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n Season Three of The Gilded Age, George Russell prepares to risk it all. The fictional late-19th-century tycoon, played by Morgan Spector, has his sights set on conquering westward trade and travel with a transcontinental railroad project. It’s a monumental endeavor that requires all manner of smoky backroom dealmaking, undercutting, and elaborate financial wizardry, which plays against a backdrop of bank runs and family dramas.
Spector plays Russell with a steely cool and intelligence that persist even as the character’s relentless determination repeatedly pushes him to the brink of ruin. This has made George Russell one of television’s most ruthless, fun-to-watch capitalists — a delight that becomes even more enjoyable when you consider that the actor is a staunch, outspoken democratic socialist.
Before being cast in The Gilded Age, Spector was a seasoned character actor with an array of stage and screen credits, including the starring role in David Simon and Ed Burns’ 2020 adaptation of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America for HBO. Throughout Spector’s career, he has aligned himself with left-wing causes and politicians, even once penning an article for the socialist magazine Jacobin. In 2020, he produced Yael Bridge’s documentary, The Big Scary “S” Word about the history of American socialism and its resurgence post-Bernie Sanders.
Spector’s journey to democratic socialism is a familiar one for many in the Gen X/millennial set. He was raised in a liberal Northern California enclave, where tolerance and diversity were celebrated even if structural issues kept his hometown overwhelmingly white. In college, he admits, he was more interested in having a good time than in politics or his studies. But he began to pay more attention after 9/11: the folly of the Bush administration’s global war on terror, the stymied hope of the Obama years, the rise of Occupy and then of Bernie Sanders. That’s when it clicked for Spector, the need to “have a critique of this overall system and a theory of power about how you’re going to take it on and change it.”
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Spector spoke thoughtfully and widely about the intersection of his beliefs and his portrayal of George Russell on The Gilded Age. He pondered the similarities between late-19th-century railroad expansion and the Silicon Valley tech boom; wondered whether the rise of AI will lead to economic and labor crises like those that marred the actual Gilded Age; and noted the parallels between the wildly unregulated financial markets of the 1880s and the wildly unregulated crypto markets of the 2020s.
“There are a lot of cowboys who are making tons of money, and there are a lot of people who want to be those cowboys and are being absolutely ruined by this fantasy,” Spector says of crypto. “That’s an interesting framework to think about these bank runs, because something quite similar is happening now.”
And then, of course, there are the billionaires themselves, from those who inspired George Russell, to those who continue to shape our world in profound ways. “The second Trump administration has made this as clear as it could possibly be — look at that picture of Trump being inaugurated and behind him are the six or seven richest men in the world,” Spector says. “That’s just naked. That’s what power means. Billionaires are a real threat to democracy. They are a real threat to the nation state. If you care about climate, if you care about equality, if you care about justice, and if you also want to change the way the U.S. empire operates in the world, you have to take on these power centers in a way that confronts capitalism directly.”
When you first got the offer to play George Russell, what fascinated you most about that era?
I had produced a documentary (The Big Scary “S” Word) with a friend of mine about the resurgence of American socialism post-Bernie. As part of that, we did a lot of research on the 19th-century precursors — (Eugene V.) Debbs, the early days of American labor, and the question of why America never developed a labor party. So, I had been reading about the period through a different lens, and the idea of coming at it from this other lens was fascinating.
Obviously, (for Gilded Age creator) Julian Fellowes, that isn’t the thing that he’s most fascinated by. But you can’t think about capitalists and what they’re doing without the rest of the story being implied. It’s a fascinating period to consider from whatever angle, and my hope is that it provokes conversation about what’s outside the frame of the show.
Do you think your personal politics have informed your performance, or added an extra layer of enjoyment to playing this character?
It’s definitely added a layer of enjoyment. I think, acting him — he is who he is. If I were to bring a critique of the character into the performance, that would make the performance less interesting. You have to surrender to the values of the character to fully play them.
The thing that’s been fun is being an ambassador for the show and being able to play against the values of the character online and in public. There are a lot of lefties on our show. Cynthia Nixon, Denée Benton, Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon — everyone’s pretty political and outspoken. It feels like that gives the contemporary audience permission to enjoy these people more than they would otherwise. Because we are living in an era of tremendous inequality, where the Gilded Age is constantly referred to as an analog. If there weren’t this sense that there was at least an implicit criticism of these people, it wouldn’t be as easy to relax into the world and enjoy it for all of the pleasure it offers. That’s my little pet theory.
