“The Gilded Age” star Denée Benton weighs in on Peggy's brush with danger

Plus, her thoughts on that romantic moment we've all been waiting for.

Warning: This article contains spoilers about The Gilded Age season 2, episode 5, "Close Enough to Touch"

Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) has plenty of pluck — but that doesn't mean she's prepared to face the horrors of the Deep South in the 19th century.

Despite her mother's warning that life below the Mason-Dixon line is very different for Black people, Peggy goes to the Tuskegee Institute brimming with hope and promise. But her trip to Alabama ends on a much different note when a group of white men come into a Black restaurant and stir up trouble with the proprietor. T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones) intervenes, forcefully shoving the racist man to the ground. The act leaves Peggy and Fortune running for their lives.

While hiding out from the angry lynch mob, Peggy and Fortune wait in terror, hoping to escape. When the coast is clear, the two talk about their admiration for each other's outspokenness, leading to a long-awaited, passionate kiss between them.

But Fortune is married and Peggy is still mourning the loss of her son — so, where might this go from here? We called up Benton to talk about Peggy's journey down South, the potent cocktail of her bravery and naïveté, and whether or not this romance might be doomed to fail before it even truly begins.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Her mother, Dorothy (Audra McDonald), warned Peggy that she wasn’t prepared for life below the Mason-Dixon line. Even with that warning, how shocking is this incident for her?

Denée Benton: The thing about trauma is nothing can really prepare you for it. I think about my ancestors, who grew up in those circumstances and what's expected of your nervous system is truly insane — to live a life full of hyper-vigilance. No one can really be prepared to face true abuse. Watching her and Fortune, who lived and was enslaved in that region, still feel the utter shock and disgrace of what those types of actions bring, it's chilling.

Thomas declares her fearless, and that's fair to say. She's obviously already been through a lot in her life, but may she also be a little naive?

Oh, 100 percent. That's the perfect combo for a young spirit that's taking on something that is much bigger than you. You need a little bit of both. I still don't think Peggy regrets going, even in the midst of what she found. I feel like she feels a responsibility to use what little privilege she does have and what small proximity to power she does have to shine a light on the terrorism that her people were surviving.

There were two lines that really resonate. One is the racist county supervisor saying, "You think things are different now, but they really ain't." And then later when Peggy asks, "Will things ever change?" Sadly, both of those statements still ring true. Would you agree? 

Oh yeah. We're reminded constantly how true that "both/and" is, how much things are changing and how much there are systems and energies that feel really intent on keeping circumstances fixed in place. It's such a heart fracturing intention to hold, but we're all doing it.

In June, on the Tony Awards, you called Ron DeSantis a "grand wizard." Do you see a through-line between that and playing a character like Peggy?

Oh, absolutely. Me and Peggy's souls were so supposed to meet. We both inspire and stress our parents out equally. We're exactly who they raised us to be and they want us safe, which no one can really blame a parent for that. But yeah, me and Peggy are definitely simpatico.

Peggy and Fortune run away. But how badly or differently could this have gone?

We all know they're what would become the KKK, these white terrorist vigilante groups. They had death and blood on their minds. And so, that's exactly what was to come. One wrong move, and it would've been a very different episode. It's how that turned out for many people that we come from. It's a really important dynamic to honor and tell truthfully. That's what Dorothy was saying. We see it every day — with Emmett Till, with police brutality. One wrong move, and it's the difference between you coming home and being planned a funeral. What's horrific about lynchings is so many of those bodies were never recovered. Equal Justice Initiative has the first lynching memorial in the United States in Montgomery, Ala., where you can go and you can find the map of the United States and find unmarked ancestors. They have jars of dirt and names to honor all of those lives that were taken disrespectfully. I don't think people understand how living all this history is. History doesn't hold enough nuance. It displays a distance that doesn't truly exist.

Yes. In regards to that, even Fortune telling Peggy that the last time he was in the South he was enslaved, shocks her. Does that speak to this sense of feeling like history is far away?

I don't know how much Peggy feels like it's far away because her father was also enslaved, but I do think you're never really ready to face that someone that you hold with so much love and respect had to survive that kind of atrocity. I don't know that you could ever really hear that and not take in a sharp breath of shock. It's what that requires.

Speaking of never quite being ready to hear something, we do see this mob searching for them. Does Peggy fully comprehend at this point what could happen? Or is she still not even fully aware of all of that?

From the moment that Thomas Fortune stands up in the restaurant, Peggy's nervous system understands that it's life and death. The trauma lives in all of our DNA. If you're a survivor of any kind of enslavement or genocide, danger becomes clear quickly. Even in New York standing up to a white person the way Thomas Fortune did would have turned it into something that could be life and death.

They do manage to escape. But we've still got four episodes left. Is this potentially going to have any lingering impact or come back to bite them later on?

I've been thinking about my paternal grandfather, who had a run-in in Georgia and escaped to Philadelphia so that he didn't deal with white mob violence. There were so many networks of people [who knew] what to do when you're surviving under a regime of terror. The path to escape, the path to concealment was something that those communities took very seriously at that time. There were networks of families to get people to safety that were never any official titled organization. Once they are out of the south, it's probably hard to find much. But I am curious more so around the families that are left behind. Would Booker T. Washington and his wife have dealt with any heat because of being in contact with these people who got away? The way that violence can trickle and affect all of the people around you was something I was curious about.

On a happier note, this traumatic experience finally leads Fortune and Peggy to kiss. Were you so excited when you read the script the first time?

We were all so excited and it's so complicated. We all know T. Thomas Fortune's circumstances, but I was really thrilled personally. I love seeing Peggy get to be taken by passion in the moment. We see her have to walk such a tightrope's of perfection in this show and such intense dynamics in every world she's in. But I was very happy that she got to get some swoony butterflies. Well, I don't know how much swooning there was happening in the circumstances, but I was happy that Peggy got her moment. I hope that there were things that happened in the barn that we didn't see as well.

Oooo, well, regardless, what does this mean for their future? Will they even acknowledge the kiss going forward?

Oh, I can't share that. Everyone has to watch the soap opera unfold between Peggy and T. Thomas and how they're going to manage this at the office. It's a good cliffhanger.

Do you think Peggy wants more? As complicated as it is.

Peggy has lost so much in the last few years of her life that Peggy's main focus is herself and her dreams. I'll be curious to see how she balances all those things. But I don't know that Peggy is really focused on finding that kind of long-term partnership right now, personally. But I think that she's in a stage of grief where she actually feels some kind of forward motion for the first time. She's being brought back to life in a way.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Related content:

• The Gilded Age season 2 review: History meets opulent, over-the-top escapism

• Opera boxes and labor movements! Season 2 of The Gilded Age will amp up the class warfare

• Schmicago star Patrick Page is having a moment — and he's ready to make the most of it
  

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.