- Mr Selfridge. - Just a few questions, Mr Selfridge.
Harry Selfridge was, you know, he was a true maverick.
Harry's story is extraordinary.
ADAMS: The storyline is interesting. There's so many characters
and so many different stories that you can dip in and out of.
It reflects the society which was happening at that time.
It isn't about a shop, it is about a man. It's about Harry Selfridge,
the man who built this iconic shop on Oxford street.
We are telling the story of Harry Selfridge and the people that interact with him.
Obviously, the show is such a success
because we just have a fabulous team of writers.
I spend a lot of time, particularly, in the writer's room
so I'm very involved in the beginning of the show
very involved in story lining, working with the writers, I was a script editor myself so
I feel that script is really important because without a good script,
you have no good show, really.
So, the writer's room, I mean it's not quite what the Americans have.
We all get together, under the sort of guidance of our lead writer,
this year has been Kate Brooke.
Beginning of Series Three, we sat down
and she talked about the big themes that she wanted to cover.
Very soon on, say the second or third meeting, we get other writers in
and then when it gets to the individual episodes,
we will talk a little bit about those in a group
and then we will break off into smaller groups with the writers
who are writing that episode and then we begin to break that down in more detail.
I think I love the characters more than anything.
I think that in Series Three, we really know our characters really well.
There is such a delicious mix of characters now
from the very warm, comic characters like Mr Crabb
to our baddie Lord Loxley,
and of course, Mr Selfridge, Harry,
who is just such an amazing character, really.
A sort of tragic character in many ways.
When you look at what he accomplished today, when there was nothing going on
anything even remotely like that and he just kind of jumped in and knew exactly
what he was doing and everyone kind of fell into place.
He lived in a lot of dualities because he led the charge and was very confident
but at the same time, very deep feeling and so he has a lot of layers and demons
and we explore all that.
It's an extraordinary story and it's a true story. Selfridges is still there,
on Oxford street.
We were very much inspired by Lindy Woodhead's book,
Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge.
I think like any, hopefully, successful drama, sort of based in non-fiction
we take the truth and then we work with it
and we try to stick to the bare bones
of the Selfridges' lives, what happened in the store, but then we have the opportunity
to create lots of other characters around them.
Princess Marie is directly related to a founding father of Russia.
I was hounded out by the Bolsheviks. You should write a book about me!
Now that's a splendid idea.
- It will be a very big book. - (ALL LAUGHING)
I play a new character who's been brought in because my son marries Rosalie Selfridge.
Princess Marie is based on a real character who has escaped from Russia,
running from the Bolsheviks.
So, my character is a pioneering Russian aviator
who's determined to get his aircraft and fleet of aircraft off the ground.
He's a little bit of a playboy
and he marries Harry Selfridge's eldest daughter, Rosalie.
And if this is a... I think we're gonna learn if this is a marriage of true love
or does he have other motives.
He's a good time boy. He likes champagne, he likes beautiful women,
he likes the new machinery and stuff. Like, he's in love with the technology of the day.
I think he's a little bit of a Peter Pan boy because he's very indulged by his mother.
So I don't think he's ever properly grown up and learnt how to be a man.
We open on Harry in his roughest time because
the love of his life is gone, so we open on a funeral.
Goodbye, my darling.
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How am I going to live without her?
You'll find a way.
And then go from that, from death to the celebration of life with a wedding.
We're hitting the ground running in season three and it's pretty action-packed.
And yet we're true to the show itself but it definitely has a different pace to it.
I think it's unfair to call Roger Grove a villain. It's really, really unfair.
He's a very good man who's made some, I think it's fair to say,
in modern terms, some fairly shocking decisions.
What I love about the show, what I've always loved about the scripts,
is that they are a mixture of a true historical story
and a set of fictional characters based on positions within the store
and within Harry's social circle and life that are, whilst based in truth,
of course, they are fictional which allows a lot of scope in the way you approach
gender, politics, fashion and retail, but it also means it's grounded in a story
that has to be told. You can't mess with the truth too much.
