‘The Gilded Age’ Submits a Luminous Roster of Tony Award Winners on the 2026 Emmy Awards Ballot
David Buchanan
Since production began in 2021, The Gilded Age has been a small-screen bastion for New York theatre performers. The HBO drama series, which fictionalizes late nineteenth-century society in the city, shoots exclusively on the East Coast — on a soundstage in Brooklyn and on location upstate in Troy, NY, and in Newport, Rhode Island — making it easily accessible for performers also appearing in eight shows a week on Broadway.
The series’ wellspring of theatre actors is not coincidental. Its casting team, led by Bernard Telsey and Adam Caldwell of The Telsey Office, have selected the players for over 179 Broadway productions. The first season of the show also began production months before Broadway officially reopened after the coronavirus closures, affording a plethora of stage actors a safe opportunity to work.
For its third season, which concluded in August 2025, The Gilded Age has submitted 15 performers on the 2026 Emmy Awards ballot. Of those 15 individuals, five have won Tony Awards and three more have earned Tony nominations. Collectively, their awards haul tallies 16 wins and 32 nominations.
See below for the complete list of Tony Award wins and nominations for each cast member submitted on the 2026 Emmy Awards ballot.
In the top acting category of Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, The Gilded Age submitted two-time Tony winner Christine Baranski and two-time Tony nominee Carrie Coon. Baranski and Coon are notably the only cast members from the robust ensemble to earn Emmy recognition for the series thus far, both receiving nominations for the second season.
But this year, Baranski has changed categories, upgrading from Supporting Actress in a Drama — where she has amassed seven career nominations for The Gilded Age and The Good Wife — to Lead Actress, a category she has yet to crack, even after six critically-acclaimed seasons as number one on the call sheet for The Good Fight. The majority of her 16 lifetime Emmy nominations come from this supporting category plus Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Cybill, for which she won once, as well as Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
The sheer volume of contenders the show has eligible in Supporting Actress this year also explains Baranski’s category change, as her move potentially opens that field to another The Gilded Age contender. The onscreen mother-daughter duo of six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald and Tony nominee Denée Benton are both eligible for nomination in this race, as well as new cast member and two-time Tony winner Phylicia Rashad, who capped off her introduction year with a delicious confrontation with McDonald. They are also joined on the ballot by series regular, two-time Tony winner Cynthia Nixon, as the mourning Ada.
The Gilded Age’s submission for Guest Actor in a Drama Series also boasts a pair of Tony-recognized performers. The third season introduced one of main character George Russell’s (Morgan Spector) most important, real-life contemporaries, JP Morgan, portrayed by Bill Camp. The official ballot summary of his submitted episode, “If You Want To Cook An Omelette,” reads, “JP Morgan calls a gathering of American railroad tycoons at his country estate, then sends their carriages away, threatening that no one will be allowed to leave until they come to an agreement.” A veteran of seven Broadway productions, Camp earned his sole Tony nomination a decade ago for Ivo van Hove’s staging of The Crucible.
Camp will vie for space in the category alongside The Gilded Age recurring player and one of the American theatre’s most treasured thespians, Nathan Lane, who stars as Ward McAllister. The network has entered the three-time Tony winner in consideration for the episode “Ex-Communicated,” with the synopsis reading, “After the debut of his tell-all book about New York’s elite class, McAllister is taken by surprise when he is banished from Society by his longtime friend and confidant, Mrs. Astor.”
The mention of Mrs. Astor here calls to mind the many notable omissions from the Emmy ballot of The Gilded Age’s starry ensemble, including two-time Tony winner Donna Murphy in that pivotal role. Indeed, the scene in which she excoriates Lane’s McAllister for revealing intimate details of his inner-circle’s personal lives in his book is a series highlight for both performers. HBO previously submitted Murphy on the ballot for the second season back in 2022 in the Supporting Actress category, though they wisely culled their submissions in that race this year to focus on the show’s more prominent players.
Other exclusions will likely sting Gilded Age fans and theatre lovers, too. Kelli O’Hara, fresh off her ninth Tony nomination for Fallen Angels, had an especially strong arc in the third season, as her character Aurora learns that her husband intends to divorce her; she must then navigate the fallout of being ostracized from society. The scene in which Aurora learns this news exploded online, especially for O’Hara’s impeccable reading of the delightfully arcane line, “How strange, when I bedecked myself in these geegaws, I was looking forward to you coming home.”
