Then her walk and gestures. How did you find those?
These fashions shape you in a certain way. Women were meant to glide, be smooth. You weren’t supposed to see movement. But Bertha was a novice and felt that her hips should be involved. I don’t know how conscious this choice is. When you’re asked to enter that lobby wearing a hat and a cashmere coat, just walk away.
This season, the show leaned more into melodrama. How do you feel playing those big theatrical scenes?
Terrifying, but wonderful. It’s like you’re playing Eugene O’Neill all the time. But gosh, we’re really having fun. That’s the key: you can’t take it too seriously. You can’t take yourself too seriously. I’m not afraid of big choices, and I’m not afraid of people not liking Bertha, just as I’m not afraid, now that I’m 42, of anyone not liking me. So I try to have fun. There was one shot when Bertha first saw Turner (Curran’s character) that was so hilariously wide. I staggered. She grabbed Morgan’s arm. I fell a little. Once we finished filming, we howled because it was hat on hat on hat on hat.
As we walked that first day, we had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t know how big it was. We didn’t know how much space there was. But as we were shooting, we were like, okay, I think we can handle a little bit more volume. In the second season, some of the show was deleted, and characters were introduced. Now we get to have more fun.
This season focuses heavily on… Real life battle Between the Academy of Music and the emerging Metropolitan Opera. What is the purpose of proxy war?
We always compare it to the moment when the Kardashians were invited to the Met Ball. The world of celebrity and the money it can provide you, is a true symbol of this. The opera also represents the struggle in this country, this feeling of people resisting inevitable change and clinging desperately to an older way of life.
Bertha ended the season with a victory. Could it have ended any other way?
i don’t think so. The exhibition explores a very special time, an extraordinary time of industry, change and growth. We already know that the money people won, and the new people won. Where they weren’t invited, they built something new from the ground up. So its rise is truly inevitable. It is an unrelenting force. There is nothing that will stop her.
