Two actors who have been in The Gilded Age since the first season are not in the fourth. Patrick Page, who plays Richard Clay, and Sullivan Jones, who plays the New York Globe publisher T. Thomas Fortune, are both out when The Gilded Age returns on Sunday 1 November on HBO and HBO Max. The two were promoted to series regular for season two, moved back to recurring for season three, and now are gone.
CBR reported the exits from Deadline’s casting story. Eleven new names join the same season. Season three scored 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. A show on that curve removing people it once promoted is making a decision about what it wants to be next, and the contract history is the clearest thing it has said about it.
Who is leaving The Gilded Age before season 4?
Patrick Page and Sullivan Jones are out for season four. Page plays Richard Clay, George Russell’s secretary. Jones plays T. Thomas Fortune, the publisher of the New York Globe. Both appeared from season one, both became series regulars in season two, both returned to recurring in season three, and neither is in the new season that starts on 1 November 2026.
| Actor | Character | Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3 | Season 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Page | Richard Clay, secretary to George Russell | Recurring | Series regular | Recurring | Out |
| Sullivan Jones | T. Thomas Fortune, New York Globe publisher | Recurring | Series regular | Recurring | Out |
Both characters had a season three worth watching. Clay was fired by George Russell, played by Morgan Spector, then went to work with a rival of his old boss to get even. He ended the season as a prime suspect in the shooting of George. Fortune was still chasing the writer Peggy Scott, played by Denee Benton, until Dr Kirkland, played by Jordan Donica, put him on the floor in a fight.
That is a lot of unfinished business to leave off screen. It also tells you what the writers thought those threads were worth.
The promotion ladder is the show talking
A contract tier in an American drama is a public ranking of a character. Recurring means the show can use you when it needs you. Series regular means it has promised you a place in the season. When a drama moves someone up and then back down inside two years, it has told you where that character sits before any announcement about season four.
The ladder here runs in one direction only. Two actors went up in 2023, back down in 2025, and out in 2026. Nobody at HBO has described it as a cut. It reads as one.
Julian Fellowes, who created the show after Downton Abbey, writes an ensemble set in 1880s New York, where old money families and new money families fight over the same rooms. That kind of story needs a lot of named people. It also has a fixed number of minutes per episode. Every newcomer takes minutes from someone already there, and the people with the weakest claim on the plot go first.
I have written before about how a television adaptation has to carry a memory it did not create, in the case of the Harry Potter series. The Gilded Age carries a lighter version of the same weight, since the audience arrives with a picture of the period rather than a picture of the characters. The show can swap faces more easily than a book adaptation can. It is still spending something each time.
Eleven new names in the same season
The exits are easier to read next to the arrivals. Season four adds:
- Taylor Trensch
- James Scully
- Dennis Haysbert
- Maggie Kuntz
- Neal Huff
- Bonnie Milligan
- Jim Gaffigan
- Dallas Roberts
- Andrew Burnap
- Elizabeth Marvel
- Adrienne Warren
Almost all of the main cast returns. Morgan Spector, Carrie Coon, Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Louisa Jacobson, Denee Benton, Harry Richardson, Taissa Farmiga, Blake Ritson, Ben Ahlers, Ashlie Atkinson, Dylan Baker, Kelley Curran, Jordan Donica, Jessica Frances Dukes, Amy Forsyth, Jack Gilpin and Audra McDonald are all back.
Count those two lists. A drama with that many regulars and that many additions has to find story for all of them in a fixed number of hours. Cutting a secretary and a publisher is the cheapest way to buy room. It is also the kind of decision that makes a show look like it is starting again rather than continuing.
What the show has not said
Neither HBO nor the producers have explained the decision. CBR noted that the reason is unclear and suggested there may simply be no space for the characters in the new storylines. That is a reasonable guess. It is still a guess, and I would treat it as one.
There is a way to test it in the first episode. If Clay or Fortune is mentioned in dialogue, the show is keeping the door open and the characters still exist in the world. If neither name comes up across the premiere, the door is shut and the audience is expected to forget two people it spent three seasons with.
I would also watch how the new names are introduced. A season that opens with a party, which this show does often, can place six new faces in one room and never explain who they are. That is where a large ensemble starts to feel like a crowd.
Why the score makes this interesting
The Gilded Age has improved with each season by the only measure the internet agrees on. The first season arrived in 2022, the second in 2023, and the third in the summer of 2025. Season three sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is close to the top of what a period drama gets.
Most shows cut cast when they are in trouble. This one is cutting cast while its reviews climb. That suggests the choice is about the shape of season four rather than the health of the show, and it makes the premiere on 1 November the first real test of whether the writers were right.
There is a version of this argument I take seriously. A show with a giant cast and rising reviews may simply have found its story, and a story that knows where it is going does not need every face from season one. Fellowes has run large ensembles since Downton Abbey began in 2010. If he thinks the fourth season is tighter without them, the reviews will probably agree with him before I do.
Still, the ladder is on the record. Promoted in 2023, demoted in 2025, gone in 2026. Whatever the reason, that is what the paperwork says.
