Morgan Spector Says George Russell “Sees the Long Game” in the Union Battle on ‘The Gilded Age’: “You Can’t Fight that Battle Forever”

The Gilded Age Season 2 Episode 6 “Warning Shots” ends with a dramatic showdown between robber baron George Russell (Morgan Spector) and striking union workers at a factory in Pittsburgh. HBO‘s lavish period drama has been tiptoeing around the vast economic equality of the time period all season, pointing out that the Russells’ wildly extravagant wealth is only possible because of the work of a massive, underpaid working class. For weeks, we’ve watched as George has attempted to placate union leader Henderson (Darren Goldstein) to no avail. The Gilded Age Season 2 Episode 6 ends in a chilling standoff in Pittsburgh, where George’s secretary Clay (Patrick Page) encourages his boss to use local law enforcement to open fire on the striking workers fighting for their right to an eight hour workday, better wages, and better conditions for themselves and their families. As the moment becomes more and more tense, it seems that The Gilded Age is about to recreate the Homestead Strike of 1892: a violent standoff between Pittsburgh steel mogul Andrew Carnegie’s chosen lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick, and unionized workers that resulted in the deaths of nearly a dozen.

However, at the very last minute, George Russell calls the guns off and agrees to negotiations over bloodshed. The day is saved! The strike worked! And no one is happier that The Gilded Age spent almost a full season working up to this dramatic detente than star Morgan Spector himself.

“I love that there’s the strike storyline in our show. It was something I sort of advocated for at various times because I think this history is so exciting and, you know, sort of under-covered in popular culture,” Spector told Decider during a recent conversation. “I mean, these were really violent battles between bosses and unions back in the 19th and early 20th century. There were a lot of like massacres of workers as they were organizing for the eight hour day, wage increases, and various other things.”

“The strike has always been really the most powerful tool in the arsenal of workers as leverage when it’s actually carried out.”

Strikes have been on actor Morgan Spector’s mind in more way than one this past year. In the months leading up to The Gilded Age‘s Season 2 premiere, Spector’s own union, SAG-AFTRA, voted to go on an historic strike alongside the WGA to bargain for better streaming residuals, protection against AI, and more. That meant that Spector was in the unique position of playing a union-busting boss all while being a striking worker.

“In a certain way, it was fun. There was a point where the show was actually going to premiere a little sooner than it ended up premiering. So there was a point where it was actually gonna come out really like in the middle of the [SAG-AFTRA] strike at a point when tensions were running high,” Spector said. “There were some ugly moments in the strike and it was a real reminder that this conflict that is kind of baked into capitalism is a brutal conflict.”

“Obviously our show is a kind of, you know, lighthearted way to think about this problem, but I was glad that we dealt with it.”

When Spector’s character George Russell deals with his strike, he does so in a way that might make his peers believe he’s gone soft. After all, Russell decides to call off the firefight after meeting Henderson’s family. So has the tough titan of industry been undone by his conscience, or is it possible that there’s a larger game of 3D chess the robber baron is playing.

“It’s a little bit of both, right?” The Gilded Age executive producer Sonja Warfield recently told Decider. “Because they are humanized for him: the workers and the son and everything. So, in that moment, he’s human. And then on the other side of it, he’s a businessman.”

“I mean, there’s some good in George and also, at the end of the day, he wants to get paid a lot.”

When Decider posed Spector with the same question, he concurred with Warfield.

“I mean, I think it is a little bit of both. I think for me it’s George thinking on his feet. I don’t think he’s ever been convinced that brutal violence was the way to deal with this problem. I think he probably quite reasonably sees that you can pacify this group of people to some extent by giving them things that don’t cost you very much,” Spector said before noting that Clay and George’s fellow robber barons “don’t necessarily agree.”

“I think [George] sort of sees the long game a little bit. These battles aren’t going anywhere and you aren’t going to be able to just kill everyone. You’re not going to be able to just brutalize people indefinitely. You know, you need workers. The question is: on what terms can you create a sustainable model where you can still make obscene profits?”

“When people shut down your factory, you go to zero. I mean, George’s company is financialized and all that stuff, but there’s real power in that kind of strike,” Spector said. “You can’t win that one. You can’t fight that battle forever.”

So maybe George Russell has it right: it’s not worth fighting that battle at all.