PALACE ENVY WITH ‘ROYALS’
From the Clampetts’ Beverly Hills mansion to Lord and Lady Grantham’s pile o’ bricks (a.k.a. Downton Abbey), television has long inspired house envy in viewers. But putting all the others to shame is the Baroque estate inhabited by the fictional modern British monarchs of “The Royals,” the first scripted series by E!, which was renewed for a second season before it even premiered in mid-March.
Production designer Max Gottlieb wanted their habitat to be fit for a king. “Really, the bottom line for this royal family was to make their surroundings as rich as possible,” he says.
So while the show’s plot may raise eyebrows with salacious shenanigans depicting badly behaved princes and princesses (the network emphasized that it’s not based on Britain’s Windsor family), the setting couldn’t be more proper. Serving as the family castle is Blenheim Palace, the opulent 300-year-old Oxfordshire mansion where Winston Churchill was born. Occupied in real life by the dukes of Marlborough, Blenheim has exorbitant upkeep costs, so like many vast, privately owned European estates it throws open its doors to the paying public for private events (weddings and parties) and as a film location (lately for a James Bond film).
“Blenheim was an obvious choice,” Gottlieb says. And so were the rich colors in the decor. “Colors like red and gold play so well on film, and there’s quite a lot of it there.”
Gottlieb says a starting point for the show’s look came from something his brother once told him. “He was at Buckingham Palace on a tour, and there was a particular corridor that a guard pointed to and said, ‘If you went down that hall, I’d have to shoot you.’ For ‘The Royals,’ I absolutely want to take viewers down that hall.”
While the exterior and more palatial areas of Blenheim are authentic (other locations include Greenwich Naval College and Wilton Hall, a grand country house in Salisbury), the private rooms of the sovereigns were created on soundstages near London. Princess Eleanor’s bed chamber reflects her edgy, rebellious nature with antiques that haven’t been treated reverentially. “We took that element of her personality into account — her disregard for the palace’s vintage pieces means that she’d shove them off to the side and put in some new, modern pieces,” Gottlieb says.
Most of the furnishings come from prop houses, with some pieces bought at vintage stores and the Kempton Park Market, a popular outdoor shopping extravaganza that takes place each Thursday in the town of Sunbury on Thames. The wallpaper in Eleanor’s room, a platinum and matte design purchased from a prop house, was given a hazy blue wash. Heir to the throne Prince Liam’s university room sports rich red walls with a mix of modern and Tudor furnishings. Lecherous Prince Cyrus’ quarters are wood-paneled, with chesterfield sofas and a blazing fireplace. “It’s very much like an old-style English gentlemen’s club,” Gottlieb says. “Cyrus is a camp character with a vicious edge, so it’s all a bit too much in a sense.”
The palace’s head of security oversees the goings on from an office in a clock tower, also re-created in a studio. “There’s an actual clock tower at Blenheim, so we used that as an inspiration. We try to make every detail as real as possible, so his office walls appear to be Chiltern stone, a very lovely, honey-colored type that you can only find here [in Britain]. Of course, it’s actually made in a plaster shop and painted by my team.”
The series’ sets are so luxe that it prompts the question: Do the actual royals live this well? Says Gottlieb, “I believe that the actual bedrooms in Buckingham Palace are smaller, but since I’ve never been down that corridor, I don’t really know.”
“The Royals” airs at 10 p.m. Sundays on E!