STARS: OUR SIZZLING TV CHEMISTRY
Violent rows. High passions. Simmering jealousies. The stars of Victoria tell the Mail how the Royal couple had an irresistible sexual chemistry (which has spilled over into real life)
Actress Jenna coleman is hurling a hairbrush through the air at her real-life boyfriend tom Hughes. the tension between them is so blistering that she has seized the nearest missile — and before he has time to side-step it, the brush has hit him hard.
Yet this explosive moment is not an intimate glimpse into the romantic lives of Jenna and tom, but a scene between Queen Victoria (played by Jenna) and her husband, Prince Albert (tom).
No wonder that Daisy Goodwin, the creator, of ITV’s hit drama Victoria, along with everyone who was on set, is spellbound by the chemistry between the pair.
Albert’s reaction is to look disappointed and suggest it might be a good idea to sleep alone that night, outside of the marital chamber. that won’t last long.
they were the Antony and cleopatra tra of the 19th century — a ruler and her consort t whose love was a rollercoaster of passionn and drama — so we can expect a lot of emotionalmoes, fireworks in the second series, which starts on sunday.
Jenna, 31, enjoyed the passionatee rows the royal couple have.
‘It fun! On the first day, when I had to throw a hairbrush at him, I hit him — I was meant to!’ she laughs.
‘I’m not hugely an argumentative person — it’s opposite to me. so it’s a very interesting part of her character r as she’s very reactive.’
the argument scenes worked bestst when filmed ‘in the raw, spontaneously, sly, often without rehearsal, to get that fire’, says Jenna.
she and tom knew each other whenhen they started filming the first series in 2015, but it was playing the young Queen and Prince together which sparked their own romance.
Is it an advantage knowing each other so well off-screen? ‘Absolutely!’ says Jenna. ‘there is so much on the page anyway that a lot of the work is done for us. But, of course, it helps if you get on with whom you are working.’
TOM, 31, adds: ‘there are magic moments on screen, and they often happen by accident. Dramatically, you are always looking for those accidents, and that chemistry is not something you can bottle.’
the real-life Victoria and Albert were ‘one of the greatest love stories there’s ever been’, says Jenna. ‘so you never want to lose their intensity, their love and, at times, their complete annoyance at one another.’
the young royal couple’s arguments were so ferocious they would chase each other from room to room.
But fury soon turned to passion. One pregnancy swiftly followed another (they had nine children in all), partly because of a lack of availability of contraception at that time and partly because they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
Victoria adored going to bed with her husband but loathed being pregnant, and we see her frustration exploding on screen.
they were a perfect example of opposites attracting.
‘You’ve got two completely opposite people who function differently,’ says Jenna. ‘One is scientific, logical, shy and methodical; the other, Victoria, is impulsive and emotionally-led.
‘If you put those two people into a goldfish bowl, where they are madly in love but living their lives in public view, it leads to fireworks.’
series one became a huge hit for ItV in 2016, watched by an average 7.7 million viewers each week.
When Victoria returns on sunday night, the action picks up four weeks after the end of the first series, which followed Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 at the tender age of 18, the demanding early years of her reign and her courtship with the handsome Prince Albert until the birth of their first child in 1840.
But it was the dashing rufus sewell who smouldered up a storm in his role as Prime minister Lord melbourne, the affectionately named ‘Lord m’, who acted as a political mentor to the Queen to a point where he became her first love.
Viewers prayed he would defy historical reality and act on his chemistry with the Queen and accept her marriage proposal. However, he saw fit to back off from his role as personal adviser once she started to fall for Prince Albert, and he was conspicuously absent from later episodes.
At the start of series two (which covers 1841-1847), the royal couple are struggling to define their power balance. ‘Victoria has been in confinement,’ explains Jenna. ‘they believed that when women had babies, they should lie horizontal for a month after the birth. she is not in the best of tempers having been fussed over during that time.
‘she comes back to work and finds that Albert has effectively taken over. so there is a really thunderous clash between them.’
things take a turn for the worse when Victoria quickly falls pregnant with her second child.
‘As soon as she’s back to work, she’s pregnant within three months, which she was devastated by,’ says Jenna. ‘she feels imprisoned by it after only just regaining her independence.’
the general view nowadays is that Victoria was hardly a doting mother, but Jenna disagrees. ‘I think she resents the children to some extent. But one of the misconceptions about Victoria is that she doesn’t like her children.
‘that isn’t really true, as a lot of those comments came later in life when she talks about how the children ruined her first two years of
marriage and how she wishes she hadn’t got pregnant so soon.
‘But if you go through her diary, day to day, she really is a doting mum, and I was keen to show that side of her.’
Series writer and creator Daisy Goodwin adds: ‘What Victoria really wanted was to have time to enjoy life with Albert as his wife.
‘We know that she enjoyed sex — she wanted her honeymoon to go on for longer — and yet she was instantly pregnant. She didn’t want to breastfeed; she thought that was for cows. She was not an earth mother in any way.
‘Every working mother I know feels guilty about not spending more time with their children, but I don’t think Victoria suffered from that guilt. There’s no doubt that she loved her children. But her marriage and her job came first and that makes her interesting. However with baby number two she definitely had post-natal depression.
‘I had a variant of that, and it’s a very debilitating thing because you feel you’ve got nothing to offer your baby. That made it hard for her to be a mother.’
The Queen and Albert both had damaged childhoods.