This season has a lot in store for everyone.
Rosalie has this virtuous,
irreproachable humility
and I guess, actually, a lot of her characteristics
follow through from her mother, Rose.
So she's great to play, but at certain points, she is capable of stepping up to the mark
and we kind of see that throughout the series, those moments where
the backbone has to come in and she has to sort things out.
It's really interesting because, obviously, getting a part where you are playing a
character whose life was real, I think from getting to speak to the writers,
deeply, we can see that they kind of entwine little bits of fiction but it is primarily
the true story that runs through and the fact that she married this Russian prince
and the demise and I guess it's all going to come crashing around their feet pretty soon.
DIRECTOR: Thank you.
All right, it's ready, chaps.
Anger! Energy! Rehearsal and background action!
Action!
Once we have a script and probably first or second draft,
we bring the directors in and they then have an input often about the store event.
It's a wonderful example of how a director might work in a writer's room.
There's an example in episode nine,
where the writers had an idea that they wanted Harry to really be quite
taken aback and quite shocked by the reaction of the crowd to a
business plan that he has to hold a big sale and to undercut his competitors.
And we were all struggling with this.
We were saying perhaps, somebody is, kind of,
petitioning or handing out leaflets
and everything we came up with was a bit lame and our director of Block 4 said,
"I know, just... What about people throwing eggs?"
And we were all a bit shocked because we thought this would be quite, you know,
(STAMMERING) this might be a bit much, sort of having our hero covered in eggs.
But in a way directors have a really good sense
of how something will look and actually,
it works brilliantly.
I'm Martin, I'm on the standby props. Basically, we got some eggs,
which we will throw at Jeremy.
We have to blow the egg yolks out making a hole in the top of each egg,
fill them with water so when they hit him, they don't cover his costume in egg yolk.
I think the biggest difficulty is really having to recreate it over several takes
and not destroy costumes and make up and all of that but keep it convincing
and protests onscreen are often very difficult to achieve so we're trying to find a way of
making it feel exciting and giving some jeopardy for Harry
that the store is in trouble.
(CROWD YELLING)
The truth is stranger than fiction. His life played out like a Greek tragedy
and that's what we're getting into.
And yet, the writers are incredible and innovative and we've taken dramatic licence
in certain parts to create these fictional characters.
There are two characters, Agnes Towler and Henri Leclair,
that when you first meet them in Season One, there's such chemistry
and it wasn't premeditated by the writers, it just happened and it was a tribute to them.
They saw dailies and went, "Oh, yeah, there's something going on here."
I mean, all the women who were in love with Henri Leclair, Grégory Fitoussi,
because he's tall and very good-looking, whatever, I think that's overrated,
I think they immediately saw him and went, "Oh, my God!" but there was true chemistry
between the two of them.
So it's that beautiful blend of reality and whatever the imagination can think up.
AGNES: I can't believe you're here.
Well, I am. I told you I'd come back.
And I told you that I'd wait for you.
Series Three is about really how soldiers returned from the war
and how people in London welcomed them back
and how they began to settle down together and so that, bit of history is very important
that we keep that extremely accurate.
The world is changing and continues to change.
We're just coming back from the war
and the men are lost and it's new territory for them
because they didn't know what they were going to get into until they came back home
and there were no jobs for them.
And one of the things that Harry and Nancy Webb want to do
is build these homes for them
a place to go and that journey is going to be an intense one this season
because you're going to get some old friends and foes that'll be back.
Lord Loxley will be back with a vengeance and will be standing in Harry's way
of achieving his dream and an homage to his wife, really.
That's what the Homes for Heroes is.
My character, Nancy, is very much a new woman.
This series is set in 1918 so it's just coming to the tail end of the First World War.
And she is educated, she has a degree, women from this era that's a very new thing.
And she wants to build Homes for Heroes, for the guys coming back from the war.
She wants Harry to help her fund it.
It was really interesting to do research for this part.
I talked to the guys, the writers, and they've sent several books,
all written by the same woman and it's just fascinating, I had no idea.
