Set Tour

- Welcome to Leeds East International Airport, otherwise known as Buckingham Palace.

Inside is where we film pretty much everything in Victoria.

Behind us are the makeup trucks, the very important catering is over there.

So that's where all the business goes on.

But over there, that's where the magic happens.

So come with me and get a tour.

(regal orchestral music plays) This is the aircraft hangar on the inside.

If you look up into the roof, sometimes you can see parakeets, owls, all kinds of birds.

It's sort of, it's Buckingham Palace but it's also a wildlife reserve which can make filming quite tricky.

During the proposal scene, when Victoria's proposing to Albert and there's this really romantic moment, we had to stop filming because a flight of parakeets kind of went (whooshes) right through the scene.

Let's go through here and into the palace itself.

(regal orchestral music) Now we're gonna meet the Production Designer, the very wonderful, very talented, very tall Michael Howells.

Michael!

How are you?

- Good.

- I'm very good.

So this is pretty much to scale, isn't it?

- This corridor is, it's 180 feet long.

It's something like 700 candles to light this room.

- How long does it take to light all the candles?

- We have a big team, there's sort of six people who light and then two fire marshals.

- Has it ever caught fire?

Has there ever been accidents?

- We've had one fire.

- Oh, okay, only one fire.

(mumbles) Yeah, well that's not too bad, is it, yeah?

- It went out very quickly.

(laughs) We've added three new state rooms and more servants' quarters.

- And of course, a very important room.

- The nursery.

- The nursery, that's the one.

- Perfect, perfect.

- Okay, see you later.

- See you then, buh-bye.

(regal orchestral music) This is the nursery, because now with Victoria and Albert, they start the famous family.

One of the fantastic things about working in Yorkshire, there are so many incredible craftsmen, that we've actually used and commissioned pieces and we had a local blacksmith who has made the cot for us based on the period design.

And things like the wallpaper comes from a house in Cornwall, Port Eliot, which we copied and recolored.

What we have done is included all the portraits are of children and royal children.

So we've used Van Dyck and Romney.

Just this idea of the royal family which is very much what Victoria and Albert invested in and became a very, very important core value of their reign.

(regal orchestral music) This is the music room.

When we were planning this, we wanted to do it based on music and song and one of our main motifs throughout the room is our birds, whether they are carved birds to look like Meissen porcelain or whether they are the birds that have been set into the mirrors or on the sconces.

The piano is actually, was made by the original makers who made the piano for the Princess Victoria before she became queen.

This is the basement, this is the servants' quarters and we're in the undercroft with connecting stairs that run up to the palace upstairs.

The basement creates a slightly bigger problem because we use less candles and there aren't any windows as we are below ground so we've used the idea of the light comes from above which is a different atmosphere to the state rooms upstairs.

But we are slightly plagued with animals that are coming in.

We had an owl nesting in the set last year.

This year, we've got a lot of crows and jackdaws who are all just raising their young, so we also have to fight against those things as well.

(pop music) - Here we are in the costume truck, and I think I can see Roz Ebbutt, our amazing Costume Designer.

Roz, my darling!

- Hi there, Daisy.

- How are you?

- Very well, thank you.

- I'm sorry to interrupt you cause I know you're having a-- - Don't worry.

- Really frantic day.

- We're loading for two separate lots of shooting all on the same day next week.

- You probably remember this from Series One.

Albert and Ernest have to put on the winter uniform because that's what you had to wear if you were at the court at Windsor Castle.

It was designed by George III and boy is it heavy.

I mean it really is heavy.

- Cause it is all real metal.

- It's real-- - Tiny twirly bits of real metal with a thread through.

- It's like wearing chain mail, it's incredible.

- So this is the wonderful violet dress we made for a special trip.

- Oh, that is gorgeous, isn't it?

We're talking about the 1840s, we're filming in the 1840s now.

So they didn't yet have crinolines, did they?

They had-- - No.

They had loads and loads of very heavy quilted petticoats, funnily enough.

But cheatingly, we give them quilts.

- They basically have duvets, don't they?

- They have a duvet on-- - Underneath.

- With some pleated linen, so it looks as though they've got layers and layers of heavy flounced petticoat, but they hadn't exploded into the giant crinoline.

- Crinoline.

- Which is coming in in about 1854-ish.

