Royal romance, on and off screen
Victoria star Jenna Coleman has fallen for her TV romance in real life, discovers Jim Maloney.
Downton Abbey may have closed its doors for the final time, but fans of the show can get an even more extreme version of the contrasting lives above and below stairs in new Brit drama series, Victoria.
Based on Queen Victoria’s personal diaries, it tells the story of the young queen, from her ascension to the throne at the tender age of 18, through to her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert.
And the romance portrayed on screen was mirrored off it for the two young actors in the lead roles, Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes, who began dating off-screen too.
The pair remain tight-lipped about their relationship, but they are believed to be looking for a house in London together. And in another blurring of drama and reality, before dating Hughes, Coleman was pictured getting cosy with real life royalty, Prince Harry, at a polo match last year.
‘‘Theirs is a huge love story but also within a domestic kind of transaction,’’ says Coleman, of Victoria and her soulmate, Albert. ‘‘You’ve got the business side of their relationship as well as their own passionate relationship.
‘‘They have to negotiate with each other things like what salary Albert is going to be paid, as well as writing love letters. There’s the bedroom side to their relationship and also the throne room, and that makes for a really interesting dynamic.’’
Throw in the teenage queen’s infatuation with British Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, played by Rufus Sewell, and it’s an even headier mix. Coleman, 30, who played Clara Oswald in Doctor Who, admits that, like most of us, she had a one-sided image of Victoria before she was cast in the role and was surprised to learn just how different she was from that as a young queen.
‘‘It’s been quite a revelation and I was surprised how little I knew about her.
‘‘When I first started on the drama a lot of people I spoke to said, ‘You can’t play Victoria. She’s stern and old and wore black for the rest of her life after Albert died’, and I don’t think people were quite aware of how vivid she was and what a lust for life she had in her earlier years.
‘‘In the series, we see her go from teenager to queen; having youth and then power and she grows into this formidable woman with a vein of steel, but never loses her humour or her selfconsciousness. The wonderful thing about her is that she is so flawed and human and you get to see that.
Coleman’s diminutive stature was ideal when it came to playing Victoria, who was short in height but threw a commanding shadow across the Empire. But it was considered important to get her eye colour right and for browneyed Coleman, that meant trying many different coloured contact lenses before they settled on the right shade of blue.
‘‘I think we tried about 70 pairs and had different camera tests,’’ says Coleman. ‘‘It was Nic Collins, our head of make-up’s idea, which was great because if you look at any of the portraits of her, the first thing you see is her eyes. They pop out at you. And it was great for me to look so different. And in terms of comfort, the lenses were fine other than when we shot by candlelight and everything became very dream-like … which wasn’t unpleasant really!’’
While the ‘‘upstairs’’ life in the eight-part drama, which starts on TV One on Sunday, is based on real events, the ‘‘downstairs’’ escapades and characters ‘‘below’’ are mostly fictitious.
In the opening episode, a messenger races to Kensington Palace to inform young Victoria that her uncle, William IV, has died in the night and she is to be queen.
She then prepares for her coronation and moving into Buckingham Palace. But not least of her problems is her mother, the Duchess of Kent (Catherine Flemming), who plans to reign unofficially through the young monarch, with the help of scheming Sir John Conroy (Paul Rhys), the ambitious controller of the duchess’ household.
❚ Victoria, 8.30pm, Sunday, TVNZ1.