Dress, boots, Balenciaga. Earrings, necklace, Anita Ko.
You could say Louisa Jacobson was destined to be a star. The 33-year-old lead of HBO’s The Gilded Age grew up putting on plays with her siblings and cousins in the Berkshires during the holidays. “We would charge for tickets and have an audience,” she remembers, laughing. “It was so cool to be a kid and have the rapt attention of adults.” Those adults, of course, included Jacobson’s parents: the noted sculptor Don Gummer and none other than America’s favorite actress, Meryl Streep.
Like her older sisters Mamie and Grace Gummer, Jacobson followed her mother’s lead into a life on screen and stage—participating in theater camp, plays, and musicals in middle and high school; singing in a cappella groups—but when she graduated college with a psychology degree, she took a hard left, working in retail and landing a job at an advertising agency. “I wanted to do something different than the rest of my family,” she says of those few years she spent working in an office in New York’s Financial District. “But I found myself feeling stuck—like I was keeping myself from doing what I wanted.
“[I knew] that if I chose my passion, which was acting, there would be many, many people who would feel like I didn’t deserve it,” she continues. “Grappling with that is kind of difficult, but it’s just part of what it is to be a nepo baby.”
Top, miniskirt, Ferragamo. Earrings, watch, bracelet, Cartier.
Ultimately, Jacobson says, she couldn’t help herself—she started going to auditions on her lunch breaks and eventually applied and was admitted to Yale’s drama school, her mom’s alma mater. “There are always going to be people who don’t believe in you,” she says. “What matters is how you show up in the room.” (When it comes to the ongoing cultural conversation around nepo babies, she adds, “It’s an important thing…to shine a light on in terms of who has privilege,” though she’s “not sure the public shaming aspect is conducive to much besides bringing people down.”)
In 2019, Jacobson graduated from Yale and hit the jackpot: booking a lead role in HBO’s historical drama, The Gilded Age, creator Julian Fellowes’s follow-up to his treasured series Downton Abbey, set in New York City in the late 19th century. “I was really, really scared,” Jacobson says, thinking back to that first season. “It was a challenge to get through. I was used to doing theater…it was new to me to be on a set. And with such a big role, I felt a lot of pressure.”
Luckily, she was surrounded by a cast that reads like a Broadway all-star team—Christine Baranski, Cynthia Nixon, Audra McDonald, and Kelli O’Hara, among others—some of whom have also worked with Jacobson’s mom and sisters. “For me, that feels safe,” Jacobson says. “Especially with Christine Baranski, there’s a real sense of familiarity.”
Dress, boots, Balenciaga. Earrings, necklace, Anita Ko.
In the show, Jacobson plays Marian Brook, a strong-willed 20-something whose father has just died, leaving her without money or support. Out of options, she moves to New York to live with her two aunts in a grand brownstone on 61st Street, and finds herself in the middle of an ongoing battle of old- versus new-money families. Marian, in some ways, serves as a stand-in for the audience, guiding viewers through the cosseted world of Manhattan’s high society.
The series is premiering its third season on June 22, and Jacobson has definitely found her footing. “It became much clearer to me [who Marian is] in seasons 2 and 3,” she says. “What’s exciting about season 3 is that…you hear from her more about her motivations, her fears, and why they exist. That’s definitely something I advocated for….You’re going to see, oh right, she’s traumatized, and…the effects of that.”
Jacobson is tight-lipped about the upcoming episodes, but she does say one scene made her jaw drop: “There are a lot of twists and turns that no one’s going to be ready for,” she teases.
Jacobson also can’t reveal much about her upcoming performances this summer. On stage, she’ll appear in an off-Broadway production of Trophy Boys, a play about an all-boys prep school debate team who are asked to discuss the prompt: “Feminism has failed women.” The satire will feature all female and nonbinary actors, and Jacobson admits she’s “excited to do something extremely different,” calling her character the “opposite” of Marian. “It’s going to help me expand as an actor,” she adds.
Then, she has a small but “fun” role in Materialists, this summer’s highly anticipated romantic comedy about a matchmaker (played by Dakota Johnson) caught between two loves. She says she was completely “starstruck” by the film’s writer/director Celine Song, the auteur behind 2023’s Oscar-nominated Past Lives. “That was a pinch-me moment,” Jacobson says of working with Song. “I loved every minute of doing my scene with her and Dakota.”
Top, miniskirt, Ferragamo. Earrings, watch, bracelet, Cartier.
In real life, Jacobson is also surrounded by her fair share of coupling off: Her friends Justin Theroux and Nicole Brydon Bloom got married this March, thanks to Jacobson introducing the two (“It’s all because of me”); Streep and Martin Short are rumored to be dating (“I don’t know him super well, but he’s a great, great guy”); and it’s been a year since Jacobson announced her relationship with girlfriend Anna Blundell and publicly came out. “I’m so lucky to have had so much support,” she says now. “I feel like my life is expanding…it’s a beautiful thing.”
That post-college girl she described—the version of herself who was still finding her way, looking for a way to branch off from the family tree—almost feels like a different character from who she is now. Much like Marian, Jacobson now knows her “why.” “I just love it so much,” she says of acting. “And I want it so badly. Nothing’s going to get in the way of that.”
Hair by Sami Knight for Rehab; makeup by Alexandra French at Forward Artists; manicure by Jolene Brodeur at The Wall Group; produced by Anthony Federici at Petty Cash Production; photographed at Malibu Creek Ranch.
A version of this story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of ELLE.
