February 25, 2021 • 32 mins
The physical setting for Bridgerton is the plinth of its exclusive society. We get swept in by the backdrop of this world maintained by matchmaking and inheritance. We're taking our first steps behind-the-scenes to relish the filming locations for Bridgerton.
Showrunner Chris Van Dusen wanted to create, "the most gorgeous, rich aspirational English garden anybody's ever seen.” Production designer Will Hughes-Jones explains how his team did it.
And Golda Rosheuvel (Queen Charlotte) and Adjoa Andoh (Lady Danbury) discuss their personal connections to historic sites.
Executive Producers: Lauren Hohman, Chris Van Dusen, Holly Frey, Sandie Bailey, Gabrielle Collins
Producer/Editor: Chandler Mays
Hosts/Guest-hosts: Gabrielle Collins, Dr. Hannah Greig, Annabelle Hood
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bridgeton. The Official Podcast is a partnership between Shondaland Audio
and iHeartRadio. You have to wear blue shoes, little plastic
things that you put over your shoes so you don't
get dirt or mud or anything through any of their
castles and such that we filmed in. By the end,
(00:21):
people just like do I have to wear these? And like, yes,
Prince Charles lives here, Prince Charles's house, Like please be
respectful of the gold on the ceilings and the expensive
marble and such. Welcome to Bridgeton the Official Podcast. I'm
(00:44):
Gabrielle Collins and I'm Annabelle Hood And on this episode
we're going to talk about how many London tourist attractions
I got into for free because that's where Bridgeton was filming.
We're jumping head first into Bridgeton with a spotlight on
the production design team. We're going to talk about locations, castles,
royal palaces, gardens, manor houses, the room where Philip passed out.
(01:09):
We're entering Bridgerton through a few of the long serving
homes of the English aristocracy, and our nineteenth century expert
Hannah Gregg will explain the abiding flow chart of gentry
and how in this world one could distinguish who's who
by a home and its gilded appointments. We're also talking
with the phenomenal gold Arocheville, who treated us to a
(01:30):
Queen Charlotte that we've never encountered before. And we're joined
by the Lambent Adua and do our Lady of Persimmon
and Burgundy, Lady Danbury, And of course we're talking to
production designer Will Hughes Jones. He's going to give us
a peek at how his team snatched up these highly coveted,
(01:51):
very protected locales for Bridgerton. The setting for Bridgerton is
the plinth of this society, the corner stone of a
society based on matchmaking and inheritance. The surroundings have to
support that support this More is Not Enough world that
straddles fantasy and the free spending eighteen teams. Some of
(02:14):
the locations used in Bridgerton were dressed up just a little,
and some, including a handful of not so royal buildings,
were completely transformed. We want to relish the hard work
that made it all happen. I felt like going into
the royal grounds of Bridgerton would allow us to get
right into what locked us into the world, Presentation Day
(02:39):
and the balls. One of my favorite moments is Lady
Danbury's bowl. It's like a promise. The season's opening bowl
at danbry House is a most highly sort off to invitation. Indeed,
for every Darling debutante from Park Lane to Regent Street
(03:02):
will be on display. When we see that ball, it's
like we're being promised. This is what the show is.
This is how beautiful the show is going to be.
Hopefully there's a ball every episode, and one of the
episodes there was about six balls all in one. It's amazing.
Oh yes, Stanbury's ball. That's the first time we see
(03:23):
everyone coming out to party after the presentation Day events.
But where we filmed that was actually bath assembly halls,
which are very very famous assembly halls during the regency time.
We used it and we pretended it was Lady Dunbury's house. Yeah,
I was thinking. Episode one is like this coveted invitation
(03:45):
into this world. We're swept into the carriage and after
this magnificent hall to meet the Queen Wilton House, Wilton House,
which reminds me, dear listeners, allow me to reenter us.
You to will Hughes Jones, the production designer. What's not
to like being asked to create a regency world but
(04:07):
heightened and over the top. You know nothing we've seen before.
Will is a wizard of period design. He gave us
the physical world of films like Jane Ear, The Musketeers
and the television series The Spanish Princess. Chris van Dusen,
the showrunner, if you remember, told Will to dream up
ridiculously lush regency surroundings. I wanted the series to look
(04:28):
like the most gorgeous, rich, aspirational English garden anybody's ever seen,
and Will took that idea and he ran with it.
Will spend some time with me to talk about getting
the vision of Bridgeton out of Chris van Duson's head
and into the planning stages. It was a really exciting
(04:48):
process in the early stages getting to the point where
we actually started building this world. I came on board
at the beginning were in February twenty nineteen. I had
this very strange interview with the Lovely World of Shondaland
sitting at a desk, and I was sitting at home
in my kitchen, and we talked about a lot of things.
I very quickly knew that this was a show that
(05:10):
I wanted to do, and when I was lucky enough
to be offered the job, I obviously very excitedly had
lots of initial conversations with Chris about the look and
the feel, and it became very clear to me that
this was not a show that I'd ever seen before
or had come across, which was even more exciting to me.
(05:31):
We had so many locations, and they're all these incredible
manor houses and castles, and Will and his team come
in and they dressed them to be in the Bridgeting
colors or to be in the Queen's colors, and you think,
this is such an incredible place. This is amazing because
they've brought in all the furniture, they've brought in all
(05:52):
the paintings, and then if you ever go back as
a tourist and see those places, you think, hang on,
this doesn't look like Bridgeton set at all. In the beginning,
Will and team went on a cross country scouting adventure
to decide where they were going to base Bridgerton, because
the whole thing, obviously is set in country houses and
(06:14):
the biggest palaces in the country. They are scattered all
throughout the country. But as well as that, we needed
a very big space to build in. So we had
this seventy two hours where we started in London. We
looked around London. We then got on a train and
we went all the way to Liverpool, the other side
of the country. We went flying around Liverpool in vans
and little minibuses, looking at probably about eight places. We
(06:38):
then got in another bus and we went south down
the side of the country, right down to Bristol and Bath,
which is on the opposite end of the country from London.
