah

The Gilded Age Season 3 finally gives poor Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) a win. In The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 6 “If You Want to Make an Omelette,” Gladys’s mother, Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), arrives at Sidwell Castle to help her homesick daughter settle in as the new Duchess of Buckingham. Ironically, Gladys’s husband Hector (Ben Lamb) is fine. The problem is the Duke of Buckingham’s sister Lady Sarah Vere (Hattie Morahan).

**Spoilers for The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 6 “If You Want to Make an Omelette,” now streaming on HBO MAX**

Lady Sarah has spent her life bullying her younger brother and has decided to do the same with his shy American wife. However, Bertha Russell isn’t going to stand for that. This week on the HBO hit, Bertha not only puts Lady Sarah in her place, but encourages Gladys to do the same.

It’s an episode that shifts everything for Gladys in England and brings mother and daughter closer together than ever before.

The Gilded Age Season 3 Episode 6 “If You Want to Make an Omelette” opens with Bertha arriving in England and immediately finding herself “handled” by Lady Sarah. Bertha handles it smoothly, but immediately is concerned when she learns from her lady’s maid Miss André (Rachel Pickup) that the staff are gossiping that Lady Sarah is wearing Gladys down to train her “like a puppy.”

During dinner, Bertha begins to test Lady Sarah. As conversation about the Third Reform Act (aka Prime Minister William Gladstone’s Representation of the People Act 1884) pops up, the issue of voting rights takes over the dinner table. Bertha comes out, like most of Julian Fellowes’s heroines, as a suffragist who wants women to have the vote. Lady Sarah is horrified. So Bertha coyly follows up and asks why. It’s a polite debate that lets Lady Sarah walk herself back into a corner.

“The character of Lady Sarah, as depicted by Hattie, is so funny,” Carrie Coon told DECIDER. “Like she’s just so dead pan and I just had to — I mean, I almost broke working with Hattie. I just thought she was so funny and her timing is so impeccable.”

Besides facing down Lady Sarah, Bertha also uses her time in England to uplift Gladys. She encourages her daughter to take an interest in the estate and to assert her status as the Duchess. It all culminates in a brilliant scene where Gladys gains the courage to call Lady Sarah out on her impropriety. Lady Sarah is used to running the house and telling the ladies at dinner when it’s time for them to go into the drawing room. Buoyed by her mother, Gladys refuses to go along and asks Lady Sarah if she’s unwell, establishing her higher status as the Duchess.

“All Gladys has wanted is freedom. And in that time period, you get freedom as a young woman through marrying a man,” Taissa Farmiga said. “Even though she’s had to be forced into this marriage, she’s finally starting to see… ‘Wait, maybe I can start playing the game of chess and manipulate it to work for me.’”

The person who shows Gladys how to subtly play this game of chess is, of course, Bertha.

“What I’ve known, that maybe some of the more critical fans don’t understand, is that everything Bertha’s doing is about love. It’s about how much she loves Gladys,” Coon said. “Of course, she wants her to feel safe and powerful and loved.”

“The most beautiful thing is that Gladys starts to find her freedom and achieve it through becoming closer to her mother, Bertha,” Farmiga said, echoing Coon. “Bertha’s been preaching this to her the entire season, the whole show.”

“[Bertha] actually has a lot of savvy and a lot of wisdom to offer her daughter,” Coon said. “They’ve been at loggerheads and Gladys hasn’t been interested in more of the nuances Bertha has to offer her. And now they get a chance to have that connection.”

“And I think it’s beautiful that in this moment of Gladys really, for the first time, putting her foot down, Bertha’s there holding her hand with just like a beautiful look across the table,” Farmiga said. “Gladys is, you know, shaking in her boots. So she’s like, ‘I think you should sit down.’ So it really was a magical moment.”

Farmiga added that Gladys’s big moment was so important that she did something out of character: she requested a different costume than what the production team had planned.

“I’m not usually one who’s extremely opinionated about the wardrobe. I really trust the masters of the craft that we have,” Farmiga said. “I walked into my trailer and I was like, ‘It doesn’t feel right. It felt like very much older, old previous season Gladys.’”

The Gilded Age wardrobe department eventually let Farmiga choose the “blue lacy” dress she wears in the final scene.

“I think it really matched the moment perfectly. It felt womanly and a tad sexy for that era with the lace and the blue,” she said. “It really, I think, helped me shine in that scene, if I can just say that.”