Before she was known as Aunt Ada Forte in The Gilded Age, or even as Miranda Hobbes in Sex and the City, Cynthia Nixon was an established theatre star. Notably, in the fall of 1984, she performed in two Broadway shows at the same time: Hurlyburly and The Real Thing, hopping between venues each night, as her characters were on stage at different times in each show.

Besides pulling off that impressive feat as a teenager, the two-time Tony Award winner has performed on stage in some of the American theatre’s most influential plays: The Little Foxes, Rabbit Hole (Tony wins), Wit, Indisrections (Tony nominations), Angels in America, and The Heidi Chronicles, to name a few. In fall 2025, she returned to the stage in the Broadway play Marjorie Prime opposite June Squibb and more.

The Gilded Age's Bertha (Carrie Coon) and George Russell (Morgan Spector) are a powerfully dynamic duo when they work together, and the same seems to be true for Coon's own artistic collaborations with her real-life husband, Tracy Letts. One of the most highly anticipated events of the 2025-26 theatre season was Coon’s performance in Letts's Bug on Broadway.

Coon worked with her husband on her prior Broadway outing, too: the 2012 revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Coon received a Tony nomination for her performance as Honey opposite Letts’s George.

There really was a Ward McAllister, Nathan Lane's onscreen role, who wrote a scandalous tell-all about New York’s Gilded Age society. Lane has a talent for playing larger-than-life roles whom audiences love despite — or perhaps because of — their questionable morals. Lane is perhaps best known for his Tony Award-winning portrayals of Max Bialystock in The Producers, a role he reprised in the film, and Roy Cohn in the 2018 Broadway revival of Angels in America.

Other notable Broadway roles include Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, and the title role in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus with his Gilded Age co-star Kristine Nielsen. In spring 2026, he tackles the celebrated role of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman on Broadway.

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Long before she was “bedecked in her finest geegaws” as the elegant Aurora Fane, Tony Award winner Kelli O’Hara was known to Broadway audiences as a beloved soprano who has appeared in more than 10 musicals. She often plays strong, complex women like Lili Vanesi (Kiss Me, Kate) and Anna Leonowens (The King and I), who could probably give Fane some tips on how to become independent in the face of her impending divorce.

In spring 2026, O’Hara stars opposite Rose Byrne in the classic comedy Fallen Angels on Broadway. When she’s not performing in plays or musicals, she’s singing opera, including at the Met — the site of much of The Gilded Age season 2’s controversy.

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Linda Emond plays nurse Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, in the first season of The Gilded Age. A three-time Tony Award nominee for Cabaret, Life x3, and Death of a Salesman, Emond returns to Broadway in spring 2026's dark comedy Becky Shaw.

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In spring 2026, Paul Alexander Nolan returns to Broadway in the new musical The Lost Boys, adding to a list of stage credits including Water for Elephants, Parade, Slave Play, Bright Star, Escape to Margaritaville, Jesus Christ Superstar, and more.

In season 3 of The Gilded Age, Nolan plays the wealthy businessman Alfred Merrick.

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Many of Broadway’s most beloved youngsters were first brought to life by Celia Keenan-Bolger, from Olive Ostrovsky in The 25th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee to Molly in Peter and the Starcatcher to Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, a role for which Keenan-Bolger won her first Tony Award. In 2024, she played Martha in Mother Play, a role loosely based on the show's playwright, Paula Vogel.

In 2026, Keenan-Bolger stars off Broadway as the Chorus in Antigone (This Play I Read in High School), a modern Greek-tragedy adaptation.

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Known for playing enterprising footman John "Jack" Trotter on The Gilded Age, Ben Ahlers made his NYC stage debut opposite You's Victoria Pedretti in Tender Napalm off Broadway in 2024. He now makes his Broadway debut opposite Gilded Age star Nathan Lane in Death of a Salesman in spring 2026.