Morgan Spector in New York, June 2025.
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
George’s main business plot this season centers around railroad expansion and the backroom negotiations behind it. What was it like digging into that?
My favorite part was that they brought in J.P. Morgan (as a character), so I got to act with Bill Camp, who’s the greatest. But also learning about the railroads. There’s a really great book called Railroaded by the Stanford historian Richard White, and in his introduction, he talks about the parallels between the railroads and Silicon Valley. They were both built by people who fashioned themselves as freewheeling individualists who don’t need anything from anybody and the government is only in their way — when, in reality, an enormous amount of the crucial funding for both the railroad and these internet companies came from the state and the federal governments. The narrative of, “I’m building this out of sheer will and genius” — it was nonsense when the railroads were being built, and it’s nonsense today.
George’s storyline this season also highlights his relentlessness and greed. What do you think motivates someone like him to always need more?
I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about how CEOs have a legal obligation to make decisions that make the corporation profit, that make the shareholders money. They literally cannot do something that might prevent that, even if it’s in the greater good of the general public. George is an embodiment of that sort of requirement for expansion implicit in capitalism. But I also think he’s one of these guys that wants to be the best. He wants to put his stamp on the universe in a way that is indelible. There are moments this season where he’s being really irrational, taking risks that are not smart, and he nearly comes to ruin as a result. The thing that’s driving him is the kind of mysterious psychological wound that is at the root of a lot of great achievement.
For me, the defining George moment came last season, when he declined to use violence against striking workers at his steel mill, then came up with a plot to undermine their solidarity by sowing racial animosity. What was it like getting to do that storyline and have it end on a note that’s not bloody, but no less wicked?
I was really impressed and proud of the writers. There’s a challenge of, you want George to be a credible man of his time. George could say, “Yes, kill all the union men who are standing in front of me” — as no doubt these guys did many a time; part of the reason America doesn’t have a Labor Party is because the labor movement was so brutally and violently repressed. But I think we would have lost the audience. You have to pull him back from the brink, but not make it seem like he’s suddenly developed a 20th-century conscience. I think the way (the writers) did that was clever, and historically accurate. That has always been, and remains, a strategy (of those in power) — you use culture, ethnicity, language, and immigration status to divide a group of people with common interests who could otherwise effectively oppose you.
You mentioned this earlier, but the Gilded Age is often used as an analog for this current moment. What are some of the resonances and differences you see between now and then?
If the forecasts are to be believed, AI and whatever that may develop into is about to transform our economy and probably our politics. I don’t think anybody really knows how that’s going to shake out. If you look at the Gilded Age, it was a period of repeated economic crisis and bloody battles between capital and labor. And I would say that conflict wasn’t resolved until the New Deal. You had close to 40, 50 years of strife until there was a kind of detente. And I think we’re probably looking at something similar (now). This technology has a real potential to completely transform our society. It may be sudden, it may be brutal for millions of people — and then what happens? What do those people do? What new politics arise when you have now 10, 20 percent white-collar unemployment?
Billionaires are often eccentric. Is there anything you’ve noted about Gilded Age billionaires that distinguishes them from contemporary ones?
My favorite piece of research for this part, even though it didn’t quite inform the character, but it did inform my sense of the society, was this book “King Lehr” and the Gilded Age by Elizabeth Drexel. It’s a memoir about her experience growing up as one of these Gilded Age ladies. She’s a wonderful writer and her perspective on this society allows you to see the eccentricity of these people. Mrs. Fish (the real-life socialite Marion Graves Anthon Fish played by Ashlie Atkinson on The Gilded Age) was an absolute lunatic. She would constantly throw parties for dogs, or parties for dwarves; she would create these bizarre riffs on social events. There’s a great story of a guy who had dementia, basically, and believed he was some kind of medieval king. And instead of putting him in an institution, (the family) had so much money, they just gave him a court. Everyone had the right uniforms, they followed him around, and played along with his delusion. There was that recent article in The Times about how Elon (Musk) is walking around with a box of ketamine and MDMA wherever he goes. When you can indulge whatever whim you want, and no one can really stop you, you’re gonna get pretty weird.
Have you ever thought about what George’s weird thing is?
It’s a great question. I do think he’s pretty austere. Gould was into orchids, that was his pastime. I’ll bring that up with the writers. Maybe it’s time we get into George’s secret strangeness.
Film and TV are strong union industries. Did coming up in that world shape your politics as much as the global events you were watching play out?
