Pound shop props for £10m drama Victoria
The Doctor Who actress who sparked romance rumours with Prince Harry last summer is about to star in her biggest TV role yet as the young Queen Victoria
IT boasts a £10million budget – but the opulence of the new ITV drama Victoria is not all it seems.
Some of the props in the lavish production are from pound shops.
Actors have used the high street discount chain’s toy swords and intricate palatial plasterwork was created using walnuts and seashells in gold.
Budgeting has become essential – each episode already costs more than £1million – in a series tipped to rival Downton Abbey in popularity.
Producers built the seemingly opulent set inside a former RAF hangar on the outskirts of Leeds. Actress Jenna Coleman, who plays the monarch at age 18, admitted there had been some crafty skimping behind the apparent grandeur.
She said: “You walk in off the airfield and you are transported.
“Michael [Howells, the production designer] spent a lot on very expensive chandeliers from Croatia but to counteract that, he’s driven up to Scotland and got 22,000 seashells for free and bought swords from the pound shop, sprayed in gold.”
She also revealed that the production team had coated walnut shells in gold leaf to be stuck on walls.
One insider said: “Not everything can be authentic as money is always a factor but the results are pretty spectacular.”
Mr Howells was tasked with creating a replica of the inside of Buckingham Palace and during filming his team burned 12,000 candles and used 3,500sq ft of gold leaf.
He explained: “We ran courses with Leeds College of Art and students came and we taught them how to guild and decoupage. It was a real team effort. We had a lot of people working and a lot of workshops which were actually really fun because you get this great momentum.
“With such a short amount of time to prepare we were working right up till the first day of filming. The night before we were still dressing sets, hanging curtains, bringing in the candelabra and hanging paintings.”
The feature-length first episode on Sunday will show Victoria ascending to the throne surrounded by rumours of a relationship with the Prime Minister, played by Rufus Sewell.
wHEN Jenna Coleman was head girl at Blackpool’s Arnold School she was known as Little Miss Perfect by some of her more catty classmates. In a way it’s not hard to see why. Apart from being pretty and charming the young Jenna was an accomplished dancer having started taking classes at the age of four. Her beloved drama teacher Colin Snell considered her one of the most promising of his protégés. And she was a straight As student to boot.
Coleman would have walked into one of the country’s top universities or drama schools but gave up that chance after being chosen to play wild child Jasmine Thomas in farming soap Emmerdale. From there her career progressed through school-based drama Waterloo Road, Julian Fellowes’ miniseries Titanic, award-winning drama Dancing On The Edge and the top-rating Doctor Who.
But this weekend she hits the big time proper with the title role in Victoria, ITV’s blockbuster eight-part series devoted to the first three years of the reign of the monarch who took the throne at the tender age of 18 in 1837.
The fact that Coleman was spotted flirting with Prince Harry in the sponsor’s tent at a polo tournament at Coworth Park, Ascot, last summer has only added piquancy to her casting.
She and Harry were pictured deep in conversation and one source said: “It was a very flirty, tactile encounter. She was leaning in to him and he had his hand on her knee. From their body language it looked like they were enjoying each other’s company.”
Coleman, who is reported to be in an on-off relationship with Scottish actor Richard Madden – most famous for his part as Robb Stark in Game Of Thrones – looked uncomfortable when quizzed about Harry on ITV’s Good Morning on Monday. Asked if their tryst was for research purposes she laughed politely and said: “No – he’s a friend.”
Whatever the nature of their relationship she clearly has what it takes to move in royal circles. In 2013 Coleman was one of a handful of BBC stars chosen to meet the Queen when Her Majesty visited Broadcasting House to open a new extension. She was also treated to a VIP tour of Kensington Palace as part of her preparations for the role. “I’ve stood in the room where Victoria was born and stood where she held her first Privy Council meeting as Queen,” she says. NOW 30, Coleman is 12 years older than the woman she plays in the opening episode but her petite frame – she is 5ft 2in compared with Victoria’s 4ft 11in – and flawless features mean that she convinces as the teenage monarch nonetheless. She even tried 70 pairs of contact lenses before the director was satisfied that her brown eyes had turned the correct shade of Victorian blue.
ITV is believed to have spent £1million per episode on its flagship production in a bid to make the show Sunday night’s new Downton Abbey. And all eyes will be on Coleman, Tom Hughes, who plays Prince Albert, and Rufus Sewell, who plays her first prime minister Lord Melbourne when the series begins with a 90-minute special on Sunday.
Coleman insisted in an interview at the weekend that she is “northern and working class” but she once told the Blackpool Gazette that Arnold School, which now charges £10,000-a-year in fees following a merger with another school, gave her the best education in the world.
However her family has suffered its fair share of economic setbacks. Her parents Keith and Karen, both 53, ran a business called Coleman Interiors until 2007 when it was shut down with debts of just over £250,500.
Two years later Keith set up a new company, Coleman & Sons Shopfitting Ltd, with her older brother Ben, 32, but last October that too was closed down, with both Keith and Karen declared bankrupt. At around the same time their five-bedroom home in a leafy part of Blackpool was put on the market. A neighbour said: “They just disappeared overnight. It’s really sad.”
If anything her parents’ troubles spurred Coleman to evergreater efforts. “A lot of interviews talk about Emmerdale and then Doctor Who but there were six years between those,” she told one newspaper. “You should have seen me when I was trying to get an agent. It was like, ‘I’ve only worked in soap, I’ve not been to drama school, I’m 22-years old and haven’t worked for a year. I’m a great catch!’”
For a period she was sent nothing but scripts for supporting characters with northern accents: “It took a long time to get any meetings. I had to take a job at a pub in Hampstead.”
But she never lost her drive, at one point flying out to LA to join the herd of wannabes auditioning for parts in pilots in the hope they would gestate into primetime hit series. She returned home jobless but fearless and after landing the part of hard nut Lindsay James in Waterloo Road she hasn’t looked back.
She will be counting down the hours until Sunday’s screening of Victoria. If the critics are wowed and the ratings are good it could be next stop Hollywood for Blackpool’s Little Miss Perfect. Victoria – ITV, Sunday at 9pm.