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When Salli Richardson-Whitfield learned the season three finale of The Gilded Age would culminate with Peggy (Denée Benton) being proposed to at the Black Ball, she immediately called dibs. “Yeah, no one else is directing that,” Richardson-Whitfield, who’s also an executive producer of the series, recalls saying.
The director, who made history in 2024 as the first Black woman to earn an Emmy nomination for directing a drama (Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty), was also slated to helm the finale of another HBO series, Task, but ended up directing the penultimate episode of season one in which Tom Pelphrey’s Robbie is killed during an FBI sting, citing her love for action. “In your mind, you always think the finale, that’s the one, and a lot of times it’s that [episode] right before that’s really the big one,” says Richardson-Whitfield.
She’s right. Her work on the Task episode and The Gilded Age led Richardson-Whitfield to make Emmy history once again, becoming the first Black woman to receive double drama series directing nominations.
“It’s crazy to me,” the former actress says of her trajectory behind the camera. “But I do take it very seriously. It’s why I work so hard.”
What went into coordinating that scene in the Gilded Age finale when all the guests are dancing and Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica) makes his way across the ballroom to propose to Peggy?
I wanted Peggy’s proposal to feel like every girl’s fantasy — not that that’s every girl’s fantasy — but when we think about that as little girls, or Cinderella or old movie romance. I think that’s the one thing you can embrace in Gilded is this old-fashioned way of doing movies and the pageantry of it all. So that slo-mo shot pushing in on her in William’s POV as we settle in on her face, she looks so angelic and beautiful, and our hearts are bursting for her. On the set, [Benton] came over and looked at the monitor later, and she and the writers were literally in tears watching it.
In general, I wanted both balls to feel like they were equally weighted. Bertha [Carrie Coon] and George [Morgan Spector], if we’re talking about nowadays, they’ve got billions, but that didn’t mean [the Black Ball] couldn’t feel as grand and gorgeous [as theirs]. And in particular, when I’m doing the Black elite storyline, I want people to understand the beauty of that time for people of color. … Both balls were designed to seamlessly cut between each one so that you sometimes didn’t know which ball you were coming into until you were there. So it took a lot of planning and storyboarding and special shots. That’s the one thing I love about filmmaking, my transitions, and Gilded Age is one of those shows that’s about fun transitions.
There’s also this divide between the old and new guard, with Peggy being shamed by Dr. Kirkland’s mother for her past and Bertha wanting to welcome divorcées back into society at her ball against others’ wishes. What’s being communicated there?
It’s a very woman-forward episode and shows that we can make mistakes and we can be forgiven and we don’t need to be scorned for them for the rest of our lives. There are choices. And things are changing in the late 1800s. Women are starting to have more of a voice. And I think that that’s what it speaks to, even for Bertha. Bertha’s making bad decisions, too, and she may land somewhere that she doesn’t want to be herself.
What’s the biggest challenge for you directing each series?
Although there are these big set pieces, what I try to do is make sure that we never forget the story. What’s at the heart of this? That is where you get in trouble as filmmakers. If it’s just about a fight scene, then who cares? If it’s just people dancing in a ball, who cares? If I think about Task and the scene where [Robbie] gets stabbed in the woods, that isn’t just a fight scene. It’s these two men who hate each other, coming head-to-head. And you feel so much for both of them, hopefully, and what they’re going through. That’s what makes that fight scene into something great.
Talk about that final scene in the episode where Robbie is floating peacefully in the water.
We wanted to bring you back to, again, what is the heart of this story? And it’s Robbie. It’s flawed Robbie. He’s a good guy who was put in bad circumstances. Some people in bad circumstances make good choices and some make wrong choices. But that doesn’t make them awful people because you see, for him, this is all about his family, and the guy had the biggest heart in the world. And that is what we brought you back to at the end — not all the bad decisions.
You’ve said in prior interviews that hearing from other women about what your Emmy nominations mean to them has been most meaningful. Did you foresee yourself opening doors for others one day when you made the transition to directing?
Absolutely not. I started out as an actress. I thought I’d be up there getting my little Emmy for acting. And it’s just starting to sink in that this means so much more to other people. I’m doing something that I love to do. I’m doing something that feeds my family, will help me retire. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be a role model and that people would be looking up to me and hoping that they could achieve the things that I have. Listen, we are all going to fail, but I don’t want to fail because I didn’t work hard enough or didn’t try hard enough. And I know it’s important for young girls coming behind me who want to be filmmakers that maybe they’ll have an opportunity because someone worked with me or worked with another woman or another Black woman and they’re like, “Oh, I had a great experience with them. And if she could do it, then I’m going to believe in this other young Black girl coming in, or this woman.” Sometimes people don’t think female directors can do action. I’ve proved that, yeah, we can. Maybe we do it different, but maybe that’s better.
Task will have an all-female directing crew next year.
I can’t imagine you didn’t have something to do with that.
I’m not going to take responsibility for all of that. I think that [creator Brad Ingelsby] maybe loved working with a woman. Honestly, those might’ve just been the best choices. Most of the time, it’ll be a show where it’s only male directors and nobody wants to know why that happened. So I really do think that Brad sat down and met with people, and he chose the people who were the right people for his show, and it happened to be women.
Were you surprised Task didn’t get a best drama series nomination?
Yeah, I think it’s deserved, but there are a lot of good shows out there, and I’m just happy that what they recognized was Brad’s writing and Mark Ruffalo and Tom. I think that some of our supporting actors should have gotten nominated. There are just amazing performances. But Gilded didn’t get this stuff in the first year or two. We have a new season of Task, and let me tell you, I’ve been reading those scripts. They are insane.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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