Denée Benton of HBO’s The Gilded Age spends day in Newport  

Photos by David Hansen

During filming for the first season of HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” Denée Benton found herself walking along the Cliff Walk at least once a week. At the time, there was no way to know how the show would be received or if more seasons would be filmed. As it turns out, fans love the show, especially Benton’s character, Peggy Scott, an aspiring writer and journalist and member of the Black elite circa the 1880s. 

In fact, when filming for Season Three makes its way to Newport, expected sometime this fall, Benton has been “given an opportunity to learn more about Black culture here in Newport,” she told a small group gathered for a media event Tuesday afternoon (which included her mother), planned ahead of a dinner that evening hosted by The Preservation Society of Newport County, where Benton was a featured guest along with Dr. Erica Armstrong Dunbar, the show’s co-executive producer.  

Dunbar recalled being invited to Newport several years ago for a meeting with Julian Fellowes, creator of The Gilded Age and Downtown Abbey, another beloved HBO series, an encounter she thought was a meeting and later realized was a job interview, one that resulted in her being involved in the creation of The Gilded Age.  

Through her work, Dunbar has helped tell the story of Black elites in the 1880s, shaping the narratives around human experiences and themes of family and love, while exploring how people “can walk different paths at the same moment” and the ways in which “wealth means different thing to different people.”  

Dunbar noted that while not everyone will read the history books she’s authored, many will watch The Gilded Age and learn about history that way, a fact evident in the Instagram comments of recent posts by Benton, where people say they had no idea that Black elites existed at that time, that they love the show for Peggy Scott’s storyline in particular, and express a desire for a character spin-off.  

When asked what it’s been like to film some of Peggy Scott’s scenes, particularly one in which the Brooklyn-born character defiantly tells her mother she’s going South, Benton said she has “a sacred responsibility” to embody Peggy and tell her stories. During that scene, filmed on set in Troy, New York, where much of The Gilded Age filming takes place outside of Newport, Benton described the day as extremely hot and as if she was embodying a form of ancestral anxiety.  

Beton herself was born in the South and now lives in New York City and says many of her family members have encountered some form of racism or learned to avoid certain backroads as common practice. 

She recalled a time when one of her scene props was a first edition work by Frederick Douglass. “It took my breath away, really, that this book had travelled through 300 years to sit on my lap on this set,” she said, noting this was especially striking at a time when so many books are being banned.  

The parents of Peggy Scott are portrayed by Audra McDonald (Dorothy Scott) and John Douglas Thompson (Arthur Scott) who Benton describes as “artistic godparents in a way that I’m pinching myself…. [they are] the gift that keeps on giving,” she said.  

A recording of their conversation will be online in the coming weeks on the Preservation Society’s YouTube Channel.    

Benton is a Tony Award-nominated actress who recently made her return to Broadway starring in the hit revival of Into the Woods as Cinderella. She also starred as Eliza in Broadway’s Tony Award-winning musical Hamilton and is known for starring as Natasha in the Broadway production of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. For The Great Comet, Benton was nominated for the 2017 Tony Award, Drama League Distinguished Performance Award, Theatre World Award and Lilly Award.  

And Dunbar is the Charles and Mary Beard Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers University and serves as a historical consultant and producer for multiple television projects and feature films. She is also the author of several books of nonfiction, including “She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman,” “A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City,” and “Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.”