Did the same thing all over again and lived on
picnic food and lots of laughs in this bus. And
we will start looking at each other going what are
we doing? We're still doing this road movie before we've
even started shooting. Wow. So many locations were used from
(07:03):
all over the country, but the Bridgerton world looks so seamless,
so self contained. All right, Annabelle, help me grasp the
scope of these locations. Break down the first few scenes
of episode one. For me, it's a disconcerting thing when
watching when you've done all the locations and you've filmed
it yourself. So the Bridgeton House that's in London. Then
(07:26):
we're in Bath when their carriage is going along the
Royal Crescent at Bath, as everybody knows. And then when
they get out of their carriage, they're at Hampton Court,
which is just outside of London. And then we jump
to them entering the room and that's at Wiltshire. Oh
my goodness, Wilton House in Wiltshire. So already within the
first five minutes we've been in five locations. It looks
(07:48):
so great on screen that it's just one linear story. Yes,
and you know, I bet you there are fans who
are in the UK or who are just geography nerds
and they know the Yes, I think that. Yeah, the
Royal Crescent and Bath is very noticeable. Yeah. Yeah, it's
such a great location. It looks so incredible on camera.
(08:09):
That's why people film there all the time, is because
it looks so good and it fits our world perfectly.
All of the architecture in Bath is just amazing. You're
traveling four hundred and fifty people around the country. I
mean I would literally wake up and not know what
city I was in. Am I in Bath, Bristol, York, Liverpool.
We even went to Liverpool at one point that was
(08:31):
Sarada McDermott and she did everything behind the scenes. Yeah,
Sarada was one of the producers on Bridgerton. Sarada is
known for her work on movies such as Twenty eight
Days Later, Tyrannosaur, Tolkien and Fighting with My Family. Bridgerton
is her first television project. The way that I structured
the project was that what I wanted to do was
(08:54):
have the core, so that was going to be the
studio and that would be thirty and then you would
go what I call going out, which means that you're
going into London in the lovely properties in London, like
we shot in Lancaster House a Lot, which is where
Prince Charles lives, and then we would go out out
(09:16):
at out means into the regions and that means a
four hour drive, so everyone's overnighting when you have all
the big balls, which of course Chris loves a ball,
like at least three balls an egg. Another thing about
the balls, which won't come out on camera, is that
we did three balls in one building in three days.
(09:38):
It was just an office building in Bristol that we
used the Ingineus ball, which is the ball where Daphne
walks down the big staircase and the walls look like
a tiffany y surey box. That was in one room.
It was pretty to nice. Simply must have your first answer,
you would be an honor, your highness. And then next
door was the bird Ball, which was a sort of
(10:01):
rich orange colored walls where Daphne's dancing with all their
suitors and there's birds everywhere, and how did you find
eligible bachelors? I must confess I felt more chemistry when
being fitted at the modiste that was in the room
next door. And then the room beside that was the
ball where Daphne and Simon dance, and it's golden and crystals,
(10:26):
and we must looked like we were enjoying ourselves. As
difficult as that maybe, yes, quote when Lady Danbury and
Simon walk into that room, initially we're actually walking down
a tunnel which we made out of stands and fabric,
because that was actually the orange ball from the day before. Wow.
It was the only way we could manage to get
(10:47):
all balls done in the time that we had allotted
was to do it all in one place. And then
the crazy thing about the whole thing is it was
actually a council building in Bristol. It wasn't a big
palace or anything, so that was a major transform it.
It was very much Yeah, it was a sort of
head scratcher because in order for our schedule to work,
we knew that we had to do it all in
one place. It was quite a coup from our location team.
(11:10):
And then the Trowbridge ball that was just a bit bonkers.
It was a crazy sort of theatrical ball. And it
was a big country house in North London with a
checkerboard floor, Jacobean paneling and very very over the top.
Some make all her celebrations too provocative and I would
caution any young lady from getting caught up in the
(11:31):
sensual nature of the feats. It was a very difficult
one for us to do because it being a Grade
one listed property where I think it's the Duke of
Northumberland lived there. They were very cautious about us doing
anything in the building, so everything we had was either
free standing or had like rubber matting underneath it. But
(11:52):
again on camera you don't see that. It just looks
like another amazing place that there's a ball happening, to
be honest, and so I found myself left with one
question to ask. I need a moment. We'll be right
back after this short break. Welcome back to Bridgeton the
(12:19):
official podcast, Annabelle Sarada mentioned that you shot in Lancaster
House a lot. Yeah, that's where Prince Charles lives. That's
one of those places where the first time you walk
in you think, oh my God, like, look at all
this marble, look at all this gold. But we ended
up filming there so many times that by the end
(12:41):
when we watched the show, it's like, hang on that
door leads to a different bowl on a different day,
and it's supposed to be a different location, and it's like,
right behind that door is a completely different set. I mean,
it props to the actors for being able to be like, Okay,
now I'm going back to the beginning of the script,
even though I just filmed the end of the script,
(13:03):
yeah yesterday kind of thing. So you're sort of all
over the place. Let's go back to will. We'll discovered
Wilton House while on the road scouting for locations with
director of photography jef U. One great moment we had
with Jeff was we went to this fantastic house Dan
in Wiltshire called Wilton House, and in the car going
(13:25):
down there, we were talking about reference films that we like,
and both Jeff and I were talking about a film
called Barry Linden, which is a Stanley Kubrick film. And
we go into this house and then sure enough we're
standing in this room and Jeff and I look at
each other and go, this is that room in the
Kubrick film. And so we then thought, okay, we've got
to use this room. It's fantastic. And that's the room
(13:48):
that became the presentation chamber for the Queen's presentation. At
the beginning. That sent goofed bumps down my spine when
we were standing in this absolutely stunning room and it
was as if Chris had written those scenes for that
room without even knowing it flawless. Should we just have
(14:12):
a watch party? The first episode? Should we just have
a watch party? Actually? I love Presentation Day. I love
any of the scenes with all the Bridgetins in it.
This moment where Daphanie is walking down seeing the Queen
at the end of that long aisle is where we
(14:33):
are swept in. I mean, we've just seen the families
getting ready and rushing to their carriages and there's all
this like anticipation and fluttering all over the place. And
then you get into this hall and you're just like,
I am in this world now, my first time watching this,
I don't know what is going on. I'm like, is
(14:53):
this chick getting married to the duke already? Like? What
is happening? She's wearing a white dress? Where is she going? Right? No,
there's something more important. She's going to see the queen.
