Behind the glitz and glamor of the multi-million pound sets are teams of researchers, costume designers and make-up artists all working to transform contemporary actors into some of the world’s most famous people.
by Niamh Lynch is a Sky News correspondent @nyamhelinch
Friday 1 December 2023 at 22:09, United Kingdom
The second part of the sixth series of The Crown is scheduled to be released on December 14.
Seven years after its initial release, the program has become a smash hit Netflix It witnessed some of the UK’s greatest acting talent – including the three queens Claire Foy, Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton – take on the challenge of photographing some of the world’s most famous people.
Behind this glamorous multi-million pound production is a massive production team working on every detail to accurately capture every decade of the royal family.
Martin Childs, production designer, and Alison Harvey, set designer, worked on all six seasons of the show and produced approximately 2,500 sets in that time.
The “luxury of time, money and people” afforded by Netflix production allows for the detailed and stunning sets we see on our screens, the pair say.
“We went through the schedule very quickly,” Harvey said.
“We had people dedicated to certain things like curtains. [I’m] In a job at the moment – we have no people, no money and no time. “We are therefore very fortunate to have these facilities available to us in such a wonderful and well-received project.”
The abundance of resources allowed Childs and Harvey to capture not only familiar castles and royal settings, but they were keen to capture the interior of the royal family as well.
“It’s a slightly retconned movie version,” Harvey said.
“We search and search and search until we run out of search,” Childs said.
He added: “I think it was Peter Morgan who coined the phrase ‘enlightened imagination’ – which is a phrase I like very much because it helps describe what we ultimately need to do.”
The first four episodes of season six were released on November 16, and captured the last eight weeks of Princess Diana’s life.
While many scenes from the 1997 crash and its aftermath are seared in the public imagination, Childs was loathe to recreate many of them.
“My consideration [for] All the scenes leading up to [the crash] He had no prior knowledge of it, because the audience does. So I didn’t want to upload it 20-20 too late.
“People know what happened. People are familiar with the footage, so we didn’t really want to recreate too much of that.”
Portraying Diana faithfully was also a major consideration for hair and makeup artists Kate Hall and Emily Young. The shift took about 30 hours Elizabeth Debicki In the late princess.
“It starts with this very old-fashioned wrapping of their heads in cling film and sellotape and marking the headline with a sharpie. The wigmaker we work with is very detailed in terms of hairlines and crowns,” Hall said.
“The hair is all knotted hair by hair, and we will go through thousands of different colors to find the four or five colors that we will use in the wig. Then once the wig is made, we start cutting.
“Then, the wig is removed from the head and dried, then put back on, cut, highlighted, and shaded at the roots. Then the makeup installations begin.”
Like production designers, the duo said they “live and die” by getting the details right.
“Otherwise what you get is something that looks generic in the area [the decade] But not necessarily strong.
“The whole point of recreating period television is to try to create this world that the viewer can watch and really immerse themselves in. The last thing you want to do is take them out of that.
“For me, if I’m watching a TV show and the textures are very modern and chemically advanced and luminous, things like that immediately take me out of the show. So, those are the kinds of details.
“One way to say we’re in the 1960s [is] About textures and what was available to people at that time. It wasn’t glamor. We have every foundation color under the sun now. But in 1960, you might have been dealing with four different shades if you were lucky. “It’s about the twist that helps you tell the story,” Hall said.
The actors have undergone their character transformations and the stage is set but something is missing.
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Along with the historical research team, the actors spend a significant amount of time prepping with action coach Polly Bennett to prepare for filming.
“When you meet new actors playing characters, it’s about trying to throw in all that information [from past seasons] away and start over.
“The best thing about working with the team this time is that we’ve already finished Season 5, so they’re kind of living in their bodies,” she said.
“I think the most important thing physically I had to think about was that they were famous. Being famous was a new idea.
“The thing that Diana was experiencing was a very specific physical change in her body. So that was the primary concern for me.”
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A huge body of research, from that of production designers and hair and makeup artists, informs Bennett’s work.
She describes working with 21-year-old Meg Bellamy, who plays a young Kate Middleton while she attends university with Prince William.
“A lot of our first sessions were just making space to go – who is this character? What was she around? What did she grow up around? What clothes does she wear regularly? What food does she eat? What are her relationships? Who did she see growing up?”
“We look at the footage that we have, we look at the photographs, and we put it together in a private investigator-like way,” Bennett said.
“And suddenly when you start looking at different pictures, you notice little things that Kate does in her life, like she always wears a handbag on the same side of her body and holds it. Now, that’s something that then became a starting point for Yes.”
“The idea that they have something very practical, but they keep it close to them and then you can take that feeling into their entire life. Whether that’s actually what Kate Middleton does or not, that becomes gold dust.” A practical idea for an actor to play.”
