Character
Agnes van Rhijn
Agnes van Rhijn in The Gilded Age (2022), played by Christine Baranski.
Agnes van Rhijn presides over her Manhattan brownstone like a fortress of old New York values, deeply suspicious of the vulgar new money moving in next door. Widowed, sharp-tongued, and fiercely protective of the family's standing, she rules her household with acid wit and rigid rules, unimpressed by anyone's wealth but her own kind's pedigree.
Christine Baranski was born to deliver lines like scalpels, and the writing hands her a bottomless supply of them. Agnes could easily be a snob and nothing else, but Baranski finds the fear underneath the hauteur — a woman guarding a world she senses is already slipping away, one perfectly timed insult at a time.
Agnes van Rhijn (née Brook) is the widowed matriarch of the Van Rhijn Family, an old money Dutch-American family from New York. She is a proud and stubborn socialite who clings to the values of the old having descended from the Brook and Livingston families. Mrs. Van Rhijn is the mother of Oscar van Rhijn, and lives with her sister, Ada, and their orphaned niece, Marian, in her Manhattan brownstone on East 61 Street.
Read more about Agnes van Rhijn on The Gilded Age Wiki at Fandom
Played by
Appears in
The Gilded Age2022