Style Take a look at
What’s “good style” anyway? Enable your favourite actor, musician, movie star, or comic to allow you to in on what they’re watching, studying, and consuming.
Photograph-Illustration: by The Lower; Images: Nick Thompson, Everett Assortment, HBO, Getty Pictures, Retailers
“I don’t assume anybody gossips greater than Oscar Van Rhijn,” says The Gilded Age actor Blake Ritson. “It’s one among his superpowers.” Since 2022, Ritson has starred in Julian Fellowes’s opulent Eighteen Eighties interval drama, which has gained momentum in viewership and awards recognition. After Oscar loses his household’s fortune in fraudulent investments and the demise of his secret homosexual lover, Ritson is relishing in his character’s ascent again into vital social standing and out of his “innermost circle of hell” — with the assistance of a lavender marriage to social climber Enid Winterton (Kelley Curran). Collectively, they make for a strong however sneaky duo with nefarious plans to thwart no matter Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) might need in retailer to take care of her new-money social dominance.
“Everyone seems to be clinging to the highest, attempting to know their means larger,” Ritson says. “There’s a gleeful amorality to Oscar and Enid, the place they see society and life as a recreation the place you may make up your personal guidelines to some extent, or no less than bend them out of whack a bit of, which may be very enjoyable.” The prolific English actor has labored throughout mediums through the years, from the stage to voice work in an extended record of BBC radio dramas. At 48, Ritson has been continuously solid in interval items — every thing from the 2010 rendition of Upstairs Downstairs to a handful of episodes in The Crown. However nothing thus far has been as scrumptious as enjoying Oscar, which permits the actor to change “acerbic barbed feedback” with Christine Baranski, who performs his mom, Agnes. “I really like working along with her,” he says. “Oscar is the one different character who can actually commerce insults along with her; he’s obtained the identical linguistic capability to search out these little put-downs.”
What do you make of this new iteration of Oscar and his relationship to Enid?
It’s thrilling seeing them each forging this different imaginative and prescient of excessive society, a imaginative and prescient of one thing way more enjoyable and progressive, with cocktails and dandies and an entire new stage of opulence. They’re comparable in some ways and united of their disdain for the Russells. They’re attempting to topple them to change into the brand new king and queen of excessive society and set themselves up as the brand new tastemakers. I feel what they current as a brand new imaginative and prescient of the long run may be very compelling. They’re attempting to supply one thing way more freewheeling; it’s a enjoyable imaginative and prescient of the long run.
Do you play Oscar with the grief of John’s brutal demise effervescent beneath the floor?
For positive. There isn’t a capacity to metabolize the grief in public as a result of being homosexual is clearly unlawful within the Eighteen Eighties, and there’s this horrible danger of authorized or social punishment for it. There’s a sense that this yr, as a counterpoint, he’s on a reasonably hedonistic run. He’s ingesting. He’s dancing. He’s canoodling. He’s spending cash in preposterous methods, and there’s a particular sense of launch that’s his means of metabolizing that grief.
Are there any Eighteen Eighties type tendencies you need to see in 2026?
Oh, there are so much. I’m an enormous fan of the sun shades. A few of them are literally my very own that I’ve contributed to the present. I really like the tailoring. The fits are so flattering and majestic. The cravats! I put on some unimaginable, muscular, Artwork Deco geometric-patterned cravats this yr, which I’m fairly envious of. I really like the flexibility to have little forensic barbed feedback on society with the tiniest of knickknack. In a scene the place he’s being notably immoral, Oscar will put on a bit of serpent slithering throughout a mother-of-pearl stud. I actually like that encoding of message, the meaningfulness of every thing that they put on.
Entering into our Style Take a look at: Which celebrities would you invite to a cocktail party (lifeless or alive)?
Stephen Fry, completely. I really feel like he’s such a latter-day Oscar Wilde. So he would undoubtedly be there. Christine Baranski would possibly make the record. She’d be incredible firm. I’d love to speak to a David Bowie or somebody to choose the brains of a musical luminary, like Bob Dylan. And Mark Rylance, he has a beautiful philosophical stance on life.
What’s the final meal you cooked for dinner?
When it will get to dinner, I’m typically attempting to appease my two youngsters who’ve nearly diametrically opposed appetites. There are only a few meals that attraction to each of them. So it will have in all probability been a turkey mince bolognese with a passata, with some Ottolenghi-style charred broccoli and New York–type Brussels sprouts.