That's when you get dressed up. So oh wait, did
you just say that it's more important than getting married.
It's going to see the queen. For me personally, it
(15:16):
is only the queen's eye that matters. Today, a glimmer
of displeasure and the young ladies value plummets do unthinkable depths.
At what point in the production process were you filming
this scene? This was in the very beginning, okay, because
(15:38):
I know Day one was like a very racy, very
steamy library scene. Yes, he was probably within the first
month or two, so not everyone knew each other as
well as we've finished. It was good because that's the
deep end. When they say we're going to throw you
in the deep end. That's what that is. Everyone's away
from home. We were all in hotels. This was around
(16:00):
the corner from Stonehenge. Everyone drove past Stonehenge on their
way to work, being like, why is the traffic going
so slowly? I just want to get to work. Oh
it's Stonehenge in the middle of a field. Oh my goodness. Okay,
So Wilton House is around the corner from Stonehenge. Okay.
When I was at Stonehenge, I do not remember seeing
anything that even looked remotely like this. This is about
(16:23):
probably about a fifteen minute drive away from stonehe Out
of here, it's still very close. Oh, it's just so secluded.
Is there like a what is the grocery store? I
want to say Salisbury Sainsbury Sainsbury's. Yeah. Wilton House is huge.
It's bigger than it even appears to be in the show.
(16:46):
We didn't even film in half of this house. The
other half of the house is still residential and still
being lived in, so we couldn't go near that side.
That's how big this place was that an entire film
crew could be in one half of the house and
a family could be living and not hearing us in
the other half. I wouldn't have two hundred film crew
in my house, but they obviously allowed it. They did,
(17:09):
and that privilege was not last on actresses Golder, Rochevelle
and Adua Endol. They played the Queen and Lady Danbury.
Here's Golder. I was saying that one of my favorite
places was Wilton House. You know, I loved that because
it's a young family that lives there and still runs
it and owns it, and that to me it felt
(17:30):
like home. Even though it was grand and opulent and yeah,
felt very out of reach, there was something homely about it. Yeah.
You know, I'm always sort of thinking, well, I've seen
all the would you would you from a bit of that,
But somewhere at the back, does somebody having corn flakes
and watching the news on the tele in the morning porridge? Yeah? Yeah, right.
(17:56):
So we used Wilton House as several different locations. We
used it Rotten Row, we used it as Clivedon, we
used it as Buckingham Home in several different episodes. Well,
Wilton House was a perfect choice. The detail and the
velvety feeling on my eyes. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
(18:17):
And it was very hot. It was hot. Wait was
the air conditioning turned off for sound. That's not actually
sun streaming through the windows. Those are some very bright lights.
Oh right, the lights on cherry pickers on cranes basically
shining through. I think it's either the second or the
third floor. That room isn't so we've got bright, bright,
(18:39):
bright lights shining through the windows. And then obviously all
of our casts and all of our background artists are
in corsets, dresses and wigs and feather headdresses. And I
was hot just in my normal twenty first century clothes,
so I don't know how they were doing right. Layers
of fair bricks. Yeah, makeup honey, okay, yeah, yeah, That's
(19:04):
why I constantly need makeup touching because you're just sweating
it off. There's not enough setting spray in the world
under those lights. No way. Oh my goodness. Let's get
back to Danbury House and our conversation with Golder and Agua,
who played Lady Danbury. Here's Agiwa again. So where I
(19:25):
grew up, Gabrielle was carter and sheep and two busses
a week. It was like deep country. Forty five minutes
northwest of Wilton House is Badminton House, surrounded by countryside
and it's the home of Lady Danbury's Den of Iniquity scene.
And what's really cool about it, Badminton House is about
(19:47):
five miles from where my father lives, from where I
grew up. Wow, we filmed the Dani of Iniquity scene
at Badminton House and when we were filming the Deniver Iniquity,
filmed it in this beautiful ballroom at the back of
which I took a photograph of me and the director
standing in front of this painting is a painting of
(20:08):
Queen Charlotte, and I would love to have grown up
knowing that she was mixed race. I would love to
have grown up knowing that she was descended from an
African woman and Alfonso the third of Portugal, and that
she was in a massive house five miles up the
road from where I grew up as a little solitary
(20:29):
black girl. I would have loved to have known that.
So there was something really beautiful about filming that scene
and feeling like I'd sort of gone full circle and
there I was with mister Ulrick Riley, who is the
most stunning director, and it was just very lovely for
me to be doing that and doing something. It's about
women being in their power and then remembering little me,
(20:53):
Queen Charlotte and having all these women around and being fabulous.
And then I drove over to my dad afterwards, and
I drove past one of my best friend's houses when
I used to walked from miles up hill to get
to a house and long than I drove to my
dad from set, and it was just so nice. It
was just like, wow, look at my life. Her bazaar
(21:14):
is that so Golden Rocheval, who plays Queen Charlotte, was
in this conversation with me and Edua, no big deal.
It was chill. I asked her if she felt an
energy from any of these historic locations. Most definitely. They
live and breathe with us, and we live and breathe
with them. You know. One of the things that's really
(21:36):
fascinating about Bridgeton that the places that we filmed in,
the manor houses that we filmed in, are their own characters.
We had some beautiful locations, and even Lancaster House for me,
was a really special place because it's a working place
for our royal family, do you know what I mean? Yeah,
And for the dignitaries of the world and I think
(21:57):
that scene that we were talking about earlier, Curtsy scene,
I think a week or a couple of weeks before
we filmed there, the Queen had a dinner party for
the world dignitaries. And to have that energy and that
pulse and fizz, living fizz to playoff to absorb, I
(22:19):
think is really helpful when you're doing something like this,
really helpful. It gives you extra umph, doesn't it. Golder? Yeah, absolutely,
in a kind of way in as well, because I
think we all I mean, I don't know if you
think this, and I know I'm an old hippie, so
but I think I really do think that buildings retained energy. Yeah,
(22:42):
don't you. I feel like the ghosts are in the
walls of a building, you know, for good or for ill. Yeah,
we all know those some places You're like, I'm not
going in there. I went in there once, you will
never get me in there again. So I do genuinely
think that, as Golder says, to be in a place
that is a working royal environment, the energy of that
(23:02):
building gives you an energy that you can absorb that
into your embodying of working royal in action. And that's
really thrilling. You kind of think of the working life
of the whole building. You know, what keeps the show
on the road, because those cucumber sandwiches don't cut themselves,
my friend. You know, yes, you know when we were
(23:25):
filming some of those locations that I'd be like, oh,
I'm never in it. Can I'm never looking your kitchen
going on in it? You know it's fascinating, isn't it.