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Patrick Page is used to playing villains the audience loves to hate; throughout his lengthy Broadway career, he’s performed in roles ranging from Scar (The Lion King) to the Grinch (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) to Hades (Hadestown), for which he earned a Tony Award nomination. And in spring 2026, he stars in Shakespeare's notoriously bloody Titus Andronicus off Broadway.

On The Gilded Age, Page plays Richard Clay, Mr. Russell’s right-hand man until (spoiler alert) he is unceremoniously fired.

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Christine Baranski is known for her feisty and formidable roles on screen, like Tanya in the Mamma Mia! films, Diane Lockhart in The Good Wife, and of course, Agnes Van Rhijn in The Gilded Age. But she has a lengthy history as a theatre performer as well. She made her 1982 debut in Hide and Seek and soon won her first of two Tony Awards for The Real Thing, followed by Rumors.

Baranski often plays high-class roles, but she was last seen on Broadway in 2008's Boeing Boeing, stealing the show in a hilarious performance as French housekeeper Berthe. And we consider the 2025 Broadway revival of Mamma Mia! Christine Baranski-adjacent.

The actress playing Dorothy Scott needs no introduction to any Gilded Age fans with even a passing interest in Broadway. Audra McDonald has made theatre history by earning 11 Tony Award nominations and winning six times, both a record; she is also the only person to win the award in all four major acting categories.

Her award-winning theatre credits include Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.’ In 2025, McDonald wrapped her latest Tony-nominated turn as Momma Rose in Gypsy.

On The Gilded Age, McDonald’s onscreen husband is fellow Broadway legend John Douglas Thompson.

After earning breakout fame for playing Marian Brook on The Gilded Age, Louisa Jacobson made her Off-Broadway performing debut in an utterly different role: as a swaggering teenage boy in Trophy Boys in 2025. The previous year, she also co-directed the play Invasive Species off Broadway.

A decade ago, Denée Benton burst onto the theatre scene when she joined the cast of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 for its Broadway transfer, earning a Tony nomination for her performance.

Benton plays Peggy Scott on The Gilded Age, but when she starred in Hamilton on Broadway, she played Eliza, not Peggy. Benton most recently appeared on Broadway as Cinderella in the 2022 Into the Woods revival.

The impressively versatile Donna Murphy is a natural queen bee as The Gilded Age’s Mrs. Astor, who reigns over New York society with an iron fist. A two-time Tony Award winner for her portrayals of Anna in The King and I and Fosca in Passion, Murphy has also starred as comedic leading ladies like Ruth Sherwood in Wonderful Town and the title role in Hello, Dolly! Plus, one of her additional three Tony nominations was for starring in Lovemusik opposite her Gilded Age co-star Michael Cerveris.

Michael Cerveris, a Broadway veteran-turned-Gilded Age valet Mr. Watson, has taken on a wide variety of stage roles, from his Tony Award-winning performances as Bruce in Fun Home and John Wilkes Booth in Assassins to the title characters in Sweeney Todd and The Who’s Tommy. He also earned a Tony nomination alongside Donna Murphy (Mrs. Astor on The Gilded Age) for Lovemusik, a lesser-known show about theatrical legends Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.

The Gilded Age is not Cerveris's first late-19th-century drama. In 2009, he starred on Broadway in In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) opposite Laura Benanti, who makes a memorable Gilded Age appearance in season 2 as Larry Russell’s paramour, Susan Blane.

Before he was the indomitable Gilded Age robber baron George Russell, inspired by the Vanderbilts, Spector trod the boards in A View from the Bridge, Harvey, and Machinal. In the latter show, he met his now-wife Rebecca Hall.

Additionally, he earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance in Russian Transport off Broadway.

