Later episodes will show the conflict from George’s perspective and the perspectives of the men leading the organization’s efforts.
“In the Gilded Age, like today, there’s incredible income inequality. And so the workers were not valued,” Warfield says. “Back then, if you were working in a factory and you were injured, employers said ‘Now you can’t work anymore and we’re not going to pay you and we don’t care about you and you’re useless to us’. During that time the workers were not humanized and we’re living in a similar time period where we have huge income inequality and dehumanization of people.”
Season two features scenes from George’s factory and the homes of his workers in Pittsburgh. The Gilded Age season 2 did not film in Pittsburgh but used locations in New York state that have preserved 1880s architecture.
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“The Troy- Albany area keeps giving us these gifts, “ Shaw says. “In a nearby town, there was an old mill town because a lot of textile plants were along the river. So even though it’s supposed to be a steel mill, we used what remains. There also was worker housing that was just up the hill from this mill that was back in the days when it was a company town. We added dirt in the street, built the gate to the factory and we added some outbuildings, chicken coops, and things like that.”
George later on in the season travels to Pittsburgh to confront the threat of a strike.
“George has a private train car, which was a way that the millionaires traveled back in those days,” Shaw says. “So we had to build the inside of his private train car. And it’s incredibly elaborate. For a little tiny space, it has all the period molding details, all these little brackets running up the header on the train car. The area where you put your luggage is all tufted and upholstered, and all the blinds and the drapes and everything were custom-made for this thing. We even had special carpeting woven for the floor.”
