In The Artist, a murder happens at the estate of a charismatic tycoon during the Gilded Age, and everyone is a suspect. Real and fictional characters interact as their true natures come into focus over the course of this wild and entertaining series.
Awards Buzz had the chance to speak with writer, director, and executive producer Aram Rappaport and two new cast members joining the show for part two, Patti LuPone and Katharine McPhee. While they didn’t offer too many clues about their characters, they did have other interesting nuggets to share.
Rappaport appreciated references to The Gilded Age and how this show is really something else:
“For us, it’s like, if The Gilded Age was really dirty and on a lot of drugs and forgot what the narrative was, that’s where we land. That’s also why we tried to juxtapose the cleanliness and the obtuseness of what, not in a negative way, The Gilded Age is. Everything’s clean, everything’s perfect, the wardrobe is clean, there’s no horse shit in the roads. It’s a perfect Gilded Age world. For us, it was like, how do we create something different, that’s really sloppy, from the heart, that’s passionate, that allows you to believe that these artists were desperate to create at all costs in this world.”
LuPone couldn’t believe the food of the era, which is represented in some of the dining scenes of the show:
“I’m just obsessed – I read that, I think it was the Astors, John Jacob, who went down on the Titanic, and Waldorf. They were cousins, like twenty or twenty-five years apart, but everyone became a hotel innkeeper. Once they had their money and they had nothing to do, they were just rich generations after the founding money, they decided to become innkeepers. But if you look at the menus on these Gilded Age restaurants, what were they eating? They were eating so much food! They had like fifteen courses at three in the morning and that was dinner!”
McPhee fell not just for the story but also for its music:
“I love the music, first of all. Can we just talk about it? The music is so cool and so stylized. Sometimes music in a show can bother me if it’s too aggressive, but the music was almost another character in the scene. The writing – this is just my opinion, I know you want to know about my experience on the show, but I’m just giving you my experience of watching something I was just jumping into and was like, sure, I’ll just play a little part. But really so honored and pleased that it ended up being something I’m so grateful to be a small part of.”
Part 1 of The Artist is streaming on The Network. Part 2 premieres on Christmas.