Comedic performer and two-time Tony winner Andrea Martin did not make the show’s final submission in the Guest Actress category. She had a unique role on the series, playing Madame Dashkova, a medium who purports to help Ada reconnect with her recently-deceased husband; the character allowed her to showcase that off-kilter, kooky delivery for which she is known, but also makes a dramatic heel-turn when Ada outs her as a fraud.
Also absent from the ballot are the family members of Rashad’s character Elizabeth Kirkland, including her son and Peggy’s suitor played by Tony nominee Jordan Donica — who The Windowcard recently praised as “never better” for his performance in the Encores! production of The Wild Party — her husband played by Tony winner Brian Stokes Mitchell, and her close confidant, played by Tony-winning legend Leslie Uggams.
Strategically, though, HBO made a sound decision to limit the number of performers it submitted in order to maximize the show’s nominations potential. This may be a challenging awards cycle for the series, even though its second season had a breakthrough at the Emmys, earning six nominations including Outstanding Drama Series. The third season debuted and concluded airing so long ago that voters may seize on more recent titles that are fresher in their minds; for example, The Gilded Age missed out on the Actor Awards Ensemble category, even though it earned that nomination for season two.
How does their 2026 Performer ballot submissions reflect this strategy? By the numbers, The Gilded Age entered five fewer actors this year than in 2024, eliminating returning performers Murphy, O’Hara, Kelley Curran, and Tony nominee John Douglas Thompson; other previously-submitted actors included Tony winner Robert Sean Leonard, whose character died at the end of the second season, and Tony winner Laura Benanti, who did not appear this year. For its first season, back in 2022, the drama submitted 14 performers overall.
The series’ other official 2026 submissions include Morgan Spector for Lead Actor; Ben Ahlers, Harry Richardson, and Blake Ritson in Supporting Actor; Taissa Farmiga in Supporting Actress, and three-time Emmy winner Merritt Weaver in Guest Actress.
For their part, both Spector and Ahlers have Broadway credentials, too. Spector has credits in A View from the Bridge in 2010, Harvey in 2012, and Machinal in 2014. Ahlers is currently in the midst of his Broadway debut in Death of a Salesman, now the most Tony-winning revival in the award’s history, starring opposite Ward McAllister himself, Nathan Lane; they play son and father Happy and Willy Loman, respectively.
Every Tony Award win and nomination amongst The Gilded Age’s 2026 Emmy Award submissions:
Denée Benton
2017 — Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 — Best Actress in Musical
Christine Baranski
1984 — The Real Thing — Best Featured Actress in a Play**
1989 — Rumors — Best Featured Actress in a Play**
Bill Camp
2016 — The Crucible — Best Featured Actor in a Play
Carrie Coon
2013 — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — Best Featured Actress in a Play
2026 — Bug — Best Actress in a Play
Nathan Lane
1992 — Guys and Dolls, Best Actor in a Musical
1996 — A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Best Actor in a Musical**
2001 — The Producers, Best Actor in a Musical**
2013 — The Nance, Best Actor in a Play
2017 — The Front Page, Best Featured Actor in a Play
2018 — Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, Best Featured Actor in a Play**
2026 — Death of a Salesman, Best Actor in a Play
Audra McDonald
1994 — Carousel, Best Featured Actress in a Musical**
1996 — Master Class, Best Featured Actress in a Play**
1998 — Ragtime, Best Featured Actress in a Musical**
2000 — Marie Christine, Best Actress in a Musical
2004 — A Raisin in the Sun, Best Featured Actress in a Play**
2007 — 110 in the Shade, Best Actress in a Musical
2012 — The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Best Actress in a Musical**
2014 — Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, Best Actress in a Play**
2020 — Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Best Actress in a Play
2023 — Ohio State Murders, Best Actress in a Play
2025 — Gypsy, Best Actress in a Musical
Cynthia Nixon
1995 — Indiscretions, Best Featured Actress in a Play
2006 — Rabbit Hole, Best Actress in a Play**
2012 — Wit, Best Actress in a Play
2017 — The Little Foxes, Best Featured Actress in a Play**
Phylicia Rashad
2004 — A Raisin in the Sun, Best Actress in a Play**
2005 — Gem of the Ocean, Best Actress in a Play
2022 — Skeleton Crew, Best Featured Actress in a Play**
2024 — Purlie Victorious, Best Revival of a Play
** denotes a Tony Award victory