When we get back from the break, we'll hang out
in Hannah's history corner to talk about the class distinctions
among Bridgerton's high society, and we'll get into more production
(23:47):
design with Chris van Dusen and Will Hugh's Jones. Welcome
back to Bridgeton the official podcast. So again every episode
we're spartlighting the research behind Bridgeton and doctor Hannah Gregg,
(24:12):
the auntset etiquette advisor and historian for Bridgerton, is just
the person to take us through well. I mean, in
Jane Austen novels, we don't often get references to dukes
or to members of the royal family, or to duchesses
or people with titles of lady. There's only a handful
of characters who are ladies such and such we tend
(24:34):
to have the miss Bingley, the Mister Darcy, the Missus Bennett.
Those characters tell us that they are not in this
world of dukes and duchesses and lords and ladies that
we occupy with Bridgeton. The Jane Austen's world is what
in English society we would call upper middle class, so
it gets slightly complicated in terms of gradations. But they
(24:57):
are people whose fathers and brothers maybe in business, they
may be clergymen, they may be in the military. They
don't necessarily own the huge country houses that we recognize
that survive in England to day, like Chatsworth in Derbyshire,
which was the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, or
Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Those were owned by dukes and
(25:21):
lords and viscounts and earls who don't really feature in
the Jane Austen novels. The Jane Austen big houses are
medium sized houses in comparison to the super rich regency London.
So the Jane Austen novels give us a slightly kind
of different perspective on what it is to be genteel
(25:42):
and wealthy in the eighteenth century, because there is this
whole other level of super wealth, super status which isn't
touched on in Austin, which we begin to encounter in Bridgeton.
So I suppose one way in which we could unto
the difference is to think about the difference that we
have today between high street fashion and then kind of
(26:02):
catwalk fashion. The Jane Austin world is the high street
basically that we shopping, which captures the society we live
in that are inspired by that, you know, kind of
catwalk take. And then the high society is the catwalk
fashion world. The world that's out of reach to us,
the world of these celebrity people who live in their
own bubble, who know each other that we feel slightly
(26:25):
excluded from, which is about this kind of creation of
something that's cutting edge and fantastical. I see, and you know,
I'm assuming this all had to do with George's golden
gilded sweg versus Napoleon silver. They're trying to outbling each other.
It's like, imagine them as the rappers of the regency London.
(26:49):
I've got more blinged than you look at my right right.
They were outblinging each other so extra well I think
it's right that we see Regency London in Fidgeton as
a place full of sparkle and success, because that is
sort of how it was in its own time. George
the Fourth, Prince Regent, was notorious for his kind of
(27:10):
love of glitz and glamor. He has an incredibly ostentatious
coronation when he does become king, and in the run
up to that, he is spending money as fast as
he can, and he's building his fancy grands palaces, and
he's got his house in Brighton that's basically this huge
new build palace, and he's got a place in London
at Carlton House. He's got the glitziest everything. He loves
(27:35):
glamor and sparkle and gold and diamonds. And there's also
a sort of kind of culture in Europe of people
trying to outdo each other. So alongside Prince Regent George
the Fourth, we have Napoleon in France, who is also
trying to be the most glamorous leader in Europe, you know,
guilding everything and sticking huge diamonds on his swords and
(27:59):
having the late systems, most exotic kind of goods and
fabrics and there is a kind of real, fast, spending,
ostentatious culture around this very very privileged, small world of
the court and the aristocrats in eighteenth century London, where
spending money and showing off is absolutely what everyone is
(28:21):
trying to do. Chris spared no expense in turning up
the volume on history's gilded, glitzy surroundings. Among the elements
the production team brought into the already locations where fabrics,
food and flowers. Like I said it is, this world
(28:44):
of Bridgeton is a beautiful, escapist world, and I wanted
the sense of nature to really be apparent on screen.
And it goes to the romance. For me, at the
end of the day, this is a show about love
and romance, and if we're going to be telling the
most romantic stories of our time, we need everything else
(29:04):
on screen that you see to be doing the same.
The flowers and the fabrics were the key things to
lighten the historic spaces, and always food played a big part.
You can make it tall, you can make it architectural,
and you can put it in full ground backgrounds. So
in order to make our world come alive, flowers and
(29:28):
food were the principal elements that we used, and anywhere
that we had a window, we spent a lot of
time and effort making drapes to bring the room up
from being an old historic building into a beautiful Bridgeton space.
There is this beautiful sense of nature in the production
(29:49):
design of the show. I wanted the series to look
like the most gorgeous, rich, aspirational English garden anybody's ever seen.
And Will took that idea and he ran with it.
At one point, I walked into a set and I
saw him in a corner literally hand painting a custom
blue color on what had to be hundreds and hundreds
(30:11):
of roses, just to get things right. And that, of
course endeared me to him forever, and also speaks to
his attention to detail. Is this the first production from
shandaland that is of this scale. It was definitely the
biggest thing I'd ever worked on. The amount of detail
(30:33):
that goes into Bridgeton is incredible. I think that's the
thing about everything about hair and makeup, about costume, about
set dressing and all of that. There's such attention to
detail that you think no one will notice this, And
as you're working, you think no one will notice me
(30:54):
doing this. Tiny thing. But if it wasn't there, people
would notice that's a nice little bow. We'll end it
right there. I don't know about you, but I'm blown
away by all the set dressings and how this team
had to trek across the country to make Bridgerton come
(31:17):
to life. I have a new appreciation for the production team.