Mrs. Armstrong is more than just a lady’s maid! Debra Monk defies easy categorization as a stage, film, and TV performer who also co-wrote the hit cult musical Pump Boys and Dinettes, marking her Broadway debut as a writer and performer in 1982. A decade later, she won a Tony Award for playing Geneva in Langford Wilson’s Redwood Curtain. She’s also had scene-stealing performances in many Kander and Ebb shows, including Chicago, Steel Pier, and Curtains.

Peggy’s father is an acclaimed actor on both sides of the pond. John Douglas Thompson has been seen on Broadway six times, most recently in the Glenda Jackson-led King Lear shortly after becoming a 2017 Tony nominee for his performance as Becker in August Wilson’s Jitney. In between, he played the Starkeeper in the 2018 revival of the musical Carousel. His Gilded Age wife, Audra McDonald, received her first Tony Award for playing Carrie in the previous Carousel revival in the ‘90s.

On The Gilded Age, Kelley Curran plays Mrs. Winterton, the lady’s maid turned wealthy widow whose ambitious and strategic ways are (almost) a match for her former employer, Mrs. Russell. Curran made her Broadway debut in the 2017 revival of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, understudying her Gilded Age co-star Kristine Nielsen’s role of Monica Reed. She's also appeared off Broadway in shows like The Half-God of Rainfall and Dracula.

Jack Gilpin plays Church in The Gilded Age, and his Broadway career includes five shows and spans several decades. He most recently appeared in The Elephant Man in 2002 as Bishop Walsham How (and off stage, he really is an ordained clergyman).

But Jack Gilpin is not the only member of his family in theatre: His daughter, Betty Gilpin, made her Broadway debut in 2025 as Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary!

Like the Van Rhijns' English butler Bannister, Simon Jones is actually English. He has performed in scores of West End productions and more than 10 Broadway shows as well, most recently Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress in 2021.

Fun fact: Jones made his Broadway debut in The Real Thing with the actors who play his Gilded Age character’s employers: Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon.

Sullivan Jones has appeared on Broadway in Jeremy O. Harris’s groundbreaking and provocative Slave Play. In The Gilded Age, he plays T. Thomas Fortune, the publisher of The New York Globe and Peggy's boss and love interest.

The Van Rhijn’s cook, Mrs. Bauer, has been busy off screen! Kristine Nielsen’s lengthy Broadway career include popular shows like the original production of the hit musical Spring Awakening to plays like Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. Not only did Nielsen star alongside The Gilded Age’s Nathan Lane in Gary, but she also replaced Andrea Martin (known to Gilded Age viewers as medium Madame Dashkova) in a performance that earned her a Tony nomination.

Monsieur Baudin, the Russells’ “French” chef from Kansas, is used to playing dual identities. Douglas Sills received a Tony nomination for his breakthrough Broadway role as the title character in Frank Wildhorn’s The Scarlet Pimpernel. Most recently, Sills appeared in Broadway's War Paint as Harry Fleming, opposite Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole.

It’s a hard knock life for Van Rhijn housemaid Bridget, but Taylor Richardson is no stranger to such roles. She made her Broadway debut at age 11 understudying Annie in the 2012 revival and went on to play the role, alternating with Stranger Things star Sadie Sink. Katie Finneran, who plays Gilded Age season 1’s high-society matron Anne Morris, was Miss Hannigan.

Erin Wilhelmi, who plays Gladys’s lady’s maid Adelheid Weber, has been seen on Broadway three times within three years, performing in The Crucible; A Doll's House, Part 2; and To Kill a Mockingbird between 2016 and 2018.

Before starring as sheltered Gladys Russell on The Gilded Age, Taissa Farmiga starred in an Off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Buried Child in 2016.

Beloved Broadway soprano and comedian Laura Benanti plays Susan Blane — a wealthy widow who has a steamy affair with Larry Russell — in season 2 of The Gilded Age. Benanti burst onto the theatre scene as a teenager, when she was can understudy in The Sound of Music on Broadway. She has since led numerous other shows, winning a Tony Award for Gypsy in 2008 and receiving nominations for her roles in She Loves Me, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Into the Woods, and Swing.

