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Victoria’s WINTER wonderland
Sledging and skating, carols by candlelight and Christmas trees galore – Jenna Coleman and her co-stars tell Lisa Sewards how the first Victoria Christmas special has pulled out all the stops
Millions will sit down to watch the first ever festive special of ITV’s Victoria on Christmas Day, in a full-blown spectacular billed as the most Christmassy Christmas special ever. There are trees galore, lashings of snow, sledging, skating and carols by candlelight in the action-packed two-hour show.
After the second series reached an explosive finale when Prime Minister Robert Peel’s private secretary Drummond took a bullet for him, the pressure was on the cast and crew to pull out all the stops for this one-off episode called Comfort And Joy. And no wonder, since it was the real Queen Victoria and Prince Albert who brought over the German traditions that turned Christmas into the family celebration we enjoy today. They enjoyed the most lavish yuletides you could possibly imagine, so in Comfort And Joy we’ll see Albert putting up seven Christmas trees – one for each family member and the Duchess of Kent, plus an enormous 16ft centrepiece tree hung from the ceiling of the Buckingham Palace ballroom.
‘They kind of invented Christmas as we know it and Albert made the Christmas tree a tradition over here,’ says Jenna Coleman, who plays Victoria. ‘In the show Victor ia has a lovely line when she sees all the trees and says she wasn’t expecting a forest at Christmas. What’s fascinating is that in this episode you see Christmas becoming Christmas as we now know it, so it feels absolutely right to have a Victoria Christmas special.’
Set in December 1846, Comfort And Joy sees Victoria haunted by the ghost of Christmas past as she prepares to tackle her first festive season without her beloved childhood nanny and confidante Baroness Lehzen, who was dismissed on Albert’s orders in the last series after their eldest child, Princess Vicky, fell seriously ill. Victoria’s pregnant with her fourth child, and the celebrations serve only to remind her of her lonely childhood spent at Kensington Palace. ‘When I was a girl I used to dread this time of year. I’d be sent upstairs to the nursery alone and Lehzen would always arrive with a huge box of marrons glacés – that’s the only thing I’d look forward to,’ laments Victoria in the drama.
Meanwhile Albert, played by Jenna’s real-life boyfriend Tom Hughes, is obsessed with staging the perfect family Christmas, transforming the palace into a magical festive wonderland. ‘All I want is for my children to have the same Christmas you and I had when we were children,’ he says to his brother Ernest. So out go the traditional British sprigs and twigs and in comes a gaudy German Christmas.
Although the drama was filmed in the Yorkshire locations which double for Buckingham Palace, in real life Victoria and Alber t would have spent Ch r istmas at Windsor Castle where they would decorate the tree themselves on Christmas Eve, lighting candles and hanging gingerbread from the branches. Then the great gilded doors would be opened for the big reveal, signalled by the ringing of a silver hand bell, and the excited children would be ushered in to open their presents.
Two years after the time when the special is set, a drawing of the Royal Family celebrating around their beloved Christmas tree at the Queen’s Lodge in Windsor Castle was published by Illustrated London magazine and British people first became aware of the tradition. The new fashion caught on quickly, and even though it was already common to bring branches of mistletoe, holly or yew inside, soon every home boasted its own tree bedecked with home-made decorations, sweets and fruits.
But in fact it had been in 1843, the same year Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, that Albert’s great friend Henry Cole commissioned an illustration from John Callcott Horsley for the first commercial Christmas card. The card was a costly shilling but the royal children were encouraged to make their own which they sent to friends and family, and once again a new British tradition was established. ‘There’s a brilliant scene where we have a Christmas card and Victoria is saying, “Why would you need to send a Christmas card when people know it’s Christmas?”’ laughs Jenna. ‘It seems we have Prince Albert to thank for an awful lot that has shaped our world today.’
Not only did he adopt the use of the newly invented Christmas crackers, which originally contained sweets and were known as ‘cracker bonbons’, but Albert also wrote his own Christmas music. All in all, the royal couple began the trend of taking Christmas away from its pagan roots, turning it into a respectable family festival. Crucially, it was Victoria and Albert’s dedication to family values which established the tradition of Christmas as a family holiday that endures to this day. ‘Family is Victoria’s foundation. It’s her safe haven,’ explains Jenna. ‘As Victoria and Albert are both from broken homes and dysfunctional childhoods, I think the importance they place on family makes a lot of sense.
‘In many ways, the traditional image of family and Christmas stems from
‘Victorians on ice is quite a beautiful sight to see’ JENNA COLEMAN
them. The children coming in to open their presents on Christmas Eve is one of my favourite scenes, mainly because the children were so excited. The set really felt inhabited in those familial scenes, and you begin to feel like you’re in a home, not a palace.’
In these early years there were some bitterly cold winters, so the real Victoria and Albert would take a ride in their red sleigh at Windsor Castle. One year they made an eight-mile round trip to Slough in it. The family also went iceskating on the lake at nearby Frogmore House which often froze over, and these scenes have been replicated in great detail in Comfort And Joy, even though it was filmed in the summer. ‘I think the ice skating scenes are very special,’ says Jenna, 31. ‘Victorians on ice is quite a beautiful sight to see.’ Tom, also 31, agrees. ‘I enjoyed it all. The smell of pine needles on set was very welcome. It was odd to walk outside from that into June sunshine though.’