I mean, it was a real time of change for women.
You couldn't be married if you worked in Selfridges. You had to be a single girl
and as soon as you got engaged or married, you had to leave and become the wife
and the care at home. All the women in Mr Selfridge are very strong.
They're written very strongly. There's an element.
Lady Mae, you know, she's a suffragette.
And you have Kitty, who's just this kind of firecracker.
And Aisling who plays Agnes. They're all very well written, very strong characters.
We sort of try and push the boat out as much as possible,
and then we try and sort of anchor it back with fact.
We often, if we get stuck in the writer's room, with the story or with a character
you know, we'll go back to the book
or we'll go back to some other kind of historical material
and we'll just sort of take from it and see what we can, see if something inspires us.
The sets are amazing.
It's just phenomenal. The best sets I've ever been on.
Every time you go to the shop floor,
you always just take a step back cos it's extraordinary.
It's a bit like Aladdin's cave when you go inside. They are amazing, the sets, I think.
We're responsible for everything behind the actors' heads, really.
It's just a beautifully done show.
It was a groundbreaking store. Harry Selfridge was a groundbreaking man
who had fantastic ideas, so keeping it sophisticated and stylish.
Just moving a bit away from the heavier Victoriana, really.
It starts with the designs. Erm, you get the scripts.
My job is to break down the scripts, see what we need and then go out and try to find them.
At the very beginning, when we first started and we were in our prep,
so six to eight weeks prep before we started filming,
they wanted to introduce different areas to the store.
So male, gentlemen grooming, was one of them.
We've got lots of beautiful stationery and pens
and a great gentleman's grooming counter from shaving brushes and razors
and colognes and all that kind of thing.
We wanted to incorporate a few more items for sale, really.
We actually wanted it, just like a shop, we actually wanted to enlarge our stock.
This is the ground floor of Selfridges.
They just finished filming here and moved on to another set.
The cabinets, like the set, were all made for the first year of the series.
It's quite unusual, they've probably invested about five years into this
because the sets were made to a very high specification and all the cabinets have been
handmade knowing there's going to be two, three or four series.
It's a good investment because you get very good props and sets and you know
you're going to use them again for a few years and it's worked very well.
These mannequins have all been sourced because they're obviously
they're period mannequins so there's very limited people who you can get them from.
These wooden arms and things. You wouldn't have these things, I don't think so.
This piece of hedge is from our palm court terrace, actually.
We moved it in here to make good use of it.
And then they had the idea of hanging these tennis balls, just as a visual sort of display.
These cabinets take a lot of filling because they're glass and they're double-sided glass
so you see everything on display.
Both Kate and myself and well, the whole art department,
when we first came down to that fantastic set
cos the sets stood for a couple of years now.
We walked down there and it was empty and we thought, you know, we could only last
about 20 minutes down there because we had panic attacks, had to run back upstairs
cos we thought, "How are we going to fill this space?"
This job is a bit tricky because finding props that are 100 years old
are quite hard to come by, so it's digging around, ringing people, asking favours,
and a bit of a treasure hunt most of the time.
I think our set deck and our buyer have done a lot of product placement,
as much as they can cos there's companies who've been around
that long time. They still have that same packaging and stuff so we've got
product placement. Everything else, we've bought, we've sourced bottles.
And we've made up the perfume
by using food colouring and we normally use vodka as well because
it goes off after a while. This has all got to be here for sort of eight months.
Everything is very, very carefully thought out.
We built the main body, the sets
at the beginning of this process on Series One
and they're constantly evolving.
Goes with the character of Selfridges itself.
It has to keep moving with the times, it has to keep developing.
I mean, one of the things that's quite amusing, I always think,
is to see how Kitty's empire grows hugely.
Because every year, somehow cosmetics becomes bigger and bigger.
HAYES: When Series Two begins, we see that Kitty
has been promoted
to beauty,
which is a new department, which she now runs and is head of.
Beauty has become this huge industry,
and she's very much at the forefront of that.
