What is The Gilded Age based on? Morgan Spector's George Russell is modeled on "the most hated man in America"
George Russell bribes, shorts and outmaneuvers half of New York on The Gilded Age, and the man he's modeled on was considerably less charming about it.
The Gilded Age is Julian Fellowes' HBO drama about 1880s Manhattan, where old money and new money fight over who gets into the right ballrooms. Carrie Coon plays Bertha Russell, a newcomer determined to break into society, and Morgan Spector plays her husband, George, a railroad tycoon. The show premiered on January 24, 2022, and three seasons have aired so far; HBO renewed it for season 4 in July 2025.
What the show is based on
There's no book. The Gilded Age is an original story that began in 2012 as Fellowes' idea for a Downton Abbey prequel and grew into its own show. What it borrows is the period, and a lot of the people in it.
Some characters are the real thing: Caroline Astor (Donna Murphy), the gatekeeper of New York society; her ally Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane); J.P. Morgan (Bill Camp); and Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (Linda Emond). The Russells are invented, built partly from Alva and William K. Vanderbilt, the new-money couple Mrs. Astor spent years keeping out.
Bertha's biggest fight with Mrs. Astor comes straight from Vanderbilt history. In the show, she backs the new Metropolitan Opera against Mrs. Astor's Academy of Music. In real life, the Academy's stockholders turned down a Vanderbilt offer to pay for more boxes, so William Henry Vanderbilt led the campaign for a new opera house. The Met opened on October 22, 1883, with Faust.
Who George is modeled on
George is a different story. His wife climbs like a Vanderbilt, but Spector was given another name for him.
"I was told that George was modeled on [Jay] Gould," Spector told AwardsDaily.
The plot, he added, borrows from elsewhere: "a lot of the facts of the plot correspond with Cornelius Vanderbilt." The character, though, is mostly Gould.
Spector knew what he was signing up for. Speaking to ET during season 1, he described Gould as "vilified in the press as someone who is responsible for famines and starvation."
Who Jay Gould was
Gould was born poor in upstate New York in 1836 and became one of the richest men in the country through railroads, stocks and an almost total indifference to how it looked:
- The Erie War — in 1868, Gould and his partner Jim Fisk fought Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie Railroad, won, and Gould became its president.
- Black Friday — in 1869, Gould and Fisk tried to corner the gold market, working President Grant's brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, for access. The panic broke on September 24.
- Western Union — he took controlling interest in the telegraph company.
- The 1886 strike — more than 200,000 workers walked off his Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific lines within a week. Gould hired strikebreakers, some of them Pinkertons, and the strike collapsed in May.
Gould took some pride in being known as "the most hated man in America."
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Where George and Gould meet
George's storylines run straight along Gould's track record. In season 1, he bribes Patrick Morris over a railroad station, then shorts the market to bleed him and his partners dry. Morris loses everything and kills himself. Spector's verdict on George was that he's "not a sterling example of a deeply moral human being."
Season 2 handed George a strike. Visiting a worker's home, he gets a look at how his men actually live. Spector described a man who "cannot reconcile the man he wants to be" with where he stands.
The Gould family resemblance even covers the home front. Gould stayed faithful to his wife, Helen Day Miller, and they had six children. George is devoted to Bertha. And just as the Russells' daughter, Gladys, marries a duke, Gould's daughter Anna married a French count, Boni de Castellane.
For the record: Gould's reputation as the most hated man in America made him take serious security precautions. George, his fictional version, got shot in his own study in season 3, and lived.
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