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

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.

JANUARY - JUNE 2024

The Gilded Age received a SAG Award Nomination for Best Ensemble Cast, and HBO MAX invited all those who could go to attend the Ceremony at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles (February 23rd -26th) It was apparent early on that we were unlikely to win: “Succession” was at Table 2, and we were at Table 53. But we had a wonderful weekend, and were delighted to catch up with old friends and to meet the delightful Lily Gladstone* and her cast-mate from “Killers of The Flower Moon” William Bellau.

I did receive The Washington Irving Award For Excellence in The Arts from the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York the day before leaving for LA, so I wasn’t empty-handed.

There were two talks on “All that glitters is not gold – behind the scenes of “The Gilded Age” – at The Lotos and The Harvard Clubs, and at the latter location was Co-Guest of Honor (with Ben Ahlers) at the 158th Annual Gala of The Horological Society of NY on April 6th.* For The Coffee House, of which I’m honorary President, I hosted a straw Poll for The Oscars, and wielded the gavel for the Annual Coffee House Auction. I also served as MC for the Annual Gala benefit for The Floating Hospital at Guastavino’s on June 4th.

The audiobook of Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” received a rave review in AudioFile, and resulted in my fifth consecutive Earphones Award.

Coming soon: “When the Sea Came Alive” the audio ensemble drama of Garrett Graff’s book of the same name, in which I give a respectable version of Winston Churchill, and for Dreamscape Media, “A Delicate Truth” by John le Carre.

Look out also for the September Issue of Vogue Magazine, available in August, for which I participated in a photo shoot for the cover by Baz Luhrman. My colleague in “Gilded” Morgan Spector, along with Marc Kudisch and Ali Fazal were also rounded up for the shoot with Hugh Jackman and Blake Lively.

June began with two zoom read-throughs of first four episodes of Season Three, two episodes a session, and filming begins on July 9th.

And finally: Idly watching on TCM, “The Grass is Greener” (1961) directed by Stanley Donen, and starring Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, on February 3rd, I’m amazed to see Moray Watson as Sellers the butler wearing Arthur Dent’s dressing gown. That’s nearly twenty years before I wore it on the TV version of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (and seventeen years before I worked with Deborah in “Candida” at the Albery Theatre in London’s West End.)

DECEMBER 2023 UPDATE

At last, on October 29th Season Two of “The Gilded Age” started to stream on MAX, and other streaming services around the world, including New Zealand , to the delight of my recently visited family there. As of writing there is still no word from Warner Media whether there will be a Season Three. More to come soon...??

I had the pleasure of being an Honored Guest, escorting Donna Murphy who received an Excellence in Arts Award, at the 188th Annual Saint Nicholas Society of The City of New York, at the Union Club. In the Nineteenth Century, it was populated with many of the prominent members of Gilded Age Society, so it seemed appropriate that they should celebrate “Mrs. Caroline Astor” ( as Donna plays in the TV Series).

My recording of Dan Ariely’s “Misbelief” was named one of the Best Audio Books of 2023 and given the Earphones Award by AudioFile Magazine.

I narrated the last Advent Concert at Marble Collegiate Church, in 2022, of the retiring Music Director, Kenneth Dake. This year I happily complied with a request from the new Director Michael Hey to perform the readings in “A Caroling We Go – Concert and Carol Sing” in the same venue.

For The Coffee House’s 108th Annual Dinner at The Salmagundi Club, I joined Nancy Winston, with Steve Brown, deviser and narrator in a concert called “Smash Flops – the greatest songs you’ve never heard from musicals you’ve never heard of."

There was an appearance as a Famous TV Naturalist (an early draft of the script said “Naturist” but it was a misprint and would have commanded a bigger fee than the program’s entire budget) in a short film called “Friends not Fur” by Peter Stray and Felicia Greenfield.

Episode 68 of the podcast, “The Gilded Gentleman”, featuring an in-depth interview by the host Carl Raymond, is now available on Apple podcasts.

Here is the link:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/simon-jones-bannister-on-hbos-the-gilded-age-in/id1595160782?i=1000638269326