TV’s Victoria finds her perfect prince
HERE was a teenage queen a million miles from the old-boot-in-a-bonnet of popular imagination. ITV’s new Sunday drama Victoria began last night with Jenna Coleman playing the title character as gorgeous, petite, headstrong, emotional.
Unsurprisingly, this 30-year-old actress, a former head girl at a fee-paying school, has been bowling over the boys in real life.
Not only has she had a four-year romance with curly-haired Game Of Thrones heartthrob Richard Madden, she also excited the interest of Prince Harry – only to consign him to ‘just friends’ territory.
The prince, who was pictured putting his hand on her knee at a polo tournament last year, apparently sent her numerous texts, but she wasn’t interested in a dalliance.
Now it appears her Victoria co- star Tom Hughes, who plays Prince Albert, is smitten.
The pair were seen leaving a party in the same taxi earlier this summer, and have also been spotted strolling together in West London.
Hughes, who has the dangerous pout of a young Mick Jagger, once played in a rock band and is widely hailed as the acting world’s next big thing. He’s more beautiful than Benedict (Cumberbatch) and his pout puts Eddie (Redmayne) in the shade.
A visitor to the Yorkshire set of Victoria observed them filming in chilly temperatures but said that when they got close you could ‘almost see the steam rising’.
Coleman is a Rada reject whose early acting career saw her play a lesbian killer on ITV’s Emmerdale before becoming an international object of fascination with her role as Clara Oswald in Doctor Who.
Born in Blackpool, she says: ‘I come from a place that was the pleasure beach, the bright lights and illuminations. My best friend’s parents owned a rock factory and we used to hang out and play among the crates of candy.’
Her dad has a business fitting the interiors of bars and shops – having recovered from his firm being shut down in 2007 with debts of just over £250,000. Jenna’s grandfather runs a hoopla stall on Blackpool promenade. ‘He’s a real local character!’ she says.
As a girl, Coleman took dance and acting classes. Her first professional part came at the age of 11, when she appeared in a touring production of the musical Summer Holiday alongside actor Darren Day.
After appearing in plays at Blackpool’s Arnold School (fees currently more than £10,000 a year) where she was known as Little Miss Perfect by catty classmates, she became involved with a theatre company which performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She auditioned for drama schools and was offered a place at York University to study English but turned it down for the role of Jasmine Thomas in Emmerdale.
She said: ‘It was great. I was 19 and earning brilliant money. Then one part led to another and I never did get to go to drama school.’
As well as the lesbian affair on the TV soap, her character became pregnant by her female lover’s dad – then had a fling with a policeman who she then clubbed to death with a chair leg. She was written out by being sent to prison.
Upon emerging from Emmerdale after four years, she applied again to go to drama school, saying she felt ‘unfinished’ as an actor and had ‘significant gaps in what I could do.
She explained: ‘I feared that maybe I’d always be cast in similar roles. I wanted to be able to do other things.’
However, she flunked her final Rada audition. ‘I just froze. I couldn’t remember a single word.’
It is a testament to her ambition and drive that this reverse spurred her to take another risk. She moved to America and spent three months doing auditions and networking.
It came to nothing but, ever positive, she said: ‘It was a great experience. I’d worked for four years but actually had no real idea of the auditioning process. I had a lack of experience, so it was extremely helpful to do that. I came home with much more confidence.’
A role as stewardess Annie Desmond in the Julian Fellowes TV series Titanic followed, and a stint in Waterloo Road (the drama set in a comprehensive school). Being just 5ft 3in meant she could play a pupil even though she was 24 at the time. Then came her casting in Doctor
‘When they got close you could almost see the steam rising’
Who in 2012. The filming experience – with two Doctors, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi – was intense, with ten months a year spent in Cardiff.
By that time she had met Game Of Thrones star Madden and they began a romance which they tried to keep low key. Despite this, they were inevitably described as sci-fi’s No 1 couple.
However, they split last spring and Madden was linked to TV presenter Laura Whitmore.
For her part, Coleman was seen enjoying a tete-a-tete with Prince Harry after a charity polo match in Ascot in June last year. He rested his hand on her knee and was said to have engaged her in deep and ‘flirty’ conversation and then followed up with texts.
She has insisted there was nothing romantic, saying: ‘We’re just friends. I don’t really want to talk about him. We’re still friends and I don’t think it’s fair.’ And she squirmed on ITV’s Good Morning Britain when presenter Kate Garraway raised the subject.
Regardless, Coleman is now very close to her Victoria co- star Tom Hughes, who’s played roles in series such as Casualty, Silk and Marple and was in the Cold War drama The Game.
He is a Rada graduate and a part of the glittering social circle of bright young actors – including his friend Kyle Soller, who plays Francis Poldark, the brother of Ross, in the BBC drama that will go head-to-head with Victoria next weekend.
Hughes has modelled for Burberry alongside Emma Watson and was a guitarist in the indie band Quaintways.
A serious ‘method actor’, he learned to play a Beethoven piano sonata for the role as Albert. Not to be outdone, Coleman learned to ride side-saddle.
She says: ‘The most difficult thing was getting the cut-glass accent right while still making her emotionally accessible. I also had to learn to waltz, to speak a bit of French, play some Beethoven on the piano, master sidesaddle riding while wearing a corset.’
That said, she explained that her biggest challenge was to play a real person for the first time. ‘You want to be sure you can do it.’
Coleman has spoken with relish about depicting Victoria’s love affair with Prince Albert on screen.
‘They were a very active couple in every sense, and we certainly don’t shy away from the fire and the passion. Often, it’s in the bedroom that they work through arguments, too. Or they’d just be talking about the events of the day, or their feelings,’ she said.
‘Those scenes were great to film together. We had exactly the same instincts and for me, he [Tom Hughes] is the perfect Albert.’
It sounds rather as if she has found her leading man.