Albert was an excellent ice-skater, and Tom took extra lessons to perfect his technique. However, David Oakes, who has the role of Albert’s brother Prince Ernest, the Duke of Coburg, took it one step further. ‘Margaret Clunie, who plays Harriet, the Duchess of Sutherland, and I spent a great deal of time on the ice – and on our bums!’ he laughs. ‘But we had two wonderful coaches, Chris and Karen, who took us from Terrible to Torvill. Being competitive, I rather took to it – I even have my own blades now. By the end I was the one doing pirouettes and spins.’
It’s on the lake that a dramatic event takes place, which Victoria creator and writer Daisy Goodwin came across in a volume called A Record Of Royal Engagements in the London Library in St James’s Square and which she excitedly seized upon when writing Comfort And Joy. ‘It was just the sort of piece I needed for the Christmas episode – not only would it look spectacular but it also had the added advantage of pushing along the story for the characters,’ says Daisy.
So what else can we look forward to in the show? ‘There are going to be proposals and there are going to be some very unusual, unexpected guests,’ explains Daisy. ‘Central to the episode is the extraordinary story of a Nigerian girl, a princess called Sarah Forbes Bonetta, who is brought to the palace after being rescued from slavery by a British Naval captain named Forbes and is offered to the Queen as a gift . She’s brought up in England by t he Forbes family, and Victoria took her on as a goddaughter. It’s an amazing story – it’s true and it’s one you don’t quite associate with Victoria.’
Jenna thinks she has an explanation. ‘Sarah enters Victoria’s life as an orphan, abandoned and alone, and I think Victoria can see something of herself in her. It becomes an almost cathartic experience. By trying to help Sarah rebuild herself, Victoria eases the wounds of her own childhood experience. I really loved exploring the scenes between Victoria and Sarah. I find their relationship fascinating and so telling about Victoria as a person.’
Below stairs, Christmas is no less festive and the mistletoe is very much in use as we see our old favourites, Nell Hudson as Mrs Skerrett and chef Francatelli played by Ferdinand Kingsley, celebrating Christmas at the Servants’ Ball. ‘The episode’s very eventful,’ says Nell. ‘Skerrett is hit with rather a massive piece of news which has the potential to change her life. She could leave the palace with Mr Francatelli and live happily – not to mention prosperously – ever after. However, it may be too good to be true.’
Like Albert, Francatelli is a vital part of our modern day Christmas traditions too. ‘The real Mr Francatelli was a big maker of mince pies, one of the early masters of the art, so he also had an impact on Christmas,’ explains Ferdinand. ‘It will be really weird watching it with my family this year. You’re normally a bit drunk and hungover watching Call The Midwife. But this year I’m going to be a bit drunk and hungover watching myself.’
The Royal Family thoroughly enjoyed the extravagance of giving Christmas gifts but Victoria was also generous with her staff, giving away gloves she had worn, as well as items of underwear, nightwear and dresses. But for the most senior male servant, household steward Penge played by Adrian Schiller, the greatest Christmas gift is a chance to dance with the Queen at the Servants’ Ball. ‘The tradition was wellestablished and a really lovely one,’ he says. ‘The Royal Family came down to the servants’ quarters and were the guests of the servants. So roles were reversed. Mr Penge is the “host” and Mrs Skerrett the “hostess” and rather than waiting for the Queen to speak to you, you could address her first.
‘Then of course I get to dance with the Queen which is what I’ve been preparing for all year. By tradition, when the royal party arr ives in the servant’s hall, the host asks for the first dance from the monarch. We servants got to ditch our uniforms and put on our party gear for a change. I had a long black tailcoat, a rather nice cravat, my breeches and buckle shoes. We did a foxtrot and a polka and it took us about three days to shoot. It was great, Jenna can really dance, as could the real Victoria.’
There’s a good deal of Christmas cheer which means even the Duchess of Buccleuch, played by Dame Diana Rigg, stops whingeing about Albert’s ‘extravagance’, discovers an old flame and gets into the festive spirit. So too does the heartbroken Lord Alfred Paget, played by Jordan Waller, who manages to stop pining for his wouldbe lover Edward Drummond, Peel’s private secretary, who was killed in the last series. ‘I would say there’s a form of happiness for him potentially in the future,’ says Jordan, with an enigmatic smile. ‘I think that Albert’s influence in injecting the Christmas mirth into the household infects Alfred and lifts his spirits along with others. Comfort And Joy has everything a Christmas story needs – charity, love, cosiness and it fills you with a warm, fuzzy feeling. And Daisy’s script delivers everything you want at Christmas by the spoonful.’
Victoria, Christmas Day, 9pm, ITV. The official companion to the television series, Victoria And Albert – A Royal Love Affair, by Daisy Goodwin and Sara Sheridan, is published by Harper Collins.
‘There are proposals and some unusual guests’
DAISY GOODWIN