Downton Abbey's creator has insisted The Gilded Age will be different to his big hit after comparisons to his original blockbuster series.
Julian Fellowes appeared on Good Morning Britain to discuss the new HBO drama and explained the differences from his Yorkshire-based drama Downton Abbey.
Co-host Ed Balls and Susanna Reid praised the sumptuous setting and finery of the show, which is set in the late 19th century and follows a young woman who moves from rural Pennsylvania to New York City after the death of her father.
She moves in with her wealthy aunts, played by Mamma Mia’s Christine Baranski and Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon, and soon becomes caught up in the aunts' battle with their neighbours, a railroad tycoon and his ambitious wife.
ITV presenter Ed Balls said: “The music, the costumes, the way it's shot, the upstairs downstairs feel - it has quite a lot of Downton Abbey in there, doesn’t it?”
But Fellowes insisted the new series has a “different dynamic” with its focus on the clash between the established wealthy set and those from new money.
He said: “Although you must have servant characters if you’re going to show rich people at that time, because everyone had these rather strange households of two existences going on under one roof, and you can’t ignore that.
“But for me the dynamic is the old versus the new. It was a different energised society.
“Mrs Astor created this blended society of the new arrivals and the old establishment, which was quite unlike anything that was happening in London or Paris or Rome. It was faster moving.”
The show has been a long time in the works as Fellowes first started working on it in 2012, but put it on the back burner until it was greenlit in 2018.
He described the cast as “fabulous” and said the production managed to make the most of the closure of Broadway during the coronavirus pandemic.
Fellowes said: “When you’ve written a script and these names start coming through of people who are prepared to act in it - there’s nothing like it. You’re as high as a kite. They were all marvellous.
“We had a wonderful pick of Broadway actors too because it was during the reign of Covid, so practically every theatre was dark and we were shooting in and around New York.”
This year is set to be a bumper year for fans of Downton Abbey, with The Gilded Age hitting screens as well as the long-awaited Downton movie sequel finally arriving in cinemas.
Fellowes said he decided to cross the pond for this latest series because he’s been interested in the “extraordinary” period of time between the Civil War and the First World War in the US.
He said: “America found its feet and found its way of doing things that wasn’t an imitation of Europe.
“They developed a way of being rich, a way of dominating the argument,” he continued. “I see it as a sort of training for the century that was coming that they would dominate.”
