Photography by Nagi Sakai
Fashion Editor Natasha Royt
After six years with Marian Brook, Louisa Jacobson knows that a character’s transformation is rarely announced all at once. It reveals itself in smaller gestures: the way she moves through a room, the decisions she claims as her own — and even the clothes she chooses to wear.
Jacobson was cast in The Gilded Age in September 2019 and began filming in 2021 following COVID delays. Now shooting the series’ fourth season, she has spent much of her early career inhabiting Marian’s world: a meticulously constructed vision of late-19th-century New York in which old fortunes collide with new ambitions and women negotiate the narrow boundaries of the lives available to them.
Recalling July’s Emmy-nominations morning, when the series landed eight total nods, the actress told WrapStyle that being with the cast and crew for the big news brought an extra “sparkle” to filming the new season.
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That growing confidence extends beyond Marian’s professional life. After being repeatedly tested by romance, convention and the expectations of others, Jacobson sees a new resolve in her character — particularly when confronted by circumstances she cannot reveal ahead of the coming season.
“This thing that happens is really hard,” she teased. “But Marian is still going to take control of what she can control, own that decision and continue moving forward.”
Jacobson’s connection to Marian’s world is intensified by her own relationship with New York. She has lived in the city since childhood, but the historical research surrounding The Gilded Age has changed the way she sees its streets.
“Working on the show has deepened my appreciation for the city,” she says. “It has connected me to the past in this beautiful way and reminded me that there is still so much to learn from it.”
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That awareness of creative lineage extends beyond acting. The daughter of a sculptor, Jacobson grew up drawing with her father and studied live-model drawing in college. She still occasionally attends sessions at the Art Students League. She has also explored theater from behind the scenes, serving as assistant director of her friend Maia Novi’s play Invasive Species, and finds other forms of expression through dance and fashion.
For Jacobson, these interests are interconnected: different ways of looking closely at people, movement and the worlds they inhabit. And as Marian claims a larger life for herself, Jacobson is doing something similar — exploring not only who she is as a performer, but everything else she may be capable of creating.
“I think we finally see Marian thriving and really coming into her own,” she says.
The same might be said of the woman playing her.
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