I'm also really moved by Adua end Doe's story. I'm
really happy for the little girl inside of her. Dear listener,
one thing for sure, we'll hear plenty of love going
around for this tight knit team. Come back next week
and we'll hear some of those stories and more behind
(31:39):
the scenes of Bridgerton. I'm Gabrielle Collins. Thanks for listening.
Bridgerton The Official Podcast is a production of shand Land
Audio and iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from Shonda Land, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you subscribe to
(32:02):
your favorite podcasts.
Bridgeton. The Official Podcast is a partnership between Shondaland Audio
and iHeartRadio. You have to wear blue shoes, little plastic
things that you put over your shoes so you don't
get dirt or mud or anything through any of their
castles and such that we filmed in. By the end,
(00:21):
people just like do I have to wear these? And like, yes,
Prince Charles lives here, Prince Charles's house, Like please be
respectful of the gold on the ceilings and the expensive
marble and such. Welcome to Bridgeton the Official Podcast. I'm
(00:44):
Gabrielle Collins and I'm Annabelle Hood And on this episode
we're going to talk about how many London tourist attractions
I got into for free because that's where Bridgeton was filming.
We're jumping head first into Bridgeton with a spotlight on
the production design team. We're going to talk about locations, castles,
royal palaces, gardens, manor houses, the room where Philip passed out.
(01:09):
We're entering Bridgerton through a few of the long serving
homes of the English aristocracy, and our nineteenth century expert
Hannah Gregg will explain the abiding flow chart of gentry
and how in this world one could distinguish who's who
by a home and its gilded appointments. We're also talking
with the phenomenal gold Arocheville, who treated us to a
(01:30):
Queen Charlotte that we've never encountered before. And we're joined
by the Lambent Adua and do our Lady of Persimmon
and Burgundy, Lady Danbury, And of course we're talking to
production designer Will Hughes Jones. He's going to give us
a peek at how his team snatched up these highly coveted,
(01:51):
very protected locales for Bridgerton. The setting for Bridgerton is
the plinth of this society, the corner stone of a
society based on matchmaking and inheritance. The surroundings have to
support that support this More is Not Enough world that
straddles fantasy and the free spending eighteen teams. Some of
(02:14):
the locations used in Bridgerton were dressed up just a little,
and some, including a handful of not so royal buildings,
were completely transformed. We want to relish the hard work
that made it all happen. I felt like going into
the royal grounds of Bridgerton would allow us to get
right into what locked us into the world, Presentation Day
(02:39):
and the balls. One of my favorite moments is Lady
Danbury's bowl. It's like a promise. The season's opening bowl
at danbry House is a most highly sort off to invitation. Indeed,
for every Darling debutante from Park Lane to Regent Street
(03:02):
will be on display. When we see that ball, it's
like we're being promised. This is what the show is.
This is how beautiful the show is going to be.
Hopefully there's a ball every episode, and one of the
episodes there was about six balls all in one. It's amazing.
Oh yes, Stanbury's ball. That's the first time we see
(03:23):
everyone coming out to party after the presentation Day events.
But where we filmed that was actually bath assembly halls,
which are very very famous assembly halls during the regency time.
We used it and we pretended it was Lady Dunbury's house. Yeah,
I was thinking. Episode one is like this coveted invitation
(03:45):
into this world. We're swept into the carriage and after
this magnificent hall to meet the Queen Wilton House, Wilton House,
which reminds me, dear listeners, allow me to reenter us.
You to will Hughes Jones, the production designer. What's not
to like being asked to create a regency world but
(04:07):
heightened and over the top. You know nothing we've seen before.
Will is a wizard of period design. He gave us
the physical world of films like Jane Ear, The Musketeers
and the television series The Spanish Princess. Chris van Dusen,
the showrunner, if you remember, told Will to dream up
ridiculously lush regency surroundings. I wanted the series to look
(04:28):
like the most gorgeous, rich, aspirational English garden anybody's ever seen,
and Will took that idea and he ran with it.
Will spend some time with me to talk about getting
the vision of Bridgeton out of Chris van Duson's head
and into the planning stages. It was a really exciting
(04:48):
process in the early stages getting to the point where
we actually started building this world. I came on board
at the beginning were in February twenty nineteen. I had
this very strange interview with the Lovely World of Shondaland
sitting at a desk, and I was sitting at home
in my kitchen, and we talked about a lot of things.
I very quickly knew that this was a show that
(05:10):
I wanted to do, and when I was lucky enough
to be offered the job, I obviously very excitedly had
lots of initial conversations with Chris about the look and
the feel, and it became very clear to me that
this was not a show that I'd ever seen before
or had come across, which was even more exciting to me.
(05:31):
We had so many locations, and they're all these incredible
manor houses and castles, and Will and his team come
in and they dressed them to be in the Bridgeting
colors or to be in the Queen's colors, and you think,
this is such an incredible place. This is amazing because
they've brought in all the furniture, they've brought in all
(05:52):
the paintings, and then if you ever go back as
a tourist and see those places, you think, hang on,
this doesn't look like Bridgeton set at all. In the beginning,
Will and team went on a cross country scouting adventure
to decide where they were going to base Bridgerton, because
the whole thing, obviously is set in country houses and
(06:14):
the biggest palaces in the country. They are scattered all
throughout the country. But as well as that, we needed
a very big space to build in. So we had
this seventy two hours where we started in London. We
looked around London. We then got on a train and
we went all the way to Liverpool, the other side
of the country. We went flying around Liverpool in vans
and little minibuses, looking at probably about eight places. We
(06:38):
then got in another bus and we went south down
the side of the country, right down to Bristol and Bath,
which is on the opposite end of the country from London.
Did the same thing all over again and lived on
picnic food and lots of laughs in this bus. And
we will start looking at each other going what are
we doing? We're still doing this road movie before we've
even started shooting. Wow. So many locations were used from
(07:03):
all over the country, but the Bridgerton world looks so seamless,
so self contained. All right, Annabelle, help me grasp the
scope of these locations. Break down the first few scenes
of episode one. For me, it's a disconcerting thing when
watching when you've done all the locations and you've filmed
it yourself. So the Bridgeton House that's in London. Then
(07:26):
we're in Bath when their carriage is going along the
Royal Crescent at Bath, as everybody knows. And then when
they get out of their carriage, they're at Hampton Court,
which is just outside of London. And then we jump
to them entering the room and that's at Wiltshire. Oh
my goodness, Wilton House in Wiltshire. So already within the
first five minutes we've been in five locations. It looks
(07:48):
so great on screen that it's just one linear story. Yes,
and you know, I bet you there are fans who
are in the UK or who are just geography nerds
and they know the Yes, I think that. Yeah, the
Royal Crescent and Bath is very noticeable. Yeah. Yeah, it's
such a great location. It looks so incredible on camera.
