Today Architectural Digest goes behind the scenes of Bridgerton season 3 with production designer, Alison Gartshore, for an exclusive tour of the set. From the subtle details in Kate and Anthony’s new apartment to the never-before-seen Cowper residence, Gartshore breaks down the ingenious and intricate work that goes into creating the grandiose Bridgerton sets.
Promotional Consideration Bridgerton from Netflix and Shondaland
Promotional Consideration Bridgerton from Netflix and Shondaland
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00:00 (gentle music)
00:02 My name's Alison Garchaw,
00:05 and I'm production designer for season three of "Bridgerton."
00:09 I'm here to show you some of our sets today.
00:11 (gentle music)
00:14 - Action.
00:15 - All right, let's cut.
00:19 - So here we are in the iconic "Bridgerton"
00:26 drawing room and morning room.
00:28 (gentle music)
00:31 This is a space that we've used over the three seasons.
00:36 It's a classic set for us.
00:38 The "Bridgerton" drawing room and morning room
00:40 was designed in season one by Will and Gina.
00:43 As you can see in the space at the moment,
00:45 we have a lot of floral dressing.
00:47 We are in the process of dressing this set
00:50 to film in a couple of days' time
00:51 for a particularly special scene here.
00:53 We worked on the color palette particularly
00:55 to reflect the warm, friendly nature
00:57 of the "Bridgerton" family.
00:59 Just a lovely space to be in,
01:00 that sort of space that you'd like to come and sit down,
01:03 have a cup of tea with Lady Bridgerton.
01:05 - What about the Duke?
01:05 - The Duke has not proposed, Mama.
01:08 - So when we started designing this set back in series one,
01:11 we looked at a lot of architectural referencing,
01:14 lots of stately homes.
01:15 We knew that we were going to be using
01:17 the Rangers' house in Greenwich for the exterior location.
01:20 And so we had to match the window sequence to the location.
01:26 And we chose the columns to give a nice sweeping arch
01:29 so that we could have the morning room
01:31 and the drawing room in the same space.
01:33 And so we had the separation of the arch
01:36 to delineate the two spaces.
01:38 So when we're thinking about designing a space
01:40 for a show like "Bridgerton,"
01:42 we have to be very mindful of the entrances
01:44 and exits for the action.
01:45 So we have two entrances here in this set
01:49 so that we can get the flow of characters
01:51 moving around the space.
01:53 The spaces themselves are so big
01:55 that we don't actually need to have any camera traps
01:57 or moving walls, which helps us with our dressing.
02:00 So we're not constantly having to take walls in and out.
02:04 Geoff Dure, the lighting designer for the show,
02:07 designed the softbox system for all of our sets.
02:10 We always have the same softbox in the center of the space
02:14 to light in a blanket way most of the space.
02:17 And then the rest of the lighting is done with highlights.
02:20 We do have to change elements in the set now and again.
02:23 When the script demands, for example,
02:25 the beginning of this season,
02:26 we had to have a portrait of Violet and her husband
02:29 specially commissioned and hung above the fireplace,
02:33 as that was referenced in the script.
02:35 Currently, we have our team of dressers in at the moment.
02:38 We are in progress, working progress,
02:41 as I say, for a specific scene that we'll be shooting
02:43 over the next couple of days.
02:45 As you can see, we've got lots of cake dressing.
02:48 Our home economist makes the cakes.
02:51 They're always fake.
02:52 You can't actually eat them.
02:54 Usually they're on a polystyrene base,
02:56 but all the decoration that you see is handmade
02:59 using fondant icing and real sugar craft.
03:02 She's incredibly skillful, as you see the beautiful things.
03:06 The piano here that we have is an original piano forte.
03:10 It's very old.
03:10 It's very delicate.
03:12 It needs tuning constantly.
03:13 So every day that we have to shoot
03:15 somebody playing the piano,
03:17 we have to have the specialist tuner in
03:19 so that it can be played.
03:20 Because it's so delicate, it loses its tune so quickly.
03:24 Oh, enough, I beg of you.
03:26 The Bridgerton spaces are quite iconic spaces.
03:29 We use the same moldings throughout our sets
03:32 for the Bridgerton house.
03:33 If you look at all of the corridors that we have,
03:36 they all look the same.
03:37 And it gives us a visual hint
03:39 that we're in the Bridgerton world.
03:40 The same with the color palettes.
03:42 All of the spaces will have roughly the same color palettes
03:45 just to help the viewer know
03:47 that they're in the Bridgerton house.
03:49 There are tiny details as well
03:51 that our wonderful set dressers put in
03:53 and our set decoration department come up with.
03:55 For example, in the Bridgerton spaces,
03:58 you'll always see some shells.
04:00 Don't know if you've noticed that.
04:01 So here we are in Kate and Anthony's new apartment,
04:08 fresh for season three.
04:10 We haven't seen these sets before.
04:12 This is Kate and Anthony's bedroom.
04:13 And for this set, we wanted to obviously still be
04:17 in the Bridgerton world
04:18 because we're in the Bridgerton house.
04:21 But since they got married,
04:22 Anthony became the new Viscount.
04:24 And so of course,
04:25 they're now technically the head of the household.
04:27 So we felt that they needed a new fresh space.
04:30 So we created something that we thought
04:32 was within the Bridgerton world,
04:34 but a little bit livelier
04:35 and a little bit younger in feel.
04:37 We had a scenic artist paint our wall panels.
04:40 He did one of each set piece.
04:42 And then we recreated that and reprinted it graphically
04:47 to run all the way around the spaces.
04:49 This is a seating area for Kate and Anthony.
04:51 And then we have the bedroom.
