If, like us, you've been following all the action of HBO's The Gilded Age, you may have spotted a particularly grand looking estate – but all is not what it seems.
After her marriage to the Duke of Buckingham, Gladys (from the 'new money' Russell family) sets off with her new husband to his ancestral home of Sidmouth Castle.
But keen viewers might have clocked that in the sweeping aerial shot, things don't appear quite right. And that's because the castle doesn't actually exist.
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Where is Sidmouth Castle?
The episode's director, Deborah Kampmeier, revealed to Deadline that the team combined two estates in Newport (Rhode Island) and one in Long Island to create Sidmouth Castle. However, some of the exterior scenes were filmed in England.
“We put the visual effect of the carriage in upside down in the water, and then the wide shot of it moving through the countryside. That’s England,” she said.
“And then as we approach the castle, that is an approach to an estate in Newport. We brought in background actors to converge upon the carriage, and then a big crane goes up and over. We actually built onto what was already there in our visual effects. That’s one piece of the puzzle.
“It is a collage that we use to create this epic castle feeling of a castle, using what we had available to us,” the director said. “We’ve used up pretty much every mansion in Newport.”
The real Gladys Russell: The actual aristocrat who inspired the new duchess
The characters in The Gilded Age are loosely based on and inspired by real-life figures, and Gladys' character is no different.
It's thought that Gladys' storyline is based on Consuelo Vanderbilt, one of the famous 'dollar princesses' in American history – and the heiress of the nouveau-riche Vanderbilt fortune.
Consuelo was married to the Duke of Marlborough, Charles Spencer-Churchill, in New York in 1895. It was a match largely without love – Consuelo's mother wanted to secure a high-profile connection, and Charles needed money to save his ancestral home Blenheim Palace.
Both parties were believed to have had affairs, and eventually divorced in 1921. But will Gladys' marriage go the same way with Hector, Duke of Buckingham? Only time will tell.
The Duke of Marlborough, Charles Spencer-Churchill was Winston Churchill's cousin and it is said that Consuelo Vanderbilt was close to Winston
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Top image: Taissa Farmiga as Gladys in The Gilded Age. Credit: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO
