{"id":117563,"date":"2026-10-12T06:42:40","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T10:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=117563"},"modified":"2026-10-12T06:43:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T10:43:31","slug":"the-gilded-ages-louisa-jacobson-on-growing-up-as-meryl-streeps-daughter-i-was-afraid-of-being-judged","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/the-gilded-ages-louisa-jacobson-on-growing-up-as-meryl-streeps-daughter-i-was-afraid-of-being-judged\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gilded Age\u2019s Louisa Jacobson on Growing Up as Meryl Streep\u2019s Daughter: \u201cI Was Afraid of Being Judged\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Photography Cass Bird
Styling J. Errico
Words Faran Krentcil
Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Photography Cass Bird
Styling J. Errico
Words Faran Krentcil
Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI think,\u201d she starts, then: thunder.<\/i><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean,\u201d she tries again, but: lightning.<\/i><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The rain starts coming in sheets. Her creamy Kallmeyer blouse has a damp sheen. The hem of her vintage wool pants gets wet and turns color from camel to mule. A few droplets land on her Miista fisherman sandals, making them seem almost bedazzled. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCome on<\/i>!\u201d she shouts to the clouds. Then, back to me: \u201cOK. So. I think the strongest thing you can do is admit what you want. Even if you\u2019re judged for it. You have to choose what\u2019s true, or you\u2019ll never be happy. I am still learning how to do this. That\u2019s it.\u201d She side-eyes the clouds again. \u201cThat\u2019s it!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the sky is listening now. It suspects, like many of us do, that Jacobson might be pretty interesting, even when she\u2019s not sopping wet.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

HBO Max is banking on this \u2014 it has installed the 35-year-old actress as the steely point of The Gilded Age, <\/i>a class-panicked soap opera about fin de si\u00e8cle<\/em> New York. The show returns for a fourth season on November 1.<\/span><\/p>\n