It never fails to amaze me how much detail and attention
the art department put into those offices.
GOODMAN-HILL: My favourite set is the offices.
I think... I love being in the offices.
I think it's because it's where Grove spends an awful lot of his time.
Well, I'd spend most of my time in the offices,
which are spectacular.
If I have something about a newspaper, or a letter, or something like that,
they've made this exquisite thing.
A lot of Selfridges original paperwork has been copied and put on.
There were whole wodges of paper. Every single bit would be an authentic print.
My character has a studio where he does all of his plane designs and drawings and, er,
the drawers are stuffed full of designs of his actual plane.
Cos Serge was a real person, as well.
It just helps you so much to live in that world, to be in it.
I don't spend as much time on the shop floor as I would like to these days.
I think every time we walk onto the shop floor, there's something new,
there's something dazzling.
There's a set on there right now with a box hedge
with a lady in tennis clothes, and hanging in front of it
are all white tennis balls. And you look at it and you go,
"White tennis balls.
"You don't see white tennis balls any more. They're all yellow, or green."
So it's kind of great to see lots of stuff come to life again.
I think we're spoilt on the show with how beautiful the sets are,
and how expansive and big they are.
I love the house. It's just... It's so beautifully done.
The minor details... Each series, they sort of update it
with the fashion of the time. I mean, we've had different wallpapers this series.
Erm, yeah, so the intricacies...
Like, I think they're importing a lot of goods over into the house to make it more...
Look a bit more valuable, I think, really, because they're just affluent people.
This is where we break the fourth wall. (LAUGHS)
Literally. There's a loading bay just through there.
We don't often use this part of the set, actually.
I've never done anything in here.
Erm, it's just a nice little area that they, you know...
For a bit of flourish in different scenes.
I mean, last series, my mother was in here for a few scenes, I think.
Literally, if you look... Everywhere you look, there is something else going on,
which is beautiful. The paintings are real.
This series, we've done a shot from up there,
which looks down on us all, there's quite a few of us in the scene,
and it just revolves and that'll be quite nice to look at.
Series Three, I've come back from the First World War.
I've opened up a nightclub.
It's a fantastic place to work in because you have the band,
the Dixieland band.
And, er... So whenever you step on set, it's like a soundtrack.
There's music playing and really, like, infectious music
that really wants to get you dancing.
With all the supporting artists, as well as the main cast going in there,
it's a fantastic place. You know, it's rocking, it's pumping.
Well?
They're good.
GRAVELLE: I didn't know much about Dixieland Lindy Hop,
but, thank God, you know what I mean?
You can be all elbows and knees so, you know,
I've managed to hold my own there and keep my head above water.
A few of the steps from the Dixieland, the Lindy Hop and the Black Bottom,
I've tried in some of the clubs in London.
Whether it's a success or a failure, I don't know, that's not for me to say,
but I have, yes, I've tried a few of the moves out.
The other place I always love visiting when I go on set is the exterior,
which is shot at Chatham docks.
It's often been called the Selfridges' bungalows.
We have just a first floor of the corner of Oxford Street and Duke Street
and it gets completely taken down and completely put up in every year
and it is like a miracle.
And in fact, it was a bit of a close call this year,
I seem to remember, because we had a terrible downpour
just when we started filming it.
The rain pours down outside when you're trying to dress the shop windows.
The rain often was poured down inside the shop windows, as well.
So that, you know...
And on the day, there's 80 extras, there's horses, there's vehicles,
there's road cover, there's CGI, there's riggers. It's... It's quite big.
Big number.
Fortunately, one of the good things about going forward in the series
is we're going through different periods.
And it's amazing to watch the costumes change
as the fashions change.
We've tried to bring new, fresh elements in.
Influences from Paris fashion, trying to get rid of, sort of,
the more heavy, traditional, Victorian style.
Wristwatch, yes. New in, new fashion.
The wristwatch is meant to be a bit more with the times.
Lots of other people are going into, sort of,
casual suits, softer materials and soft collars.
