The Russells in 'The Gilded Age' Are Based on a Very Real, Very Powerful Family

The drama of The Gilded Age has been going on for three seasons now, and in that time, more and more people have been hooked by the period drama and its high society scandals. The series is set at the end of the 19th century in New York City, and follows a rivalry between a wealthy family with new money and a poor family that is already well established in New York society.

The Russells are that up-and-coming family, and now, fans of the show want to know whether they're based on anyone real. Here's what we know.

The Gilded Age is a work of historical fiction, so its central families did not actually exist. However, Julian Fellowes, the man who created the series, took his inspiration from the real world in creating this story, which is admittedly soapier than life actually was at the time. What's also true is that many of the families that are more on the periphery of the story, including the Astors, the Livingstons, and the Roosevelts, are all real families.

The Russells are loosely based on the Vanderbilts, a family that had a similar trajectory as the Russells as they tried to leverage their massive wealth to become a part of New York society.

The conflict at the heart of The Gilded Age is between older families who have lots of status but no money, and families like the Russells, who have lots of money but made it more recently, and so lack status.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, the real-life Vanderbilt patriarch, made money in the shipping and railroad business after the American Revolution and was even described as a "robber baron" because of the tactics he was willing to use to make his fortune.

Although the Vanderbilts exist in the world of The Gilded Age, it seems like Julian was loosely inspired by their new money to imagine how a new family might integrate into New York society.

Although many of its central characters never existed, like Downton Abbey before it, The Gilded Age is in part a show that imagines what it would be like to live through real history. The show's characters experience dynamics that really existed at that time, although many of them are undoubtedly heightened or overemphasized for dramatic effect.

The Gilded Age strikes a careful tonal balance between whimsy and more serious issues, and while it doesn't always nail that balance, it features an incredibly talented cast of mostly theater actors who are all hugely fun to watch.

The show uses real history to tell interesting, imaginative stories about how society and culture work. Crucially, it knows how to land salient, interesting political points at regular intervals, which is part of what makes The Gilded Age feel like more than just a trifle. It's compelling TV, and it can help to think you're getting a small dose of history along the way.