(08:09):
That's why people film there all the time, is because
it looks so good and it fits our world perfectly.
All of the architecture in Bath is just amazing. You're
traveling four hundred and fifty people around the country. I
mean I would literally wake up and not know what
city I was in. Am I in Bath, Bristol, York, Liverpool.
We even went to Liverpool at one point that was
(08:31):
Sarada McDermott and she did everything behind the scenes. Yeah,
Sarada was one of the producers on Bridgerton. Sarada is
known for her work on movies such as Twenty eight
Days Later, Tyrannosaur, Tolkien and Fighting with My Family. Bridgerton
is her first television project. The way that I structured
the project was that what I wanted to do was
(08:54):
have the core, so that was going to be the
studio and that would be thirty and then you would
go what I call going out, which means that you're
going into London in the lovely properties in London, like
we shot in Lancaster House a Lot, which is where
Prince Charles lives, and then we would go out out
(09:16):
at out means into the regions and that means a
four hour drive, so everyone's overnighting when you have all
the big balls, which of course Chris loves a ball,
like at least three balls an egg. Another thing about
the balls, which won't come out on camera, is that
we did three balls in one building in three days.
(09:38):
It was just an office building in Bristol that we
used the Ingineus ball, which is the ball where Daphne
walks down the big staircase and the walls look like
a tiffany y surey box. That was in one room.
It was pretty to nice. Simply must have your first answer,
you would be an honor, your highness. And then next
door was the bird Ball, which was a sort of
(10:01):
rich orange colored walls where Daphne's dancing with all their
suitors and there's birds everywhere, and how did you find
eligible bachelors? I must confess I felt more chemistry when
being fitted at the modiste that was in the room
next door. And then the room beside that was the
ball where Daphne and Simon dance, and it's golden and crystals,
(10:26):
and we must looked like we were enjoying ourselves. As
difficult as that maybe, yes, quote when Lady Danbury and
Simon walk into that room, initially we're actually walking down
a tunnel which we made out of stands and fabric,
because that was actually the orange ball from the day before. Wow.
It was the only way we could manage to get
(10:47):
all balls done in the time that we had allotted
was to do it all in one place. And then
the crazy thing about the whole thing is it was
actually a council building in Bristol. It wasn't a big
palace or anything, so that was a major transform it.
It was very much Yeah, it was a sort of
head scratcher because in order for our schedule to work,
we knew that we had to do it all in
one place. It was quite a coup from our location team.
(11:10):
And then the Trowbridge ball that was just a bit bonkers.
It was a crazy sort of theatrical ball. And it
was a big country house in North London with a
checkerboard floor, Jacobean paneling and very very over the top.
Some make all her celebrations too provocative and I would
caution any young lady from getting caught up in the
(11:31):
sensual nature of the feats. It was a very difficult
one for us to do because it being a Grade
one listed property where I think it's the Duke of
Northumberland lived there. They were very cautious about us doing
anything in the building, so everything we had was either
free standing or had like rubber matting underneath it. But
(11:52):
again on camera you don't see that. It just looks
like another amazing place that there's a ball happening, to
be honest, and so I found myself left with one
question to ask. I need a moment. We'll be right
back after this short break. Welcome back to Bridgeton the
(12:19):
official podcast, Annabelle Sarada mentioned that you shot in Lancaster
House a lot. Yeah, that's where Prince Charles lives. That's
one of those places where the first time you walk
in you think, oh my God, like, look at all
this marble, look at all this gold. But we ended
up filming there so many times that by the end
(12:41):
when we watched the show, it's like, hang on that
door leads to a different bowl on a different day,
and it's supposed to be a different location, and it's like,
right behind that door is a completely different set. I mean,
it props to the actors for being able to be like, Okay,
now I'm going back to the beginning of the script,
even though I just filmed the end of the script,
(13:03):
yeah yesterday kind of thing. So you're sort of all
over the place. Let's go back to will. We'll discovered
Wilton House while on the road scouting for locations with
director of photography jef U. One great moment we had
with Jeff was we went to this fantastic house Dan
in Wiltshire called Wilton House, and in the car going
(13:25):
down there, we were talking about reference films that we like,
and both Jeff and I were talking about a film
called Barry Linden, which is a Stanley Kubrick film. And
we go into this house and then sure enough we're
standing in this room and Jeff and I look at
each other and go, this is that room in the
Kubrick film. And so we then thought, okay, we've got
to use this room. It's fantastic. And that's the room
(13:48):
that became the presentation chamber for the Queen's presentation. At
the beginning. That sent goofed bumps down my spine when
we were standing in this absolutely stunning room and it
was as if Chris had written those scenes for that
room without even knowing it flawless. Should we just have
(14:12):
a watch party? The first episode? Should we just have
a watch party? Actually? I love Presentation Day. I love
any of the scenes with all the Bridgetins in it.
This moment where Daphanie is walking down seeing the Queen
at the end of that long aisle is where we
(14:33):
are swept in. I mean, we've just seen the families
getting ready and rushing to their carriages and there's all
this like anticipation and fluttering all over the place. And
then you get into this hall and you're just like,
I am in this world now, my first time watching this,
I don't know what is going on. I'm like, is
(14:53):
this chick getting married to the duke already? Like? What
is happening? She's wearing a white dress? Where is she going? Right? No,
there's something more important. She's going to see the queen.
That's when you get dressed up. So oh wait, did
you just say that it's more important than getting married.
It's going to see the queen. For me personally, it
(15:16):
is only the queen's eye that matters. Today, a glimmer
of displeasure and the young ladies value plummets do unthinkable depths.
