Pajiba 10 FYC: Morgan Spector Can Bust My Union

By Chris Revelle | Pajiba 10 | December 3, 2023 |

By Chris Revelle | Pajiba 10 | December 3, 2023 |

As a progressive consumer of media who believes whole-heartedly that we should lend our eyeballs to the media that best reflects the values we wish to see in the world, it can feel like a curious choice that I’ve devoted so much of my attention (not to mention several articles) to The Gilded Age, a show that is quite besotted with conspicuous wealth and the enormous gowns and manses that come with it. The truth of my attraction is that I love a period piece, I love an elaborate frock, and I love to rest my eyes on Morgan Spector as he plays robber baron par excellence, George Russell.

George Russell is every fiber the fatcat with his home the size of Rhode Island, his fist closed tightly around his enormous wealth, and his membership to the robber baron Legion of Doom. I should find him repellant and I very likely would, but alas: Morgan Spector. He affects a wonderfully crisp and classic mid-Atlantic accent that makes each word spoken with his smoked-honey voice sound like a proclamation from the stage. Perhaps the gravitas he’s able to conjure with only his speech comes from his time on Broadway. His chemistry with Carrie Coon as his wife Bertha is also something to behold; he looks at her like she’s his favorite meal. Together they make one of the hottest couples on TV with their propensity for making out in parlors and devouring one another with their eyes. They’re aspirational that way, despite being cackling supervillains. With a less skilled (or less hot) actor in the role, I would find George to be a forgettable and archetypal monocle meanie who’s destroying American labor, but with Spector, it feels elevated. Sure he’s trying to bust unions so wealth can be consolidated away from the workers who generated the value he enjoys, but he’s a foxy (and fictional) enemy of labor, and that counts for something!

I will now accept accolades for not immediately typing, “ABS ABS ABS” for the first few paragraphs because have you seen him shirtless around the internet? As Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber of Who? Weekly are fond of saying, he’s a total monster, but when the shirt pops off he’s just daddy. Do I want to be attracted to some top-hatted monster who looks sharp in a tux and hot out of one? No, but look:

And I’m far from alone! There’s this piece (that’s also a great write-up of Gilded Age) that leads with the important thing: Morgan Spector is a babe. A writer posted that she wanted to eat babka off his abs and when he learned of the post, he gave a whole interview about, in part, how it feels to be so thirsted after. I began with the Gilded Age looking for period piece fun and discovered a hunk too! Please join me and hundreds (thousands? millions?) more in ardent appreciation of Morgan Spector and throw him a vote in your Pajiba 10.