The Gilded Age’s Carrie Coon on Bertha and the Real-Life Heiress Who Inspired Her

As Bertha Russell, a robber baron’s wife on The Gilded Age, Carrie Coon swans around her Fifth Avenue mansion wearing the finest couture from French designers and coldly commanding her sprawling staff. But there is no trace of Bertha’s imperiousness when the Emmy and Tony-nominated actor (Fargo, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) signs onto Zoom on a recent weekday, harried from a day packing up her Chicago household for an impending move with two young children underfoot. “My husband”—playwright and fellow actor Tracy Letts—“said to me before he left, ‘I’m starting to understand the appeal of having a staff,’” said… Read Full Article