Unfortunately, Mr Crabb is sort of stuck in the Victorian age.
Yeah, it's like a dream. Everything looks so beautiful.
The colours are all jewel-like.
I think, in reality, in the times, and everybody wore a lot of dark colours
because they couldn't afford to have light colours that get stained all the time,
so everybody was wearing dark.
So, it was quite a drab look in London at that time.
But the costume designer and the set designer
and everybody's just gone for it.
Oh, this is my... Oh, it's so beautiful. It was made especially for me.
My lovely teal colours with the, erm...
Yeah, it's... I've never had anything, ever, sort of fitted and perfectly made.
Rosalie has been on a romantic trip with Serge, her husband.
And she's come back with, kind of,
Parisian style things going on and so, she's completely embraced it.
And so, this is a new dress.
My first scenes were getting married, so it was kind of authentic.
It was really incredible.
I tried on all these wedding dresses because in the first episode, I get married.
Um, and then they actually made a wedding dress for me.
So, it was completely fitted perfectly,
so I feel like I've got married in a very extravagant way.
Flying is why Serge fell in love with Rosalie.
He came to me and he said, "Mother, she is an angel."
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
To Serge and Rosalie!
AUDIENCE: To Serge and Rosalie.
(SPEAKING RUSSIAN)
(AUDIENCE SPEAKING RUSSIAN)
(LAUGHING AND CHEERING)
A lot of research has gone into my costumes, but, well, everybody's costume
and particular colours are chosen, specifically because she comes from Russia.
She also lived in Paris for some time.
The detail is very important to me, as well. And that helps me, as a character.
It's not mine, and yet... I guess you can't tell.
And this is my very beautiful and expensive lovely wig, which has just been freshly cut.
It feels like mine, though.
Basically, the wig, it's human hair.
Each hair is knotted into a little cap
that's made to individually fit their head.
And it matches, exactly, their own hairline.
And then each hair is individually knotted in, in the right direction that you want it to go.
We finished at 7:00 yesterday and it was sort of a flurry of activity in the makeup trailer.
And I was going, "Wha... When do you go home?"
And they just sort of stay until they're all set.
They have to be painstakingly reset every day.
I'm getting it ready, yes, for the next time she wears it.
So, I pre-set it, and then leave it in...
It's going to be set on these common rollers in the hot sticks
to get the period look for that time.
Um, and then, we just... They live over there with the other wigs.
Partly set, ready to dress out when she comes in.
These are Elsa, our new character, Elsa. She's got various wigs.
Every time we see her, she's in a different club look.
And that's the daughter, the back of Mr Selfridge's daughter's head.
On this particular programme, it's been nice to come in
and completely reinvent all the characters because the time has moved on,
changed the way the characters look. They didn't really wear makeup before.
So, we've introduced makeup because it's now come into the marketplace,
and, er, yeah, it's been nice.
(APPLAUSE)
LEWIS: When we sat down this year, as we do every year,
and we talk about how we can make the world bigger and better
and most exciting for our audience.
And this year, we very much focused on the CGI.
People always ask me, "What's the difference between working
"over here and working in the States?"
And I think over here, they somehow magically get it all done for less.
OTTON: We've, ah... We built the ground floor of Selfridges exterior,
but the company D Neg have actually built the rest of the Selfridges store.
So, up we go and the rest of the street, left and right, is Selfridges.
It's really made the world that much bigger that we couldn't have done with sets.
It really is fun when you go to Chatham
and you're right next to a battleship and a submarine and a rope factory
and when you look at it onscreen, suddenly it's Oxford street.
It's incredible.
Looking back on Series Two, we were really excited by
some of the possibilities and some of the brilliant things that
D Neg achieved on our Chatham sets,
particularly because that is very reliant on CGI because it is just one floor.
Just a portion of the front of Selfridges, and then you got green screens on the side.
The green screens are very odd
because you don't know what's going to be there.
They're just green screens.
We don't actually film in front of them, but they sort of go into the distance.