Defiantly awesome brands like Eckhaus Latta and Kallmeyer are also Team Louisa, employing the jut-cheeked blonde in ads and social media content for the fall season. In late August, Jacobson was named to the Vanity Fair Best Dressed List, joining the ranks of Nicole Kidman, Harry Styles, and Rihanna. Looking at the hoops running up both her ears, I kind of want to pierce my own cartilage with a vintage Miu Miu brooch, even though needles freak me out. She has achieved Cool Girl status on a molecular, should-I-stab-myself level. She laughs hysterically when I say so.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is The Challenger,<\/i> an upcoming TV thriller starring Kristen Stewart as legendary astronaut Sally Ride. In the show, Jacobson plays her longtime romantic partner Tam O\u2019Shaughnessy, who needed to stay secret in order to protect Ride\u2019s NASA job. \u201cI started pushing my agents to look for more queer stories,\u201d says Jacobson, who came out as queer herself in 2025. \u201cI understand actors who feel like they can\u2019t do that. I have queer friends who still only want to play straight roles. But I\u2019m in a place now where I really want to embrace it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacobson\u2019s easy bravery is a recent development for the Brooklyn native, and she admits it. \u201cI was pretty lost in my early 20s. I hadn\u2019t yet admitted to myself that I really wanted to be an actress. I hadn\u2019t come out yet. I was afraid of being judged. \u2026 Maybe I put up some walls around things I loved.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This would be totally normal for anyone, but Jacobson had some extra Vuitton streamer trunk to add to her post-adolescent emotional baggage. Mainly, Jacobson is the youngest daughter of Meryl goddamn Streep.\u00a0 <\/span>That means no matter how good she is at her job \u2014 and critics agree that Jacobson is excellent<\/i> \u2014 the internet\u2019s gonna internet. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI lived under this anvil of being my mother\u2019s daughter,\u201d admits Jacobson, who was raised between Los Angeles and Connecticut. \u201cAnd my older sisters [Mamie Gummer, 43, and Grace Gummer, 40] are also amazing. So I\u2019m already in their shadow. It\u2019s a heavy thing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Louisa
Photography Cass Bird
Styling J. Errico
Words Faran Krentcil
Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Photography Cass Bird
Styling J. Errico
Words Faran Krentcil
Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Louisa
Photography Cass Bird
Styling J. Errico
Words Faran Krentcil
Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Louisa
Photography Cass Bird
Styling J. Errico
Words Faran Krentcil
Hair: Blake Erik; Makeup: Romy Soleimani; Manicure: Lolly Koon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like Tracee Ellis Ross or Maude Apatow, Jacobson is the kind of Hollywood legacy kid who can confront her good fortune while challenging norms about female star power. She knows she is a nepo baby, and she really <\/i>knows that Redditors feel \u201clike I didn\u2019t deserve [success] or that things were given to me.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou know,\u201d she says, ducking a stream of rain runoff, \u201cthey\u2019re not wrong. But you have to stay in the room.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge, Jacobson admits, is that for years she pretended she didn\u2019t even want to be <\/i>in the room. After graduating from Vassar with a psychology degree, she got a job working retail for the designer Clare V., then serving as a corporate assistant at an ad agency. \u201cMy favorite part was the focus groups,\u201d she says, grinning. \u201cI just was fascinated watching all these strangers come and talk about something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But eventually, Jacobson had to admit to herself that she wanted to be a performer, even though she knew there would be some online rants about her family connections. \u201cBut I couldn\u2019t ignore what I knew was true. I had <\/i>to do this to be happy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2017, Jacobson secretly applied to Yale\u2019s graduate program, where after three rounds of competitive auditions, she joined fellow trainees like Stereophonic<\/i>\u2019s Juliana Canfield and the playwright and Emily in Paris <\/i>scene-stealer Jeremy O. Harris. \u201cI was thrown in with 15 other random people around my age. We all had very different life paths, and we all got to expand and learn and make mistakes and fuck up. Everyone\u2019s doing it together. No one\u2019s feeling more special than anyone else. It was the best thing I\u2019ve ever done for myself. I think I needed that extra level of inner belief and faith in myself in order to deal with the world and how the world perceives me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, that perception was glowing. After graduation, Jacobson landed roles in critically-acclaimed plays like Lindsay Joelle\u2019s Trayf <\/i>and Carson McCullers\u2019 Member of the Wedding <\/i>and was regularly praised by theater critics for her nuanced, robust performances. Between gigs, she worked like many actors do as a waiter, where Mike Eckhaus \u2014 one half of the cult-favorite Eckhaus Latta label \u2014 ran into her on the job. \u201cI was at a design event during Pride at a friend\u2019s loft in Tribeca,\u201d he recalled. \u201cShe was working there as a cater-waiter. We struck up a conversation and made the type of plans you make when living in New York where you exchange numbers and it ends there. \u2026 She emanated good energy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Then came her first-ever TV role as the gumption-loaded ing\u00e9nue Marion Brooke on The Gilded Age<\/i>. Produced by Downton Abbey <\/i>maestro Julian Fellowes, the addictive and adored show follows Marion as she\u2019s taken in by her imperious (but, the show takes great pains to insist, not racist!) wealthy aunts on Fifth Avenue. Fortunes are gambled, and marriages are shattered. There\u2019s a lot of lamb with mint jelly. John Singer Sargent makes a cutie-pie cameo, and you keep waiting for Billy Zane from Titanic <\/i>to show up. Instead, the show\u2019s filigreed <\/i>baddies are played by acting legends like Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald. <\/span><\/p>\n