‘Victoria felt that as a child she was wronged,’ explains Daisy. ‘She was basically kept in prison in Kensington Palace and felt that her mother, the Duchess of Kent, didn’t love her enough; that she gave all her attention to the awful John Conroy, the comptroller of her household,’ — referring to the man rumoured to be the Duchess’s lover.
‘Victoria felt deprived. So she’s determined she’s never going to be put in a corner again.’
Meanwhile, Albert felt he’d lost his family after his mother, Louise, was alleged to have had an affair with Alexander von Hanstein, one of her husband’s equerries. She subsequently went into exile in 1824 and never saw her children again.
‘Their childhoods left them with a void for something they both craved — family, security and love in the purest sense,’ says Jenna.
Despite their rows, their passion for each other never dwindled. ‘There aren’t many marriages which hold onto such intensity under such public scrutiny,’ says Jenna.
‘Victoria worshipped Albert and, as they grew older together, the love grew as she learnt to rely on him.
‘Victoria saw that Albert, in marrying her and not being master of the house, had made a huge sacrifice, and she would spend her life trying to make that up to him. But despite this, she was reluctant to relinquish any control to him.’
The new series sees Albert growing in confidence by exploring the scientific and technological advances of the time, such as locomotives and early computers, and taking on a new role as a father. One storyline in the new series that Tom particularly enjoyed is that concerning Charles Babbage, who invented the first mechanical computer. ‘If you look at our modern world, computers are our everything in terms of communication,’ says Tom. ‘To go back and see the primitive form of the idea and the genius behind it is very exciting.
‘In Buckingham Palace at that time, there were candles — no electric lights — and yet someone has perceived a machine that can think for you. I understand why Albert would have been fascinated by that.’
Victoria, who reigned for 63 years, was a much more interesting figure than the ‘grumpy old bag’ people remember her as, says series creator Daisy, who describes the monarch as a ‘vivid, passionate, lifeloving young woman’.
For inspiration, Jenna watched Judi Dench in the film Mrs Brown about the widowed Queen Victoria (Dench) and her relationship with John Brown (played by Billy Connolly), the trusted servant of the late Prince Albert, and the subsequent uproar it provoked.
‘She liked straight talkers, which is why she had a friendship with John Brown, and it’s partly why she liked Lord M,’ says Jenna.
‘I suppose if you are in a position of power, and you feel people are not quite reachable, you like those who can really make you laugh and close that divide.
‘I think Victoria is a really surprising monarch. She’s a heroine, but she is so flawed and stubborn.
‘She can be selfish and reactive and says the wrong thing because she wears her heart on her sleeve. But that’s actually what makes me love her all the more. The fact that she never did lose that spirit, those veins of iron, is amazing.’
During the first series, some critics said Jenna was too pretty to play Victoria. But the actress begs to differ: ‘I think people just look at
photograph [her diamond jubilee portrait taken in 1893, showing a dumpy, somewhat sour-looking old woman] which was taken much later in life.
‘Also, it’s my job as an actress to capture the essence and the energy of somebody. She was only 4ft 11in so I’ve got a couple of inches on her, but other than that we look exactly the same.’
In the new series, the Queen will face the challenges of the potato famine in Ireland and the political fall- out of the Corn Laws which imposed restrictions on imported grain, pushing up food prices at home.
We’ll see some new faces, too, notably Dame Diana Rigg, 79, who plays the Mistress of the Robes, The Duchess Of Buccleuch.
‘We worked together on Doctor Who, similarly in Victorian garb, except that Diana had a creature attached to her chest and was trying to take over the world!’ smiles Jenna. ‘So quite different circumstances.
‘But she’s amazing. When we go to France, Diana’s character is the person who doesn’t like change, who misses the British food — she’s very much that voice.
‘The relationship between the two women doesn’t get off to a very good start but becomes surprisingly tender.’ Dame Diana adds: ‘To begin with it is a bit prickly because the Duchess had been working for Queen Adelaide, Victoria’s aunt, beforehand and comparisons are made. Victoria, in her youth, does not measure up as far as the Duchess is concerned. However, as time goes by she accepts her more and more.’ Of her character, Dame Diana adds: ‘I love her candour. I like the fact that I don’t think she would lie — she is what you see. She is a very efficient sort of woman, but then so am I, so we have that in common.’
That no-nonsense exterior covering an inner kindness spills over into real life. Dame Diana’s contract contains a seemingly diva- like demand for a bottle of prosecco at the end of each day’s filming.
But Daisy explains: ‘ She has a glass of it and shares the rest of the bottle with the make-up ladies.’
Other new characters include Martin Compston (Line Of Duty’s Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott) as a campaigner for victims of the Irish potato famine, and New Tricks star Denis Lawson as the Duke of Atholl, who hosts Victoria and Albert on their first visit to the Highlands.
Familiar faces from the first series include To The Manor Born star Peter Bowles as the Duke of Wellington.
It’s not the first time Peter, 80, has been close to Queen Victoria.
‘I played Prince Albert and Judi Dench played Victoria at the Royal Albert Hall and the [real] Queen came and chatted about it after. It was wonderful,’ he says.
‘Had I grown sideburns, I could have played him in this series — if only I was 55 years younger!’
As for Jenna and Tom, they have grown into their roles in a way in which Daisy would never have imagined.
‘When we’re on set with Jenna and Tom it was like meeting royalty,’ she says. ‘They’re not majestic offset, but on- set they completely inhabit those characters and you can feel the power.
‘I’m the puppet master, but even I feel their regalness is fascinating.’