So, I'm always amazed when I actually see it.
Oh, you always feel like you're on the set of something epic, when you are, you know.
And it can be sometimes, you now, when you go like,
"Okay, this is quite bare",
but when you see it on the screen and when the effects are in and everything,
you go, "Ah, okay. Right."
We got two cameras working today,
we've got the option of getting a high shot and low shot.
Er, as you can see there, the buildings,
we've only got the lower storey of the building,
the rest is all CGI. That's all recreated in a computer.
Some shots are more expensive than others.
If we move the camera, with some shots, that can cost a fortune.
So, there's quite a lot of times when we say, "Let's do this static."
Other times when we can afford to do it, we can move the camera.
I'm here to take care of all of the digital and visual effects needs.
So, what we do is we create the wider world around the set.
So, as you can see behind me, we've got the massive, 50-foot green screen
on either end of the set and we replace that with our digital world,
which extends Oxford Street, both east and west,
and we create digital cars, people, and put them all in
and make it look as seamless as possible so you feel that Selfridges is this
massive building on a bustling high street.
So, yeah, the bulk of our work is back in the office.
So really, we're here just to make sure everything's filmed correctly
so that we can manage to put all of our assets in,
but back at the office is where it all really takes place.
So this is, um, a digital scan, which we had a machine on set
before the filming commenced,
which is able to make, let us make, inside the computer, exact representation
of what the set was.
And this is one of their more complex shots of the show because for the first time,
they wanted to see Oxford Street east.
Now in Selfridges Series Two, we've only every looked down the west.
And however, this series, one of the main briefs we got early on,
was the idea to open up the world and to have a larger, vaster environment,
and make that environment more rich.
And we wanted to give the directors the ability to shoot
what they wanted to shoot,
as much as possible, and make it work for them
rather than give them boundaries in which they had to stay into.
What this is, this is an example of...
Production wanted to widen the Selfridges' universe
and this is a great example of one of the most difficult shots we faced
to have a whole CG Oxford Street and a pan from looking down on the floor,
look up, over London and then onto location, which was meant to be purposed as
the top of Selfridges, where a wedding was taking place.
Don't put the flowers there, that's where the wedding cake's going to go.
A whole day's takings squandered.
And this is all getting in the way of the Spring Promotion.
The peacocks have arrived.
Peacocks!
What I want to show you is some stuff that we did regarding Paddington Station.
The important thing was, really, that the lighting had to be correct.
I mean, Paddington is a big, vast, open space.
And, um, when I spoke to the director about it,
we talked about what sort of atmosphere
and ambiance was going to be in the station.
What I found was, in research,
were some fantastic old drawings
from Paddington in the 1930s.
And this is, this here, is the original end window
and it's got all the dimensions and all the technical drawings and everything.
This is actually quite different
to the end window that... The end windows that are there today.
Er, the design is quite different.
So, I thought it was important, just for authenticity's sake,
to make sure that as many elements, as many ingredients
that I found researching
were correct.
Train stations are very romantic places, so we wanted something that had
you know, light cascading through, pockets of light.
We couldn't do a big move on the shot,
so we had a lock-off camera.
And so we positioned it in such a way that we would get the train moving out
and all of the action coming towards camera.
We immediately sort of focused on the CGls
being somewhere where we can broaden the show
and create much more, um, production value.
We've been very ambitious with that in Series Three
and I think it's really paid off.
We go out to the roof terrace
and there's a big tilt up over the whole of London
and it, when I first saw it, absolutely blew me away.
It was incredible.
They have spent so much time and energy on getting it right on these sets
and yet, just when you think,
"Well, they probably don't have anything left for the CGI."
Yet, they'll be incredibly adventurous with that
cos we're creating a lot of different worlds.
They're over-achieving on every level and it's really great because we're...
Now, we're exposing the roof at Selfridges and so we're kind of recreating that.
Um, I think it's going to put the pressure on Selfridges themselves
to open up that roof
cos it's... They make it look really, incredibly beautiful,
as it was back in the day.
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