Maggie Siff and Stacey Cunningham Illustration by João Fazenda

Maggie Siff walked onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange eight minutes before the opening bell one recent morning. The actress, who is forty-four and has long, coffee-colored hair and bangs, had a day off from shooting the Showtime series “Billions,” on which she plays Wendy Rhoades, one of the show’s few female characters. Wendy is a corporate psychotherapist for a hedge fund—kind of like a life coach for capitalism—and she slinks around the office in austere sheath dresses. Siff had taken a cab to Wall Street from Brooklyn, where she lives, and she wore the uniform of a hip outer-borough mom: black pants, ruffled blouse, and slouchy black blazer. She grew up in Riverdale, but this was her first trip to the Stock Exchange.

A press representative for the exchange greeted her with the news that Citigroup was celebrating International Women’s Day by having one of its managing directors ring the opening bell. “Happy International Women’s Day,” Siff said, as she was led through the throng of traders awaiting the nine-thirty opening bell. She asked how many women were on the trading floor.

“Um, that’s a good question,” the rep said, giggling nervously. “Between the traders, the Stock Exchange personnel, the media, and the guests, there can be scores of them.”

“But how many traders?” Siff pressed.

“I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “We’ve had a few in and out.” He pushed on, pointing up at the bell podium, where Stacey Cunningham, the first woman president of the N.Y.S.E., stood, in a chestnut dress, leather jacket, and leopard pumps.

“Did Stacey ever work on the floor?” Siff asked. Before she got the answer, the bell clanged, a few traders approached her for selfies, and the crowd dispersed to start making money. Cunningham descended and held out her hand to Siff. “I’m a big fan of the show—love it, love it!” Cunningham said, in a husky voice. “So, are you ready to start trading stocks?”

“Um . . . ” Siff said.

“There were not that many women on the floor when I started, in the late nineties,” Cunningham told her. “But it cuts both ways. You have a much higher profile as a woman on the trading floor, because you get some extra points for wanting to be there.” She added, “But there are still very few women on the floor.” (Last year, there were two.)

A dark-haired woman in a red blazer and a double strand of pearls with a diamond Chanel clasp walked up. It was Tracey Brophy Warson, from Citigroup. She was the one who would be ringing the day’s opening bell. “We are the pioneers,” she said to Cunningham.

“You’ve been in finance for years,” Cunningham said.

“It’s lonely,” Warson responded. “Being in financial services, we have a ways to go.”

Siff told them that she had been following the story of “Fearless Girl,” the statue of a defiant young woman with her hands on her hips, which State Street Global Advisors had installed facing Arturo Di Modica’s “Charging Bull” sculpture at Bowling Green, to draw attention to the dearth of women on corporate boards. Di Modica had protested, arguing that “Fearless Girl” changed the context of his original work, and the new statue was relocated, to just outside the Stock Exchange. Cunningham lobbied to get it there. “I love it—she’s just staring down capitalism,” Cunningham said. Critics have complained that “Fearless Girl” promotes a kind of “corporate feminism,” but Cunningham sees the art work as “aspirational.” “I view her as a symbol of people who don’t see limits,” she said.

“The cultural context totally changed as that controversy was happening,” Siff said.

“I think that’s also a part of why my job got so much press. I was named president during the MeToo movement,” Cunningham said.

She took Siff on a tour (highlights: the jumbo Fabergé urn that Nicholas II gave in appreciation for a bond issue, on which he defaulted, owing to being executed; Jimmy Page’s guitar; a stained-glass ceiling made by an ex-Tiffany employee, after Tiffany’s quote was too high). They ended in Siebert Hall, a conference room named for Muriel Siebert, the first woman to join the exchange, in 1967. Cunningham said, “The first nine guys she asked to sponsor her said no.” She pointed at Siebert’s rainbow-striped fur coat, inside a display case: “She didn’t try to blend in.”

Siff noted that Cunningham’s outfit matched her own onscreen wardrobe as Wendy Rhoades. “The leathers, the zipper up the back,” she said. “Wendy really zips herself in.”

“I don’t want to be too gendered about it, but she can be a shark. She can be as manipulative and conniving as some of the more toxic male archetypes,” she went on. But, as a therapist, “she has great wells of empathy, and emotional X-ray vision.” As for working in finance, Siff said, “Slinging around huge amounts of money” on a screen—“that would make me break out in hives.” ♦

An earlier version of this piece misstated which bell Warson was scheduled to ring at the New York Stock Exchange.