The whole thing is a blast, and Jacobson knows it \u2014 she giddily makes the \u201czipped lips\u201d gesture when I beg her for Season Four spoilers \u2014 but making the show\u2019s first season in 2022 was, she confesses, a trial by fire. Even though she\u2019s a trained Yalie, stagecraft differs dramatically from HBO\u2019s infamously tight camerawork, which is great for dragons and zombies but challenging for actual humans. She was just coming to terms with her queer identity in her personal life while balancing scripts, set dynamics, and 13-hour days in a corset that, at her own insistence, was cinched within emergency-room distance of her intestines.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was learning, and that was a very public way to learn,\u201d she shares. \u201cI\u2019ll say this: I can\u2019t watch Season One back now.\u201d That might be because shortly after the show\u2019s debut, Jacobson did the bravest thing that a modern actress can do: She looked at the comments on Reddit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of like exposure therapy!\u201d she declares. \u201cSo many of the things that people were saying about my performance [on The<\/i> Gilded Age<\/i>] were basically the intrusive thoughts and voices that I\u2019ve had in my own head since I was really little. I got really depressed. I really doubted my commitment to the work. Like, could I actually do this?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But being brave is feeling afraid \u2014 or sometimes, just feeling like shit \u2014 and doing it anyway. So Jacobson slammed her laptop shut and cautiously auditioned for the part of an anxiety-shaken bride in The<\/i> Materialists, <\/i>the matchmaking-dilemma film starring Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal helmed by \u201cdream director\u201d Celine Song. She got the part, and began taking stronger steps into her adult, acting self. <\/span><\/p>\n

Jacobson also took on the role of queer advocate, albeit somewhat warily, in 2024. That\u2019s when she announced her relationship with fashion producer Anna Blundell with a now-dead Instagram post reading \u201cblessed to be entering this joyful New Era bb\u201d with a flame heart and a Pride flag emoji. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe interesting thing is that I never came out!\u201d Jacobson says of the rainbow-wrapped move. \u201cI never said the words \u2018I am a lesbian\u2019 to the press. I posted some stuff on Instagram, like an article about lesbian fashion from the [New York] Times<\/i>, and the media really ran with it. And so they<\/i> decided that I was a lesbian.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But wasn\u2019t she?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, ugh!\u201d Jacobson says, balling up her hands into little fists like the Arthur <\/i>meme. \u201cIt was a lot for me to handle because I was still figuring out my relationship to my sexuality, and it felt like it got ahead of me. That was hard. But I identify as queer, and I thought it was important. Visibility is so important, and I have seen Kristen Stewart and others just be visible and out, and it\u2019s really inspiring. I don\u2019t think I would have even thought that I could be brave enough to do it had I not seen other people do it. So I don\u2019t think it was necessary for anyone to know who I date, but I feel passionate about the visibility of queer people. It\u2019s normal. Nobody should be hiding, and I wasn\u2019t gonna hide.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The actress says she had some help and mentorship from Daniella Kallmeyer, the CFDA-nominated designer who calls Jacobson \u201clike a little sister and friend and muse.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

