BACKSTAGE AT THE BALL

Hundreds of extras, multiple glass slippers, and sets as big as cathedrals. Craig McLean takes a VIP tour of Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Cinderella’ spectacular

Backstage at Pinewood Studios, they’re going behind – and beyond – the fairy tale. The walls of a film production office are bedecked with still images of Cate Blanchett in some of her 16 outfits; the look is “fantasy historical period meets Forties and Fifties”. That means a femme fatale in pinched waists, “lots of hats”, and nods to Dietrich (Marlene) and Crawford (Joan). This is not a stepmother (wicked) we’ve seen before. Here in the western Home Counties it’s day 57 on the four-month shoot of Disney’s live-action telling of the story of Cinderella. In rooms strung along the warren of corridors near the huge sound stages, director Kenneth Branagh’s teams are busy tinkering with the fantasy. In one bustling atelier, triple-Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell is wrangling multiple glass slippers, plus a dress that lights up, the better to illuminate Helena Bonham Carter’s fairy godmother’s magical munificence. Not pictured: the computer artists bunkered off-site, working to transform mice into horses, a goose into a carriage driver and a scullery maid’s rags into royal-ball-worthy frockery. What the Disney animators did with hand-drawn aplomb in the 1950 cartoon, Branagh’s special-effects teams are doing via cutting-edge CGI. Somewhere else in the sprawling complex, Cinderella herself is being readied for her close-up. She’s played by Lily James, best-known for the role of sparky, jazz-loving Lady Rose in Downton Abbey. Today is a “full gown” day, which means a three-hour process to lower the super-smiley 25-year-old into a magnificent powder-blue dress that is wider than it is tall. “We looked at literally hundreds of girls,” reveals producer David Barron, “and Lily, she just had Fairy godmother: Helena Bonham Carter that incredible combination of great beauty, great acting skills, but also great innocence. She’s possessed of the essence of Cinderella, I think, in a way that other girls aren’t.” This is a big, $95million production. Cinderella 2015 is a reverent tilt at the centuries-old tale, and at the beloved, 65year-old cartoon. Concept art on the walls references familiar scenes and themes such as “Mother dies and father leaves” and “Ella flees”. The set’s WiFi network is titled “Cella1”, while the filming is the work of Dark Forest Productions. As for Richard Madden’s prince, he is suitably dashing. But at the same time, this is a modernised take: more epic, and made funnier, thanks to a script by Chris Weitz. “Ken [Branagh] has given Cate’s character a backstory,” notes Vanessa Davies, the senior production associate giving me a tour of the set. The stepmother is no longer tautologically wicked. There is a reason for her cruelty, “some disappointment in her life… She has real bitterness after losing two husbands”, she says, referring to the fathers of her two biological daughters and of Ella. Those sisters, by the way, are “ugly” no more. “That would be a little bit cruel in this day and age… they’re more ugly on the inside.” This rebranding led to inspired casting. They’re played by Sophie McShera (another Downton graduate; she’s kitchen maid Daisy) and Holliday Grainger (next to be seen in a new BBC adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Madden, neatly, is the other lead). They’re an entertaining double-act, bickering, preening and prancing in gaudily elaborate dresses that make them look like oversized Quality Street chocolates. The titular heroine, meanwhile, is no simpering sap mooning about as she waits for that fateful day when her prince will come. “Have courage and be kind,” is her mother’s deathbed bequest to young Ella. “Goodness is Cinderella’s superpower,” says Branagh. This begets the film’s first key