For three seasons, The Gilded Age fans have waited for Larry and Marian to get together. After their engagement went south, it seemed like it might never happen. But in the season 4 premiere, Larry and Marian (SPOILERS AHEAD for Gilded Age season 4, episode 1) finally spend a night together.
It had all the right tropes: A broken carriage wheel, no way to get back uptown, two rooms left in the nearest hotel, no pesky chaperones to get in the way. Bu›t the morning after, it’s clear that Marian is devastated by what’s happened between the two of them, and Larry is left reeling as to what he did wrong. The actors behind the characters, Louisa Jacobson and Harry Richardson, spoke with Cosmopolitan about what went through Marian’s head the morning after, how Larry will try to understand her reservations as the season goes on, and the joy of playing a will-they-won’t-they couple.
Louisa: It's this huge transgression. Premarital sex was a cardinal sin, and it's something that would completely ruin a woman's reputation in society, completely leave her destitute, leave her without marriage options. She would be thought of as impure.
We don't live in this context anymore. It's really hard to deal with the fact that what might have been the best night of her life is something that is so bad because she's internalized that history of shame. He's not going to feel those consequences.
Louisa: Her father lied to her when he died about her situation financially, and he wasn't a very good father. Her mother died very young. And then there's Tom Raikes from season 1, and then the safe, arranged thing with Dashiell didn't work out, then there’s this mistrust with Larry because of the brothel situation.
She's just been burned so many times in such an intense way that there's already a lot of trepidation. And there's a lot of pressure on her from society because she's had two failed engagements. The stakes are really, really high right now.
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