Ayla Ruby
Laura Benanti has a Tony and numerous other award nominations and wins. The multi-hyphenate actress, who first appeared on television in FX’s Starved and on film in Take the Lead, is probably best known for her work in the Broadway productions Gypsy and She Loves Me. She’s only with us for three episodes in season two of The Gilded Age, but she makes a big impact, especially on Harry Richardson’s Larry Russell.
Over Zoom, she chatted with us about playing Susan Blane, a lady in, as she puts it, “limbo.” Benanti talked about why the character was so appealing to her and how even just putting on the corsets from the costumes helped her get into the right frame of mind for the time period. And she even talked about her comedy work. Read on for the full conversation or listen to the audio below.
Ayla Ruby: So I’m very excited to talk. I love your work, so this is a true pleasure.
Laura Benanti: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Ayla Ruby: So I’d love to talk about what kind of drew you to The Gilded Age, what drew you to Susan?
Laura Benanti: I like a lady in limbo. There’s something about playing vibrant women in repressed eras that I feel really drawn to. And look, we’re still in a repressed era, but it’s getting increasingly better, I do feel that optimism. But something about her, the gilded cage of it all, living with a man 20 years her senior for 20 years in this huge sort of creaky house, and then all of a sudden he’s gone and she’s still young, she still has all of this life ahead of her.
There’s part of me that felt like a lot of times people get stuck in a time where they make a decision. So if you’re married at 20, you stay 20, you know what I mean? That you kind of stop growing where you left off. So I liked the idea that she’s drawn to this young man, not just because he’s handsome because she still sort of feels like his peer and she’s been stuck with this old man for so long who sounds like, and I imagine to be just sort of a real promotion, whereas she’s so full of life. So I liked the idea of playing somebody who is being let out of their cage. And then to me, their inability to actually be together when that is ultimately what they want is deeply sad and moving and who doesn’t want to have that drama that they get to play?
Ayla Ruby: Well, that last moment that we see you on screen, you’re behind the door, very sad that Susan and Larry won’t have this relationship, it’s heartbreak. It’s just beautiful and sad and very well done.
Laura Benanti: Yay, I am glad you feel that way. I do feel like that scene with Bertha where… And I imagined for me that she broke up with him for him. I don’t think it’s because she was running away or hiding, I think she probably listened to some of those things that Bertha said. She wouldn’t be able to give him… Well, I mean she would at that point be able to give him children. Or not give him children, ew, I’m so angry at myself, Lord, whoa, I hate myself. But they have a big age difference. And so she doesn’t want to do to him what she experienced ultimately. So I think there’s a selflessness in that, and the tension of basically having to lie and say it didn’t mean as much to her necessarily is such a heartbreaking thing.
Ayla Ruby: You’ve talked a little bit about what she represents and who she is, can you talk a little bit about how you as an actress get into that headspace, get into that character to be someone experiencing that?
Laura Benanti: Well, there’s two layers to a show like The Gilded Age. So you have your natural human feelings and then you also have a time period that restricts your behavior, the way that you talk, the way that you move, the way that you carry yourself, the way that you hold your hands. So we were so lucky to have a fantastic dialect coach who really helped us. And just by nature of putting on that corset and those clothes, you carry yourself differently.
And so then the trick is once you sort of get all that down, to let go of it so that you can be the human. I think it’s very easy to get caught up in being sort of a mannequin in those clothes and in the way that they talk and all of that. It’s like you don’t want to be stuck there. So for me, I always align myself with my character, even if I haven’t experienced what they have experienced, I have felt the way that they have felt for the most part.
So I think for me, for longing, the longing of women in general to be seen for who they are, for freedom, for sexuality past being 30, peri-menopausal sexuality and the freedom and the constriction of that, that’s sort of what I was trying to allow. I didn’t want her to be a cougar. I didn’t want her to be a trope of a cougar who sought out this young man, not at all. If anything, I think he seeks her out. So my desire was to flesh her out to be a compelling character within only three episodes. How do you imbue her with life and longing and not be just like a slick cougar in three episodes? And that was a challenge, but it was really, really fun.
Ayla Ruby: And again, thanks to you, she’s got this confidence and just something in how you played her that makes her very sympathetic and makes her, as an audience member, you root for her to have love and all this and you’re very sad when she doesn’t.
Laura Benanti: That means a lot to me, thank you for saying that. That was Deborah Kampmeier, the director, and I talked a lot about it. And that was our goal, our goal was to make her a fully fleshed out human being, not just like a character meant to stoke the fire.
