Winter/Spring 2025

Now we’ve reached the summer solstice of 2025, an update is long overdue.

Filming on Season Three of “The Gilded Age” carried on from July 8th 2024 until January 10th and we were kept in the dark as to when the show would be streamed, though rumor had it that it would be in the Fall. Then we learned that it would debut in June, and later June 22nd, and carry on for eight episodes, during which time its streamer will change its name back from MAX to HBO MAX.

The final scene of Season 3 of The Gilded Age

As long as people can still find it, here’s to a ratings boom so intense that a Season Four becomes a no-brainer.

In February, I roped Tom Santopietro into the Annual Straw Poll for the Oscars at The Coffee House, aided by a very skilled two-minute compilation of the films of 2024 and clips from all the Best Film contenders, provided by my son Tim.

At the Montauk Club

At the same place, and also at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn, I interviewed Frances Vieta about her book “Looted – Rescuing Italy’s Stolen Treasures”. All of us who have known her for many years were really unaware of her history of fearlessly investigating theft, smuggling and forgery in the dark and corrupt world of the trade in antiquities. The book starts and ends with her long and eventually successful campaign to repatriate the Euphronius Crater from the Metropolitan Museum to its town of origin in Italy.

A Freeman of London!

On May 14th, I was admitted as a Freeman of the City of London in a brief ceremony at the Guildhall, conducted by the Chamberlain of the Corporation. It’s an order founded in 1237, and, from now on, I can demand, if sentenced to be hanged, that it should be done with a silken rope; I can also drive sheep over London Bridge; walk around the confines of the City with an unsheathed blade; demand to be married in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and if found drunk and disorderly, within the Square Mile, can expect not to be arrested by the police, but sent home in a cab

The cast of The Gilded Age at the Premiere

Season Three of TGA was grandly celebrated with a red carpet gala premiere of Episode One on June 12th at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, followed by an afterparty at Cipriani 25 (Broadway).

I was determined not to be dismissed, as I once was by the New York Times as “Man At Left is Unidentified”, and put quite some thought into what I should wear. Finding a smart set of tails in a London Charity Shop was the start, and with accessories from Nancy’s jewelry collection, unused since her death in 2019, I think I pulled it off. At least, fashion maven Luke Meagher aka Hautelemode gave me a rave review on Instagram saying I set an example of how “to slay the house down boots.” I had to have it translated, but was suitably chuffed when I understood.

The day after, blessedly without a hangover, though it might have been good for Method Acting, I voiced the character of Winston Churchill for another audiobook/ensemble drama by Garrett M. Graff: “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky – an Oral History” for Simon and Schuster, produced by Scott Sherratt. This marked a return to WSC after “When the Sea Came Alive – An Oral History of D-Day “, recorded last April and which won the 2025 Audie for its category of Multi-voiced performance. Fingers crossed for a repeat…

On set of The Gilded Age

Fall/Winter 2024

With James Ivory & Ruth Prawer and the cast of "Giovanni's Room"

Last August I went to a screening of “Merchant Ivory” a documentary about those two remarkable film makers, and was quite unprepared and astonished to see myself in a still photo taken at their country house at Claverack New York to illustrate the range of activities that took place there. I had to back to my scrapbooks and found that in 1998, I was appearing on Broadway in Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell” and along with Katie Finneran was recruited by our colleague Phil Tabor to go on our day off upstate to take part in a reading of Ruth Prawer Jabvala’s script for a film of “Giovanni’s Room”. We were rewarded with an excellent lunch of Indian cuisine (Ismael was a superb cook) and had an excellent outing altogether. Sadly the film was never made. Here’s my own version of the group photo: I’m the one in a sand-colored jacket, Katie’s just in front of me, and Phil Tabor is in the glasses behind me

with KT Sullivan & Steve Ross

On October 6th I co-starred with the stars of New York Cabaret, Steve Ross and KT Sullivan in a concert at The York Theatre called “I Like America – Celebrating 125 years of Noel Coward” produced by the Coward Foundation. We also used the occasion to pay tribute to Barry Day OBE who has been the tireless chronicler and compiler of all things Coward – his books, his films, his stage productions, his letters, his diaries – and who over the years has provided the three of us with many opportunities to perform in revues of his own devising.

Later in November, at The Lambs Club, I read the stage

At the Lamb's Club

directions for a one-woman play called “JBKO” (Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis) by my old friend Tom Santopietro whose latest book “Audrey Hepburn – a Life of Beautiful Uncertainty” has just been published by Applause books. Jackie O was played with her usual skill and talent by Maureen Anderman who starred opposite me in  the Broadway production of Michael Frayn’s “Benefactors” in 1986 when all three of us first met - Tom was the Company Manager on that show.

At the Salamgundi Club

In December, I performed in a concert for The Coffee House at the Salmagundi Club devised and narrated and in one number performed by Steve Brown, with Nancy Winston at the piano. It was called “Shakespeare the Musical  - well, sorta”. It gave me another chance to wear the white tuxedo jacket I picked up at a bargain price from the Ladies Village Improvement Society (LVIS) Charity Shop in East Hampton last August.

SUMMER 2024

As expected filming for Season Three of The Gilded Age began on July 9th and has, so far (touch wood) proceeded as planned. We did a video tribute/greeting for Julian Fellowes for his 75th Birthday, which cannot have failed to amuse/surprise him, and he sent grateful thanks in return. Here's our "downstairs" crew singing birthday greetings - fittingly on the stairs of the set.

The September Issue of Vogue hit the stands on August 21st and I appear in two photos of the sequence called “Heist of the Heart”, as a jaded Surete detective, overseeing the arrest of Blake Lively as “The Cat”, and as a high rolling gambler in the shot in the Monte Carlo Casino, where “The Cat” spots the stunning necklace, her theft of which leads to her downfall at the hands of “L’Ombre”, an agent from Interpol (Hugh Jackman). (The beard does look perhaps a bit photogenically French?) Alas, the US Vogue is not the same as the UK September Issue.