Jordan Donica, who plays Dr. William Kirkland on screen, was a 2023 Tony nominee for Camelot and has also performed on Broadway in Sunset Boulevard, My Fair Lady, and The Phantom of the Opera — his Broadway debut. In 2025, he played Joe Hardy in a D.C. production of Damn Yankees, and we hope he’ll be scoring a home run on Broadway soon.

Claybourne Elder made his Broadway debut in the musical adaptation of Bonnie and Clyde and went on to appear in Torch Song, Sunday in the Park with George, and Company. He also won a Drama Desk Award for performing in One Arm off Broadway.

In The Gilded Age, Elder plays John Adams, a descendant of the early U.S. president and the secret lover of Oscar Van Rhijn.

In The Gilded Age, Katie Finneran plays haughty, old-moneyed Anne Morris, who is determined not to allow newcomers like the Russells to become part of New York society.

Most recently seen on Broadway in The Thanksgiving Play in 2023, Finneran is a versatile and prolific stage performer who has won Tonys in both featured actress categories: Best Featured Actress in a Play for Noises Off and Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Promises, Promises.

Long before working at the Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital as Dr. Wilson in House, or even playing Reverend Luke Forte in The Gilded Age, Robert Sean Leonard trod the boards of Broadway. As a teenager, he replaced Matthew Broderick in Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and went on to appear in shows like Sunday in the Park with George, Born Yesterday, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Candida, and Invention of Love, for which he won a 2003 Tony Award.

Andrea Martin is beloved for playing quirky characters, like Madame Dashkova, a medium seen in season 3 of The Gilded Age. A tour-de-force theatre comedian, the two-time Tony Award winner has appeared in over a dozen Broadway shows. Most recently, she's performed off Broadway in Meet the Cartozians and High Spirits in the 2025-26 theatre season.

Best known to Gilmore Girls fans as Headmaster Charleston of Chilton, Dakin Matthews plays Joshua Winterton in The Gilded Age. Matthews' recent stage credits include the Broadway productions of Waitress, Camelot (alongside fellow Gilded Age cast member Jordan Donica), and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Known for his smooth baritone, Brian Stokes Mitchell has starred in more than 10 Broadway shows, including Kiss Me Kate (Tony Award), the original production of Ragtime (with Gilded Age co-star Audra McDonald), Man of La Mancha, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (with Gilded Age co-star Laura Benanti).

In Gilded Age, he plays Frederick Kirkland, a character loosely inspired by real-life pastor-turned-dentist Mahlon Van Horne.

English actress Hattie Morahan plays Lady Sarah Vere, Gladys's sister-in-law after her marriage to the Duke of Buckingham. In real life, Morahan is married to fellow actor Blake Ritson, who stars as Oscar Van Rhijn in The Gilded Age.

In 2014, she led a critically acclaimed revival of A Doll's House at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and she's performed in numerous London productions.

In The Gilded Age, Phylicia Rashad plays Elizabeth Kirkland, a denizen of Newport’s elite Black community. Rashad has had a lengthy stage career, winning Tony Awards for Skeleton Crew and A Raisin in the Sun, and she's lately turned her attention to roles backstage. She produced Purlie Victorious in 2023 and directed Branden Jacobs Jenkins’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play Purpose in 2025.

A Tony award nominee for his performance in Clybourne Park, Jeremy Shamos has also appeared on Broadway in shows like Meteor Shower (opposite The Gilded Age's Laura Benanti*), Noises Off (with Andrea Martin), Reckless (with Debra Monk), The Assembled Parties, and Glengarry Glen Ross.

He plays Met Opera financier Mr. Gilbert in season 2 of The Gilded Age.