They met through Jacobson\u2019s fashion-obsessed older sibling, Grace \u2014 \u201cthe shopper of the family,\u201d Jacobson says with an exaggerated sigh \u2014 who steered Louisa into Kallmeyer\u2019s boutique on the Upper East Side. \u201cWe caught each other\u2019s eye; there was a knowing that was exchanged,\u201d Kallmeyer says. \u201cIt\u2019s not about queerness as a political identity, not gay or not. Just a being seen<\/i>. Shortly after that, she came out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She also became a willowy 5\u20197\u201d vehicle for Kallmeyer\u2019s no-gimmicks lineup of jacquard car coats, burnout silk slip dresses, and leather-on-leather suiting. \u201cShe\u2019s truly coming into herself, in the sense of fashion but also identity and career all at the same time,\u201d says the designer. \u201cWe chose her as the new face of Kallmeyer because she\u2019s coming into her talent and her identity, which fully aligns with our values. We want to represent that idea of being seen, and seeing people become themselves. That\u2019s a big deal. Also,\u201d Kallmeyer pauses. \u201cLouisa is really <\/i>fun. She has great vibes. She was the very last person on the dance floor at my wedding. She is the best party guest \u2014 but I cannot legally say any more about that!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Jacobson admits that, like most 35-year-olds in New York City, she loves to haunt vintage stores, cram into tiny downtown bars, trawl across Canal Street in search of kitschy but cool jewelry, and hang out with her friends, a mix of Yale classmates and childhood friends (\u201cmy fifth-grade crew!\u201d) that she continues to keep close.\u00a0 <\/span>She is also in \u201cconstant\u201d search for massage techniques and exercises because of her Gilded Age <\/i>corset, which \u201creally does leave you with a tight back. I mean, these Victorian standards were insane.<\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jacobson remains close with her sisters \u2014 she and Grace even help each other with the grind of self-tape auditions that are increasingly common in Hollywood. \u201cWe need more support from the industry about this,\u201d Jacobson insists. \u201cNot everyone has a friend they can call to be an automatic scene partner and videographer. We really need a community solution.\u201d (It\u2019s at this point in the interview that I wonder if after The Gilded Age, <\/i>Louisa Jacobson should star in a Norma Rae <\/i>remake or at least run for SAG president.) <\/span><\/p>\n

And she is now single, although when I ask if she wants to swipe around on Raya, she winces. \u201cI did [Raya] years ago when I broke up with my boyfriend,\u201d says Jacobson. \u201cI was just coming out, and it felt like a safer way to do that. But now that I have done a couple seasons of the show, and I have some standing in the fashion world, I feel a little too\u2026 I\u2019m not<\/i> famous,\u201d she insists, holding her hands up in the universal \u201cstop\u201d gesture. \u201cBut I feel weirdly vulnerable. Exposed.<\/i> And I\u2019m an old-school soul, and I kind of really love meeting people in person and organically. I still have faith in that. Sorry! I\u2019m such a romantic!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I tell her I am, too, but I picked out my boyfriend on Hinge as if he were a Dries Van Noten skirt on Net-a-Porter. Jacobson giggles but remains resolute in her no-screens policy for new loves. \u201cThis is gonna have to be a fate thing,\u201d she says. \u201cBut please, show me all the pictures of this guy.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

I take this request \u2014 and the fact that both of us are now fully rain-drenched \u2014 to ask, again, about The<\/i> Gilded Age<\/i>\u2019s upcoming season, specifically the romance of it all. Jacobson seems to scroll through a contract in her mind, figuring out what she can actually share about the hotly TikTok-ed show. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so proud of the work this season,\u201d she begins slowly. \u201cEveryone is so amazing, which you obviously already know \u2026 okay. I can tell you that Marion gets a job in a tenement settlement\u201d \u2014 a community center for low-income New Yorkers, especially in immigrant communities, that helped with education and medical care in the early 20th century \u2014 \u201cand I can also tell you that total social ostracization is on the line for some people because of a very <\/i>bad event. The stakes are very, very high.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Through the rain, I point down Orchard Street to where my grandfather was born in a literal tenement house about a hundred years ago. \u201cOh wow. <\/i>We weren\u2019t here then!\u201d says Jacobson ruefully. \u201cWe\u2019ve got some Quakers on my mom\u2019s side. We\u2019ve got some Norwegian settlers on my dad\u2019s side. We\u2019re just very, very Midwest!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I ask Jacobson if that\u2019s why she\u2019s so nice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAm I nice?\u201d she asks the air around us. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she says, turning back to me. Her eyes are bigger than they seem on TV. They appear almost translucent. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m just very honest. I think the nicest thing you can be to yourself is just radically accepting of who you are. I think, especially today, we can\u2019t hide ourselves or who we love or what we love. We just have to own it, so that other people can be less afraid of their own stuff. Otherwise, come on. What are we doing here?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA\u2019<\/em>s Fall\/Winter 2026 Issue<\/a><\/p>\n