- Is that real ermine?

- That is real ermine, you sometimes get fake ermine which is white rabbit with little bits of black fur.

- But we are going to make it very clear to the viewers that this is not-- - This is a very, very... - No animals were... - This is vintage ermine.

- This is vintage ermine.

All the fur normally is all pretend.

The Coldstream Guards' hats.

- Yes.

They're fake fur.

- All fake fur.

They are fake fur.

- Which we then have to, because it's very floppy, we then have to brush and spray with hairspray to keep it all looking nice.

(laughs) - Oh, look at that, isn't that lovely?

You can see... And who makes these bonnets for you?

- Various different costumiers have made them for me, and then we've re-trimmed some as well.

Daisy, I'm gonna pop this back quickly cause I really need to go on the set.

I hope you'll excuse me.

- Okay.

By Roz, thanks so much.

(romantic orchestral music) So here is the makeup truck, and I'm just gonna go and find out who's inside.

Hey Jenna.

- Hi Daisy.

- Got your, have you got your contact lenses in?

- I do have my lenses in.

- Is that the first thing you do?

- It's maybe the sixth, after the hair.

- After the hair, all right.

- After the fake hair.

- Oh God, how much fake hair have you got on?

- Couple of pounds worth, I'd say.

- God.

It's so iconic though, the plaits around the ear thing, isn't it?

That's just... - Yeah, this is kind of where we started, but-- - Yes.

- These all change around actually, all the references from, so they're all here last year, they go all the way along the truck.

- [Daisy] Yes.

- And here, which is a lot of the softer, more maternal look.

- Yes.

- And then we have... - Where's you being queen, queenly?

Up there?

- Up there.

The Plantagenet Ball, which we've done this series.

- And there's Robert Peel.

- You should try those lenses one time.

- I'd love to.

It's amazing to look at them when they're blue, it's just, I've always wondered what it would be like to have blue eyes.

So now we're gonna move on to Nic Collins who's the demon barber of Victoria.

She is the genius, the award-winning genius behind many costume dramas, including Downton Abbey.

This is Adrian Schiller, Mr.

Penge, and there are your sideburns.

Ugh, they look at bit sort of (sniffs) - Yeah, they look very - That's not - They need a little bit more work.

- Very hairy until they've been worked on.

- The real challenge with Victoria, isn't it, is the difference in hair, it's how much hair people, men, had on the faces.

- Yeah, much hair.

Much hair than what people want to wear on their faces now.

- The other thing about Victorian era is that ladies, like Victoria and her cult, didn't wear makeup, did they?

- No, it wasn't fashionable, again a-- - It wasn't respectable.

- No.

It was only seen, but they did wear-- - A little bit.

- It was kind of, like we do-- - Discreet.

- Yeah, we kind of say we don't, but yeah... (laughs) - So Adrian, Penge, how do you feel about your wig?

- Well, it's itchy and I'd rather not wear it but I have to from time to time.

There is a slight issue which we have bumped up against which was really people wearing wigs like this one.

Here you are.

- Which is a livery wig.

- The livery wig.

I mean you literally just pop that on top of your head and you didn't bother to make a good join on the forehead or anything like that.

- No.

- Just slammed it on and off you went.

But it looks a bit silly, cause it looks like people are wearing hats made out of hair.

- And what we decided, and they're really bad-fitting and sometimes they look quite comedy on-screen and we didn't want them to look comedy, so we decided to have a soft front put on them.

So they're fitted quite well and rather than being the center, the attention of the scene, they just kind of blend into the background with the footmen.

- I mean, these wigs'd be made out of horsehair, wouldn't they?

- They would be made out of horsehair, yeah, yeah.

Or yak, goat, y'know.

- So they would look pretty odd.

- And also, if they couldn't afford a wig, they would powder their own hair into style.

- Well I've got a train to catch and you've-- - You've got a train and I have to go to set and Daisy's busy.

- I'm always busy, I've gotta do some writing.

I've gotta write the Christmas Special, otherwise there won't be one.

So I'd better go, okay thanks so much Nic.

So that's all from our whistle stop tour of Victoria.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

As you can see, the cars are waiting for the cast to take them away back to the hotels and back to London and back to real life and I've got to get back to my laptop and write a few more episodes so I'll see you around.