(trumpets sound) - Costumes should inform the audience, it should give all the information they need to make a judgment about that character.
And it's as important as what we say.
If you get the costume wrong, you confuse the audience, you confuse the character, you confuse the actor.
(slow music) - We made a decision early on to dispense with all modern costume accoutrements.
So no Velcro, no hooks and eyes, no zippers.
These costumes were constructed exactly in the way they were constructed 500 years ago.
Joanna Eatwell, our costume designer, spent weeks in the Victorian Albert museum, looking at the designs for clothes of the period.
- Tudors were just was so ingenious in the way that their clothes were constructed.
Fabric was so valuable in the Tudor period, you know.
We're pre any kind of industry so everything is hand made.
Every bit of fabric you value tremendously.
So consequently a lot of clothes are tied together.
So if you burrow out this sleeve you simply untie the knots here, take the sleeve off, and replace it with another.
And the same with the women, their dress are all pinned together.
It's ingenious, it is, and you know you unpin this, and you remove this area, you put in something new, you've got a new dress, you take out your sleeves.
Everything is a jigsaw puzzle that goes together.
- You know Henry the Eighth he was broader than me, you know just (muffled noise) like this and she did a brilliant job at dressing me in a way that broadened me out.
Made it look like the clothes weren't wearing me but I was wearing them.
It was my frame underneath.
Joanna Eatwell is a brilliantly talented designer.
(slow music)