It’s funny, your first encounters with the union, it’s just like this thing you pay $5,000 to and then you are treated a lot better on set. But from a macro perspective, look at our industry (compared to) different sectors of the American economy, especially the creative economy, like musicians, who are broadly not unionized. The way that the internet has affected them was absolutely devastating. Because we are unionized, we’ve had a lot more protection, and we’ve been able to slow the erosion of our industry — although at this point now, it’s mostly owned by tech companies. But we had a lot more leverage because we were collectively organized.
What’s your political media diet like?
I’m an avid podcast listener. I’ve been a Chapo (Trap House) fan from very early on, and I listen to TrueAnon. They do a lot of different episodes, but as philosophers of the world as shaped by the internet, they’ve really come into their own. (Hosts) Liz (Franczak) and Brace (Belden) are kind of indispensable voices. I’ve been listening to Adam Tooze’s podcast, Ones and Tooze. It’s often over my head, but he’s a wonderful economic historian, so I learn about the past, and I think his analysis of our current political economy is very good.
We have this fragmented ecosystem, right? So to get an approximation of what’s happening in our daily lives, you do have to consume The New York Times. I also subscribe to The Financial Times. I’ve started listening to Bloomberg Business podcasts because I feel like that gives me an angle into the material reality we’re living in. American Prestige is a great foreign policy podcast. You’re trying to build a collage of reality out of all these different places. I should probably read more right-leaning sources, but I don’t know — I just don’t.
The documentary you produced, The Big Scary “S” Word, tracked the rise of this new era of American socialism, which suffered a big blow in 2020. What have you made of the trajectory of the left since then?
It’s strange. There’s so much about Covid that I don’t think we’ve all unpacked; we’ve just put it behind us. But one of the things that happened was, this thing that had incredible momentum, the Bernie Sanders campaign for president, was really undermined and failed in 2020. And we didn’t even get a chance to mourn and digest it. It was like that happened, and then it was Covid.
There are pockets of hope. I think Zohran Mamdani is a fantastic candidate (for mayor in New York City). He feels like a candidate who could have an amazing future as a left politician. But in terms of, is there an heir? It doesn’t feel like there’s an obvious heir to the energy that Bernie was able to bring together. (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) is fantastic, but I’m not sure how she would fare in a presidential campaign.
And I think the issue of Gaza is one that has really become central for the left. Bernie has not been great on it, AOC has not been consistently great on it. There’s a sense of, who can we actually believe in, both on a political level, a practical level, and a moral level? Because I think that’s fundamental to the appeal of socialist politics: It’s a moral politics. Right now, looking around, there isn’t going to be a hero parachuting in, around which those energies can cohere. It’s going to have to be built from the ground up and organized, and it’s going to take a long time.
Morgan Spector in New York, June 2025.
Yet there is a healthy media ecosystem for those ideas, whether it’s Chapo Trap House or Hasan Piker, who I always think of when Democrats talk about needing their own Joe Rogan.
Exactly, if you were really looking for a left Joe Rogan — it’s Hasan. He’s there. He’s got a huge following. But they want somebody they can control. Somebody who isn’t going to upset the donors. And until they actually decide to really draw a line and distinguish themselves as not the party bought by the billionaires… I don’t know, I don’t have much hope for the Democratic Party to rescue itself from the wilderness.
What do you make of the way “socialist” is used as an attack line against leftist candidates?
I really do think this is something Bernie changed forever about American politics. The Trump campaign and surrogates, they talk about the threat of communism all the time, like that’s still a going concern. Even China is a market economy. The Cold War is so fundamental to 20th-century American identity that they just can’t let it go. But I think voters are past it.
You also noted the importance of Gaza as an issue for the left, and you’ve used your platform a lot to speak out against the ongoing war there. How does your Jewishness and relationship to Judaism influence the way you think about Israel and Palestine?
I relate to what’s happening in Gaza more as an American than as Jewish person. I’m half-Jewish, on my father’s side, and I was raised by parents who were very hostile to organized religion. Nevertheless, there’s history and culture that gets passed down, a set of common experiences you inherit. I had a recurring nightmare when I was four about carrying my injured mother through a dark forest and being turned away at house after house because I was Jewish. That comes from somewhere, and it has an effect. But it seems to me that the fundamental thing that makes someone Jewish is whether they practice the Jewish faith, and I don’t. I guess I do possibly feel a greater responsibility as an American who is seen as Jewish to speak up about what’s happening in Gaza, because Jewish safety is so often used to justify what is being done there, and I don’t think that’s legitimate.