At what point in the production process were you filming
this scene? This was in the very beginning, okay, because
(15:38):
I know Day one was like a very racy, very
steamy library scene. Yes, he was probably within the first
month or two, so not everyone knew each other as
well as we've finished. It was good because that's the
deep end. When they say we're going to throw you
in the deep end. That's what that is. Everyone's away
from home. We were all in hotels. This was around
(16:00):
the corner from Stonehenge. Everyone drove past Stonehenge on their
way to work, being like, why is the traffic going
so slowly? I just want to get to work. Oh
it's Stonehenge in the middle of a field. Oh my goodness. Okay,
So Wilton House is around the corner from Stonehenge. Okay.
When I was at Stonehenge, I do not remember seeing
anything that even looked remotely like this. This is about
(16:23):
probably about a fifteen minute drive away from stonehe Out
of here, it's still very close. Oh, it's just so secluded.
Is there like a what is the grocery store? I
want to say Salisbury Sainsbury Sainsbury's. Yeah. Wilton House is huge.
It's bigger than it even appears to be in the show.
(16:46):
We didn't even film in half of this house. The
other half of the house is still residential and still
being lived in, so we couldn't go near that side.
That's how big this place was that an entire film
crew could be in one half of the house and
a family could be living and not hearing us in
the other half. I wouldn't have two hundred film crew
in my house, but they obviously allowed it. They did,
(17:09):
and that privilege was not last on actresses Golder, Rochevelle
and Adua Endol. They played the Queen and Lady Danbury.
Here's Golder. I was saying that one of my favorite
places was Wilton House. You know, I loved that because
it's a young family that lives there and still runs
it and owns it, and that to me it felt
(17:30):
like home. Even though it was grand and opulent and yeah,
felt very out of reach, there was something homely about it. Yeah.
You know, I'm always sort of thinking, well, I've seen
all the would you would you from a bit of that,
But somewhere at the back, does somebody having corn flakes
and watching the news on the tele in the morning porridge? Yeah? Yeah, right.
(17:56):
So we used Wilton House as several different locations. We
used it Rotten Row, we used it as Clivedon, we
used it as Buckingham Home in several different episodes. Well,
Wilton House was a perfect choice. The detail and the
velvety feeling on my eyes. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
(18:17):
And it was very hot. It was hot. Wait was
the air conditioning turned off for sound. That's not actually
sun streaming through the windows. Those are some very bright lights.
Oh right, the lights on cherry pickers on cranes basically
shining through. I think it's either the second or the
third floor. That room isn't so we've got bright, bright,
(18:39):
bright lights shining through the windows. And then obviously all
of our casts and all of our background artists are
in corsets, dresses and wigs and feather headdresses. And I
was hot just in my normal twenty first century clothes,
so I don't know how they were doing right. Layers
of fair bricks. Yeah, makeup honey, okay, yeah, yeah, That's
(19:04):
why I constantly need makeup touching because you're just sweating
it off. There's not enough setting spray in the world
under those lights. No way. Oh my goodness. Let's get
back to Danbury House and our conversation with Golder and Agua,
who played Lady Danbury. Here's Agiwa again. So where I
(19:25):
grew up, Gabrielle was carter and sheep and two busses
a week. It was like deep country. Forty five minutes
northwest of Wilton House is Badminton House, surrounded by countryside
and it's the home of Lady Danbury's Den of Iniquity scene.
And what's really cool about it, Badminton House is about
(19:47):
five miles from where my father lives, from where I
grew up. Wow, we filmed the Dani of Iniquity scene
at Badminton House and when we were filming the Deniver Iniquity,
filmed it in this beautiful ballroom at the back of
which I took a photograph of me and the director
standing in front of this painting is a painting of
(20:08):
Queen Charlotte, and I would love to have grown up
knowing that she was mixed race. I would love to
have grown up knowing that she was descended from an
African woman and Alfonso the third of Portugal, and that
she was in a massive house five miles up the
road from where I grew up as a little solitary
(20:29):
black girl. I would have loved to have known that.
So there was something really beautiful about filming that scene
and feeling like I'd sort of gone full circle and
there I was with mister Ulrick Riley, who is the
most stunning director, and it was just very lovely for
me to be doing that and doing something. It's about
women being in their power and then remembering little me,
(20:53):
Queen Charlotte and having all these women around and being fabulous.
And then I drove over to my dad afterwards, and
I drove past one of my best friend's houses when
I used to walked from miles up hill to get
to a house and long than I drove to my
dad from set, and it was just so nice. It
was just like, wow, look at my life. Her bazaar
(21:14):
is that so Golden Rocheval, who plays Queen Charlotte, was
in this conversation with me and Edua, no big deal.
It was chill. I asked her if she felt an
energy from any of these historic locations. Most definitely. They
live and breathe with us, and we live and breathe
with them. You know. One of the things that's really
(21:36):
fascinating about Bridgeton that the places that we filmed in,
the manor houses that we filmed in, are their own characters.
We had some beautiful locations, and even Lancaster House for me,
was a really special place because it's a working place
for our royal family, do you know what I mean? Yeah,
And for the dignitaries of the world and I think
(21:57):
that scene that we were talking about earlier, Curtsy scene,
I think a week or a couple of weeks before
we filmed there, the Queen had a dinner party for
the world dignitaries. And to have that energy and that
pulse and fizz, living fizz to playoff to absorb, I
(22:19):
think is really helpful when you're doing something like this,
really helpful. It gives you extra umph, doesn't it. Golder? Yeah, absolutely,
in a kind of way in as well, because I
think we all I mean, I don't know if you
think this, and I know I'm an old hippie, so
but I think I really do think that buildings retained energy. Yeah,
(22:42):
don't you. I feel like the ghosts are in the
walls of a building, you know, for good or for ill. Yeah,
we all know those some places You're like, I'm not
going in there. I went in there once, you will
never get me in there again. So I do genuinely
think that, as Golder says, to be in a place
that is a working royal environment, the energy of that
(23:02):
building gives you an energy that you can absorb that
into your embodying of working royal in action. And that's
really thrilling. You kind of think of the working life
of the whole building. You know, what keeps the show
on the road, because those cucumber sandwiches don't cut themselves,
my friend. You know, yes, you know when we were
(23:25):
filming some of those locations that I'd be like, oh,
I'm never in it. Can I'm never looking your kitchen
going on in it? You know it's fascinating, isn't it.
