Deborah Kampmeier (‘The Gilded Age’ director) on 2nd season’s ‘heartbreaking’ scenes and ‘complex female characters’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

David Buchanan
·4 min read
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“I was obsessed with Edith Wharton when I was a teenager. That whole world was very much a part of my imagination when I was a young girl,” remembers Deborah Kampmeier, who directs two episodes of the second season of “The Gilded Age.” The HBO drama series draws heavily on the works of the legendary writer, and the director’s affinity for her writing and the opportunity to step into “the decadence of the world” of that period drew her to the project. She was also inspired by the “epic nature of the style” of the show that was established in its first season by directors Michael Engler and Salli Richardson-Whitfield. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

To acclimate herself to the visual style of the lavish period piece, which is set in 1880s New York, Kampmeier “really studied season one,” sharing, “I watched those episodes multiple times.” She worked on both of her episodes — the second and the fourth of the eight-episode season — with cinematographer Manuel Billeter, who lensed four episodes from the first season. The director likens the experience of stepping into an established show as being like a guest at a dinner party, stressing, “I have to come to the party not to change the menu,” but rather “to find the perfect bottle of wine to match the meal.”

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Kampmeier’s approach to directing her episodes was to “lean into the grandeur that was created in season one.” Both of her episodes were penned by series creator Julian Fellowes, who she describes as trusting “his directors to come up with a visual landscape that’s going to support this beautiful dialogue he’s written.” She adds, “I just adore that he creates such complex female characters of every age.”

The director began her career in indie filmmaking, which she believes afforded her a seamless transition into working in episodic television. While her last feature film had a total budget of $250,000, she says, “My imagination always had this kind of budget,” referring to the lush, extravagant production values on “The Gilded Age.” Though the scale of this series may be far different from the films she’s made independently, she notes, “Indie filmmaking is such a great training for television because television is so fast, just like indie filmmaking is.”

WATCH ‘The Gilded Age’ season 2 trailer: Battle lines are drawn

Kampmeier directed the second episode, “Some Sort of Trick,” in which Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) departs New York for Newport, Rhode Island, where she will attend a ball hosted by Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane) and where her architect son Larry (Harry Richardson) will start a new project for Mrs. Blane (Laura Benanti). Tony Award winner Benanti is a new addition to the series this season, and the director spent a lot of time with her to “create this woman who wasn’t just a cliché of an older woman going after a younger man.” Together, they dove into Mrs. Blane’s backstory to understand how “her emotional age is the age she was when she got really trapped in this relationship with this older man,” a marriage that has recently ended by the time Larry meets the widow.

One of the standout moments of the episode is the final scene at McAllister’s ball. Kampmeier says she was inspired by the 360° panorama of the location in Rhode Island. She envisioned the opening shot of the scene to “start at the back of a gown and come up and see the orchestra and come over the roof and reveal the dance.” The episode ends with a surprising development between Bertha and her former lady’s maid Turner (Kelley Curran) that the director teases will have a “really fun payoff” at the end of her next episode, the fourth, “His Grace the Duke.” She also teases, “I cry when I watch episode four. There’s love scenes that are both heartbreaking and then also heartwarming. There’s this one very heartwarming scene… every time I see it, the performances of those two actors, I just burst into tears every time, it’s so moving to me.” The installment airs on HBO and streams on Max on November 19.

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