Ayla Ruby: So we’ve talked about Larry and Susan and you mentioned a little bit about that Bertha and Susan, that scene and that’s so pivotal and, I don’t know, it’s really interesting. And I’d love to know how you approached that, what was it like kind of preparing with Carrie Coon? Just anything you can share about that.
Laura Benanti: So Carrie is such a remarkable actress. She actually had her very first acting job on a show I was on called The Playboy Club for NBC. It was canceled after three episodes and she’s like a brilliant theater actress so she was working in Chicago where we were filming. And so she and I became friends that way and it was such a joy to be welcomed onto her set with her, obviously in a very different show than The Playboy Club, although equally, although equally painful costumes. We only work together when there’s corsets involved.
So she is such a grounded… She’s the perfect example of what I was saying, of living within the time period, but not letting it wear you, where you wear it. And she’s the perfect example of that. She has mastered a dialect that is really challenging and could be, in the hands of a lesser actor, feel performative and it never does. And that scene, Bertha is scary. Bertha is a force. And so here is Susan who is not nearly that, she has been sort of lonely for a long time. So to have to come up against her I think takes a lot from Susan, but she does it, ultimately she acquiesces and does what Bertha tells her to and what Susan does not want to do, but to perform with her was really intimidating, which I think was perfect for the characters.
Ayla Ruby: And you almost wouldn’t think that Susan would be intimidated by anything after all that she’s been through, so I find that very interesting too.
Laura Benanti: Well, it’s so scandalous. She would’ve been completely ostracized from society and she already spent all of this time alone. It’s like she can’t risk not being able to live in the world.
Ayla Ruby: Yep. I think that’s an excellent point, I think that’s perfect. As part of the relationship, there are some very passionate scenes. As an actress, what’s that like? How does that work for you on set? And how do you prepare for something like that?
Laura Benanti: They’re very technical, you know what I mean? You’re not just mashing on each other, it’s like choreography. And I really trusted Harry so much. He is such a sweet young man, and we talked through a lot of it and we both were like, “This is what I’m comfortable with. This is what I’m not comfortable with.” And we had an intimacy coach there making sure we knew what the choreography was and what it was going to be. I think when I was younger, it probably would’ve made me uncomfortable, but I think now, I’m going to be 45 in July, I’m just kind of like, “It’s fine,” you know what I mean? I don’t know what Harry’s experience was, but he and I became buddies, so I was glad it was him.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s awesome. Again, there are these three episodes, is there anything that we haven’t talked about or even that we have talked about from these episodes that was really gratifying or challenging for you to do? Because you’ve had this incredible career and I’d love to hear of just anything about that.
Laura Benanti: I really appreciate that. I feel really grateful that I’m able to do so many different things in a world that I think, and this is where I relate to Susan, in a world that boxes women in, that wants to quantify us as one thing. I feel really lucky that I get to do drama and a Melania Trump impression and straight plays and musicals and movies. And I just wrote a show that I performed at the Minetta Lane, Nobody Cares, that’s on Audible that I wrote that’s basically stand up an original songs that I wrote with Todd Almond.
So I get to do all of these different things and it makes me feel really grateful. It’s so easy to compare yourself to other performers and see where you want more than what you have, and I’ve been really working on, how do you stay grateful but also ambitious? How do you hold both of those things at the same time? And this business challenges us to do that as working actors. So that’s kind of it, that’s my musings on life. I really loved playing Susan, I loved getting to be with so many of my dear friends. That was really fun.
Ayla Ruby: You had limited time on screen, was there anyone you really wanted to have a scene with that maybe didn’t quite work out timing wise, or that would’ve been fun to play in that sandbox?
Laura Benanti: I mean, Celia Keenan-Bolger is one of my dearest friends, one of my best friends so that would’ve been great. But we got so many dinners together that I was like, “This is even better.” I would’ve loved to have worked more with Nathan Lane. I worked with him just in one small scene.
Ayla Ruby: The introduction, right, where we meet her?
Laura Benanti: Yes, exactly, exactly. So yeah, I think that’s about it. I really appreciate you talking to me, thank you.
Ayla Ruby: No, thank you so much. Is there anything else you want people to know? Because I know we’re at time, about The Gilded age or about anything you’re working on?
Laura Benanti: I mean, they can listen to my comedy show, Laura Benanti, Nobody Cares on Audible and it will be coming to a city near them eventually. But what do I want them to know about The Gilded Age? Just that a lot of time and care and thought goes into this show. It’s not slapped together. It is very technically difficult. This crew works so hard, these actors work so hard. Every element of what you see from PAs, production assistants, to producers are lovingly putting this together for people’s enjoyment. So I’m glad people are liking it.
Ayla Ruby: Well, that’s awesome. Thank you so much for chatting and thanks for your time.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Comments
Loading…