When we get back from the break, we'll hang out
in Hannah's history corner to talk about the class distinctions
among Bridgerton's high society, and we'll get into more production
(23:47):
design with Chris van Dusen and Will Hugh's Jones. Welcome
back to Bridgeton the official podcast. So again every episode
we're spartlighting the research behind Bridgeton and doctor Hannah Gregg,
(24:12):
the auntset etiquette advisor and historian for Bridgerton, is just
the person to take us through well. I mean, in
Jane Austen novels, we don't often get references to dukes
or to members of the royal family, or to duchesses
or people with titles of lady. There's only a handful
of characters who are ladies such and such we tend
(24:34):
to have the miss Bingley, the Mister Darcy, the Missus Bennett.
Those characters tell us that they are not in this
world of dukes and duchesses and lords and ladies that
we occupy with Bridgeton. The Jane Austen's world is what
in English society we would call upper middle class, so
it gets slightly complicated in terms of gradations. But they
(24:57):
are people whose fathers and brothers maybe in business, they
may be clergymen, they may be in the military. They
don't necessarily own the huge country houses that we recognize
that survive in England to day, like Chatsworth in Derbyshire,
which was the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, or
Castle Howard in Yorkshire. Those were owned by dukes and
(25:21):
lords and viscounts and earls who don't really feature in
the Jane Austen novels. The Jane Austen big houses are
medium sized houses in comparison to the super rich regency London.
So the Jane Austen novels give us a slightly kind
of different perspective on what it is to be genteel
(25:42):
and wealthy in the eighteenth century, because there is this
whole other level of super wealth, super status which isn't
touched on in Austin, which we begin to encounter in Bridgeton.
So I suppose one way in which we could unto
the difference is to think about the difference that we
have today between high street fashion and then kind of
(26:02):
catwalk fashion. The Jane Austin world is the high street
basically that we shopping, which captures the society we live
in that are inspired by that, you know, kind of
catwalk take. And then the high society is the catwalk
fashion world. The world that's out of reach to us,
the world of these celebrity people who live in their
own bubble, who know each other that we feel slightly
(26:25):
excluded from, which is about this kind of creation of
something that's cutting edge and fantastical. I see, and you know,
I'm assuming this all had to do with George's golden
gilded sweg versus Napoleon silver. They're trying to outbling each other.
It's like, imagine them as the rappers of the regency London.
(26:49):
I've got more blinged than you look at my right right.
They were outblinging each other so extra well I think
it's right that we see Regency London in Fidgeton as
a place full of sparkle and success, because that is
sort of how it was in its own time. George
the Fourth, Prince Regent, was notorious for his kind of
(27:10):
love of glitz and glamor. He has an incredibly ostentatious
coronation when he does become king, and in the run
up to that, he is spending money as fast as
he can, and he's building his fancy grands palaces, and
he's got his house in Brighton that's basically this huge
new build palace, and he's got a place in London
at Carlton House. He's got the glitziest everything. He loves
(27:35):
glamor and sparkle and gold and diamonds. And there's also
a sort of kind of culture in Europe of people
trying to outdo each other. So alongside Prince Regent George
the Fourth, we have Napoleon in France, who is also
trying to be the most glamorous leader in Europe, you know,
guilding everything and sticking huge diamonds on his swords and
(27:59):
having the late systems, most exotic kind of goods and
fabrics and there is a kind of real, fast, spending,
ostentatious culture around this very very privileged, small world of
the court and the aristocrats in eighteenth century London, where
spending money and showing off is absolutely what everyone is
(28:21):
trying to do. Chris spared no expense in turning up
the volume on history's gilded, glitzy surroundings. Among the elements
the production team brought into the already locations where fabrics,
food and flowers. Like I said it is, this world
(28:44):
of Bridgeton is a beautiful, escapist world, and I wanted
the sense of nature to really be apparent on screen.
And it goes to the romance. For me, at the
end of the day, this is a show about love
and romance, and if we're going to be telling the
most romantic stories of our time, we need everything else
(29:04):
on screen that you see to be doing the same.
The flowers and the fabrics were the key things to
lighten the historic spaces, and always food played a big part.
You can make it tall, you can make it architectural,
and you can put it in full ground backgrounds. So
in order to make our world come alive, flowers and
(29:28):
food were the principal elements that we used, and anywhere
that we had a window, we spent a lot of
time and effort making drapes to bring the room up
from being an old historic building into a beautiful Bridgeton space.
There is this beautiful sense of nature in the production
(29:49):
design of the show. I wanted the series to look
like the most gorgeous, rich, aspirational English garden anybody's ever seen.
And Will took that idea and he ran with it.
At one point, I walked into a set and I
saw him in a corner literally hand painting a custom
blue color on what had to be hundreds and hundreds
(30:11):
of roses, just to get things right. And that, of
course endeared me to him forever, and also speaks to
his attention to detail. Is this the first production from
shandaland that is of this scale. It was definitely the
biggest thing I'd ever worked on. The amount of detail
(30:33):
that goes into Bridgeton is incredible. I think that's the
thing about everything about hair and makeup, about costume, about
set dressing and all of that. There's such attention to
detail that you think no one will notice this, And
as you're working, you think no one will notice me
(30:54):
doing this. Tiny thing. But if it wasn't there, people
would notice that's a nice little bow. We'll end it
right there. I don't know about you, but I'm blown
away by all the set dressings and how this team
had to trek across the country to make Bridgerton come
(31:17):
to life. I have a new appreciation for the production team.
I'm also really moved by Adua end Doe's story. I'm
really happy for the little girl inside of her. Dear listener,
one thing for sure, we'll hear plenty of love going
around for this tight knit team. Come back next week
and we'll hear some of those stories and more behind
(31:39):
the scenes of Bridgerton. I'm Gabrielle Collins. Thanks for listening.
Bridgerton The Official Podcast is a production of shand Land
Audio and iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from Shonda Land, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you subscribe to
(32:02):
your favorite podcasts.
Host
Gabrielle Collins
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Today’s Latest News In 4 Minutes. Updated Hourly.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.