How ‘The Gilded Age’ and ‘Feud’ tackled period-specific language

The art of creating a quality period drama is not just about ensuring an authentic representation of how people from a bygone era would look, move, live and work. It’s also about knowing what they would say and how they would say it, but in a way that doesn’t send today’s audiences rushing for a dictionary.

“I try to give some words, language and phrases that they would have used, but I also try not to use phrases that would distract a modern audience,” says Julian Fellowes, who created HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” about the late timely years of New York. Social theater from the 19th century.

Fellowes, who is working on the show with writer and co-executive producer Sonja Warfield, says that as a result, audiences are “willing to go on this journey with us.” And that may mean hearing outdated views and language that could be considered offensive.

“I think it’s a mistake – because you want them to be sympathetic – to give characters a modern attitude,” he says. “What you want to discover is the attitudes of people who would have been considered fairly progressive in their own time.”

At the same time, he says, “I think it’s entirely possible to portray a character as unpleasant or unjust without using offensive language. You can achieve the dramatic goal without offending everyone and making everyone feel uncomfortable. We did not try to fake or pretend that we were living in a happy period when no one had an unkind thought. But I hope we have been able to make that clear in a dramatic way.”

Warfield says the show’s writers made a “conscious choice not to make racist comments” in the powerful second-season episode, “Close Enough to Touch.” That episode found Denée Benton author Peggy Scott — a black woman born free in the North and raised in New York — in the American South for the first time. She and her editor T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones) must flee from a gang of angry white men in Tuskegee, Ala.

“I think that would be at odds with the way our show normally sounds,” Warfield says of the dialogue choice. “It would be about the word… We didn’t want to take away the suspension of disbelief for the viewer.”

The second season of “Gilded Age” also focuses on Blake Ritson’s Oscar van Rhijn, the wealthy son of Christine Baranski’s old-fashioned socialite Agnes; he also happens to be in the closet. Fellowes says showing Oscar severely beaten after an encounter during the second season premiere, “You Don’t Even Like Opera,” is a reminder of how dangerous it was (and is) to be queer in this country.
“Being homosexual was illegal until the 1960s,” he points out. “It all had to be covered up and it was really difficult. Of course, as a writer I could say that the benefit of this is that every gay story you put into a series allows you to push back on those outdated views.

In the FX miniseries ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ used insensitive language, both to reflect the homophobia and bigotry that simmered beneath the surface of that time and setting, and, because it is based on true events, to reflect the actual conversations that took place.

Set largely in mid-century New York, it focuses on the lives of author Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) and society women. Era-specific homophobia and bigotry seemingly always lurk beneath the surface. When Demi Moore’s enraged Ann Woodward uses a derogatory word, it’s a blow.

Series executive producer Ryan Murphy said Variety at a press conference for the show, there was a lot of talk in the writers’ room about the word and “how it was depicted in the show.”

“As difficult as it was to put into words, [it was about] being true to the characters, the time and the power of words,” Murphy said. “We did some pretty extensive research on that and we had a lot of conversations about ‘should we leave it in?’ Should we take it out?’ Ultimately, the show left it in, Murphy notes, but as a gay person who has heard that word used “since I was 3 years old, I really understand the wound of it and the pain of it and how it can really turn your life upside down. down.”

This also says something about how quickly language can evolve.

FX did not expect that all “Shōgun” viewers would be familiar with the terminology and history of feudal Japan. That’s why they’ve put together a comprehensive online guide with a glossary of terms like ‘rōnin’ (masterless samurai), ‘bushō’ (warlord) and ‘sokushitsu’ (concubine), as well as a map and historical timeline. But Max’s crime drama “Tokyo Vice” had to focus on how that language would have changed in a more recent period, as it moved from the 1990s first season to the early 2000s season 2. Creator JT Rogers and the writers explored the type of slang that yakuza members would have used at the time, as well as what a white American learning Japanese in a formal setting (Ansel Elgort’s journalist Jake Adelstein) would sound when speaking it compared to someone who is self-taught (Rachel Keller’s Samantha Porter).

Todd A. Kessler, creator of The New Look, had a more complicated problem creating his Apple TV+ series about fashion designers Christian Dior (Ben Mendelsohn), Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) and others in France during and after World War II – French libel and slander laws.

Because he filmed in France, everything his characters said had to be double verified by a French lawyer, including how extensive Chanel’s ties to the Nazi Party were. Although Binoche’s Chanel shares many anti-Semitic sentiments, she has not heard any derogatory insults, as Kessler says he could not find any reference to her methods in his research.

The show is largely in English because Kessler wanted to work with Mendelsohn again after their successful collaboration on Netflix’s “Bloodline.” The Australian actor received a supporting role in a drama Emmy and two other nominations for the family-oriented crime thriller. But he doesn’t speak French.

Still, Kessler says, he wanted the show to “use English in a way that feels a little more formal” and stay away from slang or pejoratives.

There is at least one line that was verifiable and that Kessler would have liked to have written. The French actress Arletty (played here by Joséphine de La Baume) is said to have had a relationship with a German officer during the occupation.

Her response to the accusations? “My heart is French, but my ass is international.”