Aurora Fane was right all along about the social climbing Tom Raikes, and fans saw that in the final episode of season one of The Gilded Age when the lawyer stood up a hopeful Marian Brook. Broadway star Kelli O’Hara, who plays Aurora in the HBO series, spoke to HollywoodLife in an EXCLUSIVE interview at the 75th Tony Awards, and teased the young Ms. Brook’s next steps. “Well, I do know… but I can say, if there is any sort of present aspect to Marian, it’s that she is not just going to do the society norm, she’s going to do things a little differently,” Kelli told HL. “So, we will have to watch her make these decisions carefully and intelligently.”
In season one, we saw Aurora, in particular, take a liking to Marian, despite her pushback against the expectations of high society and ‘old money.’ Recall, Aurora Fane is Marian’s Aunt Agnes van Rhijn’s niece and takes Marian under her wing when Marian makes her entrance into New York society. Kelli compared their relationship to her own 20-year journey in the Broadway community. “I think you can liken it to my own person. I’m here on Broadway at the Tonys for the 14th time, and when I was coming up as an ingénue, it was a very different business. Now, I look at younger women paving their own ways in a different way, and it’s incredibly useful,” she explained. “I can’t go backwards, but I could definitely make decisions differently for myself as I go forwards. So, Aurora, in the same way, came up through society probably following all the rules. But with Marian, she gets a little taste of something different.”
The Gilded Age season one ended with Marian deeply heartbroken and surprised after Aurora and her aunts were proven correct when Tom Raikes stood her up on the day they planned to wed. Now, as the cast has returned to film for the highly-anticipated season two, it won’t be too long until we find out what Marian’s next moves will be!