Salli Richardson Whitfield on Her Second Historical Emmy Nominations: “Female Directors Can Do Action”

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. Related Stories TV Workplace Comedies Are Having a Major Emmy Moment TV Eugene Levy on Becoming a Slightly Less 'Reluctant Traveler' in the Third Season of His Emmy-Nominated Show

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 divorc é es back into society at her ball against others’ wishes.