With awards season just around the corner — and the competition fiercer than ever — the cast of The Gilded Age has officially entered full campaign mode to keep the series on voters’ radar. That means events, interviews, industry parties, and, of course, the one thing we love most: breadcrumbs, hints, and unfiltered speculation about Season 4.

Still, The Gilded Age does not seem strong enough yet, even within HBO itself, to overpower heavyweights like Task, The White Lotus, or The Last of Us. After all, the main drama categories rarely stretch beyond five nominees. In this brutally competitive field, however, Carrie Coon already feels like a near-consensus for at least an individual nomination.

Us Weekly got a head start by talking to Audra McDonald and Taissa Farmiga, two characters poised to gain even greater narrative weight in the franchise’s next chapter.

Audra, who plays Dorothy Scott, Peggy’s mother, will see her daughter finally marry a successful doctor who genuinely loves her — but she will also be forced to face a mother-in-law from hell. A brand-new emotional battlefield opens there.

Taissa, meanwhile, is Gladys Russell — or rather, Gladys, the Duchess of Buckingham. Forced into a marriage with a man she barely knew and who initially wanted only her fortune, Gladys had to leave her family, her country, and her former life behind. She inherited a toxic sister-in-law in the process, but at least discovered that her husband is a good man: the two genuinely fell in love, and she is now pregnant. The cruel twist? She has no idea that, because of her, her parents’ marriage has completely collapsed.

Because yes: George Russell packed his bags, returned to New York, and left Bertha behind. After a near-death experience, he decided he could no longer trust his wife — especially because of the way she handled Gladys’ arranged marriage. Divorce was never spoken aloud on screen, but the damage was unmistakably done. And the finale dropped Gladys’ pregnancy onto an already shattered Bertha for good measure.

Interestingly, Taissa seems far less tormented by the possible end of the Russells than we are. She is far more intrigued by another social time bomb: the sham marriage between Oscar van Rhijn and the current Mrs. Winterton, Bertha’s former lady’s maid, now elevated into high society.

“I feel like Oscar van Rhijn is someone who — I mean, Blake [Ritson], I just adore as a human and as an actor — and him and Mrs. Winterton together, I feel like they get into so much drama, but the really juicy kind. I’m excited to see what kind of chaos they would cause for our society in the 1880s,” she laughed.

Behind the scenes, however, the cast is almost as much in the dark as the audience. No one has seen the Season 4 scripts yet — but that is about to change. Cynthia Nixon confirmed the shift:

“None of us has seen the Season 4 scripts yet, but I’m hearing that we’ll be getting the first three very soon — so that’s exciting.”

In other words, the game is about to begin — for them and for us.

At the epicenter of the emotional earthquake, however, Carrie Coon chooses not to be entirely fatalistic about Bertha and George’s future — even with real-life Vanderbilt history pointing straight toward divorce.

“We haven’t followed the [Vanderbilt] storyline exactly, not to a T, so I’m hopeful. Also, Bertha is so tenacious. She never gives up. If she wants George back, that’s what she’s going to get.”

And then comes the line that perfectly captures the spirit of the moment. Audra, with the glint of someone who knows exactly where the real gossip lives, went straight to the heart of the matter:

“Well, I want to know what’s going to happen with ‘Railroad Daddy,’ if he’s going to come back to our dear Bertha. I can’t imagine life without the two of them together — they belong together — so their road back to each other is going to be very interesting to watch.”

In the end, between loveless marriages that turn into real love, an heiress who still does not understand the emotional price she paid, a separation that feels final — but maybe is not — and scripts still hidden away, Season 4 of The Gilded Age has already begun long before the cameras start rolling.

And if the series has taught us anything by now, it is this: Underestimate Bertha Russell at your own peril.