HBO’s ‘The Gilded Age’ found its French chef in a Detroit-born actor
DETROIT >> In the HBO drama “The Gilded Age,” Douglas Sills plays the ultimate status symbol for a social striver in 1880s New York City.
Sills has a dapper moustache and a certain impatience as Monsieur Bourdain, who heads the kitchen of a railroad tycoon’s wife who is determined to impress her old-money neighbors.
“She has outfitted herself with every important accessory that would be part of the ruling class,’ he says, ‘and one of those is to have a French chef instead of having a cook.”
Only this French chef is a Detroit native and Broadway veteran who divides his time between acting and his family’s business, a West Bloomfield commercial real estate company.
“Some people are waiters. Some people are paralegals when they’re not working. This is my thing, and I’ve learned a lot,” says Sills, 61, who has been multitasking this way since 2007.
Premiering Monday, ‘The Gilded Age’ is the creation of Julian Fellowes, the man behind the PBS megahit ‘Downton Abbey.’ Set in 1882 Manhattan, it immerses viewers in the upstairs-downstairs lives of two wealthy families and their servants. The settings and costumes are lavishly faithful to the era, the dialogue sharp and witty. And the performances? Even Maggie Smith’s dowager countess would have good things to say about them.
Originally planned a decade ago as an NBC series, ‘the Gilded Age’ moved to HBO in 2019. Filming was delayed in 2020 by the COVID-19 shutdown. In short, it has been a long journey for closest thing that television has to a ‘Downton Abbey’ sequel. It tells the decidedly American story of George and Bertha Russell (Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon), a nouveau riche couple who’ve just moved in to their new mansion on East 61st Street, and their neighbors across the street, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon), aristocratic sisters who are too snobbish to socialize with the Russells.
There also are two new members of the van Rhijn household, namely Agnes and Ada’s quietly progressive niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson, the daughter of Meryl Streep), whose father’s death has left her penniless, and a young Black writer, Peggy Scott (Denee Benton) who befriends Marian and becomes a personal secretary to Agnes.