As Mamie Fish on Gilded Age, Ashlie Atkinson plays a decadent, witty society hostess inspired by a real woman. The actress is best known for her screen work, but fresh out of theatre school in 2004, Atkinson made a splash in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig off Broadway, winning a Theater World Award and an Outer Critics Circle nomination for her performance. She also performed in the 2007 Broadway revival of The Ritz.

Bill Camp, who plays J. P. Morgan on Gilded Age, was nominated for a 2016 Tony Award for playing John Hale in a revival of The Crucible that also featured fellow ‘Gilded Age’ cast member Erin Wilhelmi. Other Broadway credits include Death of A Salesman (alongside Gilded Age's Linda Emond), Jackie (with Gilded Age’s Kristine Nielsen), Saint Joan, and The Seagull. Camp also won an Obie Award for Tony Kushner's Homebody/Kabul off Broadway.

Christopher Denham won a Lucille Lortel Award for his Off-Broadway performance in Red Light Winter, and he's appeared in various other shows on and off Broadway, including 2025's Good Night, and Good Luck opposite George Clooney. In The Gilded Age, he plays a wealthy banker with a secret connection to George Russell’s valet Watson.

Known for her television roles, including Special Agent Maya Miller in Ozark and Athena Trumbo in Gilded Age, Jessica Frances Dukes made her Broadway debut in a 2021 production of Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind.

Perhaps best known for playing Mrs. Astor's daughter Carrie, Amy Forsyth made her Broadway debut in 2024 as Diana in Stereophonic.

David Furr was a 2017 Tony nominee for his portrayal of Garry Lejeune in the revival of Noises Off, which also featured Gilded Age cast members Andrea Martin and Jeremy Shamos. His other Broadway credits include numerous classic plays like Burn This, The Importance of Being Earnest, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cymbeline, and King Lear.

In The Gilded Age, Furr plays the widowed Van Rhijn/Fane cousin Dashiell Montgomery.

Rebecca Haden plays Flora McNeil on The Gilded Age. On stage, she performed in a 2022 Off-Broadway production of Alice Childress’s The Wedding Band with Theatre for a New Audience.

In The Gilded Age, Ward Horton plays Charles Fane, who's central to one of the most heartbreaking twists of season 3. Horton played Ed in the 2018 Broadway revival of Torch Song Trilogy.

At 10 years old, Matilda Lawler made her Broadway debut as one of the children in The Ferryman. She plays Dashiell Montgomery's daughter Frances, and one of Marian Brook’s pupils, in The Gilded Age.

After performing in numerous London theatre productions, English actress Rachel Pickup made her Broadway debut in the 2017 revival of Present Laughter, which also featured fellow Gilded Age cast members Kristine Nielsen and Kelley Curran. Both Curran and Pickup understudied Nielsen's role.

But the similarities didn't stop there! In The Gilded Age, Pickup plays Miss Andre, who becomes Bertha Russell's lady maid after Curran's character is dismissed.

John Sanders plays prominent Gilded Age architect Stanford White. He's performed on Broadway in Groundhog Day, Matilda, and Peter and the Starcatcher, and he also spent many years as a fixture of the Chicago theater scene, earning two Jeff Award nominations there.

Hannah Shealy plays Mrs. Astor's divorced daughter Charlotte, who is based on the real-life Charlotte Astor Drayton Haig. Shealy's theatre credits include productions of The Rose Tattoo, Queens, and Unknown Soldier at the prestigious Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

In winter 2026, the Gossip Girl star returns off Broadway as Junius in The Tragedy of Coriolanus. Also off Broadway, she notably performed in five casts of Nora and Delia Ephron's Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which featured a rotating, all-star lineup.

On The Gilded Age season 1, she played stenographer Mabel Ainsley.

In The Gilded Age, Tripplehorn plays Sylvia Chamberlain, a socialite based on a real woman who was snubbed by high society. Tripplehorn got her start in theatre, performing off Broadway in John Patrick Shanley's The Big Funk and on Broadway in a 1997 revival of Three Sisters.