What’s your pre-filming ritual on the set of The Gilded Age?
My pre-filming ritual begins at house the place I brew up a choice of teas for endurance all through the day. I begin with a flask — there’s a tea store referred to as Postcard Teas in London, which makes an unimaginable Earl Gray with cold-pressed bergamot from Calabria. So I’ve a flask of that, after which I’ll have a flask of matcha latte from Kettl, after which a really good Darjeeling mix by Fort Mason. I’ll have a tea choice, and I’ve a bit of hamper with snacks with me.
Do you have got a playlist to get into character for Oscar?
I’ve a wide range of Oscar playlists, that are clearly wildly anachronistic, however I fairly like a little bit of aesthetic whiplash anyway. Typically on set there are specific scenes or pivotal moments the place there’s a very particular emotional local weather that doesn’t match the ambiance on set. I then use music as a swift means of immersing oneself within the character. I suppose it’s a sonic portal to dissolve the current, step into the emotional pores and skin of the character, a deliberate drowning out of the fashionable world so you may hear the character’s pulse.
What are some playlist highlights?
The Puppini Sisters’ “Materials Women” cowl; “Candy Talkin’ Man,” by the Chiffons;“Kiss,” by Prince; “Fantasy on Two Folksongs,” by the Osipov State Russian People Orchestra; “Gamblin’ Man,” by Lonnie Donegan; “Let’s Misbehave,” by Rose Colella.
How do you’re feeling about Gilded Age–period etiquette and politeness?
I’m within the Oscar camp the place I feel there are events that demand a sure propriety, which is quite fantastic and has a magnificence and magnificence to it, however equally, there are a lot of events the place they invite anarchy. There’s one thing about being so tightly coiled and codified, which is an open invitation to refined misbehavior. Having mentioned that, my youngsters might use a number of suggestions so possibly I ought to give them a duplicate of Debrett’s etiquette information and browse it to them as their bedtime story.
Favourite recreation to play?
Beautiful corpse was a recreation designed by the surrealists in 1925. Somebody attracts the pinnacle, you fold it over. Somebody attracts the neck, fold it over. Somebody attracts the physique, then the legs, and you then give it a reputation, and also you give you this unusual amalgam of everybody’s subconsciousnesses. You give you quite fantastic creations, typically with a barely scatological edge with my youngsters. It’s genuinely witty and enjoyable.
Title a guide you couldn’t put down?
Antkind, by Charlie Kaufman, however I did need to put it down as a result of it was 700 pages. However I did learn by means of it fairly avidly. He has such a beautiful, irreverent, postmodern, melancholy voice. I really like that guide.
You’ve been in loads of interval dramas. What’s a private favourite movie or present that doesn’t happen in our time?
I’m a sucker for a dystopia. I really like movies like Brazil, I’m a fan of Terry Gilliam. I like movies which have an otherworldly sense. Just like the Coen brothers, they exist out of time, one thing like O Brother, The place Artwork Thou? is pleasant. I’m watching loads of youngsters’ exhibits in the meanwhile. Bluey is a masterpiece of dual-register storytelling. It’s like an ode to the exhausting choreography of recent parenting; it revels within the poetry of the mundane. It’s the one present the place I discover myself urging the youngsters that they need to in all probability watch another episode.
Worst factor to do at a cocktail party?
I’ve seen it. I used to be at a cocktail party and somebody’s prawn dish got here. They ate each single one of many prawns, and in fast succession, then vomited all of them straight again up into the identical bowl they have been served in. Although it was a toddler, it was horrific to witness. It might be a brand new nadir for any ceremonial dinner.
Do you have got any recommendation for lavender marriages?
Judging from the present, marry your finest buddy might be the takeaway as a result of they enjoyment of one another’s firm. There’s no sense of imposition of them current in the identical house. In a means, it’s nearly the happiest marriage within the present. They’re two finest pals hanging out, guffawing and gossiping, and forging their very own dynamic path by means of society.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
Signal Up for The Gilded Age Membership
A publication the place writers and editors obsess over HBO’s campy Nineteenth-century drama, for subscribers solely.
Vox Media, LLC Phrases and Privateness Discover