Denée Benton Wanted to Show You This Side of Peggy for So Long

Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO

For all its dedication to upstairs-downstairs cliché, HBO’s The Gilded Age has, from the outset, been a mold-breaker when it comes to race. One of the best moments of season one was the reveal that Peggy Scott, played by Broadway vet Denée Benton, does not come from a low-income background, as her contemporaries (and perhaps the audience) expected. She hails from a wealthy Black family in Brooklyn, where her father runs a successful drugstore. Since then, the...