It always begins with the voice. Working on the third season of HBO’s The Gilded Age, things began to click for Denée Benton when she revisited her character’s distinct 19th-century New York lilt. “We have an incredible dialect coach, Howard Samuelsohn,” she explains. When Benton, who plays secretary-turned-reporter Peggy Scott, dials into our early morning Zoom, her cool-girl baby bangs are a far cry from her character’s 1880s updos. “Every time I have my first session back with him and get Peggy’s voice, it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, she’s back.’ From there, everything kind of aligns.” The corset helps too, with the at-attention posture it demands. “You just physically can’t slouch…or breathe much,” she adds. That physical transformation is a reflection of the show’s broader magic: pulling viewers into an opulent world just far enough from the present to feel like an escape.

While Peggy is seldom seen without a big hat or a bustle, Benton’s own style hasn’t always been as clearly defined. “In my earlier years of getting a stylist for the first time, there was such a disconnect,” she recalls. “It was like, during the day I was in Ross Dress For Less and at night, I was in Oscar de la Renta.” After gracing red carpets for nearly a decade—her Broadway debut in Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 earned her a Tony nomination in 2017, and she went on to star in Hamilton and Into the Woods—she’s recently emerged as one of TV’s most daring style stars.

“This season I think
 
we finally get to see her catch her stride and take flight in all areas.”

When the first season of The Gilded Age premiered in 2022, Benton began working with stylist Solange Franklin Reed to take a more intentional approach to fashion. “Over the past two years, with Solange, I really wanted to explore different edges of what it feels like to [dress] like a sexy, embodied woman,” Benton says. “Solange has helped introduce me to the foundations and I’ve been able to take the journey and run towards what feels like a snapshot of ‘me’ right now.”

Becoming Peggy is not so unlike the kind of becoming Benton has reckoned with in chapters of her own life. “I grew up in the Pentecostal church so there were a lot of rules around the way you’re supposed to be able to express yourself,” she says. This was compounded by the jarring experience of attending predominantly white schools. “[With] the desirability politics of that…as a Black girl, it takes you a really long time to realize that you are beautiful.”

She traces the arc: the empowered India.Arie phase, the shaved head, the five tattoos in a single summer, the hair that went blond, then black, then purple. “I feel like I’m kind of settling now,” she says. “Where there’s not so much reclaiming happening.” Over the years, Benton has described her Gilded Age character as a sort of “spiritual ancestor.”From her very first scene, Peggy Scott, an ultra-driven member of New York’s Black elite, is an on-screen anomaly.

Too often, Black life in period dramas is only shown through the lens of servitude. The Gilded Age breaks that mould. And though it isn’t a fantastical reimagination of history, like Bridgerton, it doesn’t strictly narrow its gaze on Black struggle or pain. After Benton was cast, she worked closely with the forces behind the show, particularly co-executive producer and historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar, to ensure that Peggy’s journey was told with depth, nuance, and historical accuracy.

This season, Peggy steps even more fully into herself. “The first two seasons we’re really having to see her grieve and shed these old selves in order to step into what she wants,” she says. “This season I think we finally get to see her catch her stride and take flight in all areas.”

It’s a parallel Benton feels in her own life too. “It feels really in line with me and my personal life in some ways…I feel like I’m coming into full bloom.” She laughs: “I joke that [Peggy and I] went through our Saturn returns at the same time and just kind of got obliterated by the universe, only to have things come into alignment.”

The Gilded Age is now streaming on HBO and Crave.

Photography: Brent Goldsmith
Styling: Corey Ng
Makeup: Keita Moore
Hair: Cody Ainey
Editorial and Creative Director: Sahar Nooraei
Art Director: Jessica Hui
Fashion Director: Haley Dach