04:53 So predominantly in here,
04:54 we have the color palette of the Bridgertons,
04:56 which is the classic Wedgwood blue with the creams.
04:59 But we introduced a little bit more of a warmer tone cream,
05:03 slightly peachy cream actually for Kate.
05:06 And this whole space is about the blending
05:08 of Kate and Anthony's family.
05:10 So it's Bridgerton meets India.
05:12 We've brought in some of the warmer tones,
05:14 which we had for Kate and Edwina last season.
05:17 And we've married them together
05:19 with the Bridgerton classic palette.
05:20 We've also got hints of purple in the graphics on the wall
05:24 and the deeper pinks,
05:25 which were referenced in their costuming last season.
05:28 So the bed obviously is a classic English bed,
05:32 but we have played with the fabrics a little bit.
05:36 We have the paisley fabric, again, classic Indian.
05:39 And then some of the detailing on the canopy,
05:42 we chose specifically some of the trims,
05:45 which we felt reflected Indian culture quite well
05:49 without being too over the top with it.
05:51 It had to be a subtle reference really.
05:53 So obviously we have a dog bed over here,
05:56 which of course is for Newton, our favorite corgi dog,
06:00 which is Kate's dog, who she loves dearly.
06:02 Hints of India in the set dressing.
06:04 We have elephants, ivory, lots of brass,
06:08 which you wouldn't normally have for the Bridgertons.
06:10 It's quite a feminine space, I suppose,
06:13 because Kate is quite a strong feminine character.
06:15 So we felt that really their bedroom
06:18 might reflect that more than Anthony's
06:20 very masculine character.
06:22 And through this way,
06:25 we have Kate's study and dressing room.
06:27 So the colors in here are warmer still.
06:31 So using the same palette,
06:32 but we've flipped the colors on the walls.
06:34 The peachy orangey color is more predominant
06:37 than the Bridgerton blue.
06:39 Kate's now the head of the Bridgerton household.
06:41 So she has to have her own working space,
06:44 which is her desk here.
06:45 Of course, Lady Violet hasn't stepped down quite yet.
06:48 The pictures, especially in the study area,
06:51 you'll notice are all scenes from India.
06:53 We have referenced horses.
06:55 She loves to horse ride.
06:56 And over here, we have Newton the dog, of course,
07:01 which was specially commissioned for us as a portrait.
07:04 So this is Kate's desk.
07:06 And one of the things that we do a lot of,
07:09 we spend a lot of time is the graphics.
07:12 Everything is all calligraphy written.
07:15 If she's working on her accounts,
07:16 we have lots of accounts pages,
07:18 which should you read them would be correct.
07:21 The graphics department spend a lot of time
07:23 referencing ephemera of the time
07:25 and making sure that everything is period correct.
07:28 A lot of it is actually printed,
07:30 but when we do need to handwrite something
07:32 and see that in action, we have to get calligraphers.
07:35 And they have to be body doubles for our actors,
07:37 of course, because they have to match.
07:39 It has to look seamless
07:40 as if the actor was writing in the script.
07:43 But it's very skillful, very difficult to do.
07:45 And there's not many people
07:46 who can actually achieve the fluidity that you need
07:48 for those writing scenes.
07:50 So the drapery in "Bridgerton" is really important for us.
07:54 It's all historically accurate.
07:56 The set decorator, Natalie Papagiordiades,
07:59 she spends a lot of time decorating and researching
08:03 and paying particular attention
08:05 to all the window and curtain treatments.
08:07 They're such a large part of any room in "Bridgerton"
08:11 that we have to make sure that the color tones
08:13 are correct for our palette.
08:14 The way that the light kicks off the fabric
08:16 is really important for us.
08:18 A lot of fabrics look quite dead and dull on camera
08:21 when they're lit.
08:22 So we try and stay away from anything like that.
08:24 And we choose fabrics that are slightly shiny
08:28 and have a sheen so that the light catches beautifully
08:31 and it helps to sculpt the space.
08:34 So when we're reading the script,
08:36 obviously, if you know "Bridgerton,"
08:38 you'll know that there's quite a lot of intimate scenes
08:40 throughout the series.
08:42 And not to give you any spoilers,
08:44 but we always have to make sure
08:45 that where we have those intimacy scenes,
08:48 that the furniture will stand up to the job, shall we say.
08:51 So we're here on the "Bridgerton" set
08:55 in the Cowper's new set for season three.
08:59 This is the Cowper's hallway.
09:01 The inspiration for the corridor here
09:03 was Sir John Soames' country manor,
09:06 which is Pitshanger Manor.
09:07 It's all period correct, strangely,
09:09 even though it looks more modern than it actually is.
09:12 We've got hand-painted marbling everywhere.
09:15 There's a lot more details to see in the drawing room.
09:17 So let's go take a look.
09:18 So the Cowper family,
09:26 we don't know a lot about their backstory
09:29 from seasons one and two.
09:30 We've seen Cressida quite a lot in seasons one and two.
09:33 - How convenient.
09:34 (camera shutter clicks)
09:35 Penelope, I did not see you there.
09:37 - We understand her to be quite a difficult lady.
09:40 She causes a few issues now and again.
09:42 So for season three, we see more of the Cowper family.
09:46 We start to understand a little bit more
09:47 about her backstory and her upbringing
09:50 and the reasons why she maybe is as difficult as she is.
09:53 So the space that we designed really was to reflect
09:56 the masculinity and the austerity of her father.
09:59 He's quite an overbearing character,
10:00 it turns out, in season three.
10:03 And so we wanted the space to feel quite oppressive
10:06 and quite domineering,
10:07 and we wanted her to feel very small in the space,
10:11 like a caged bird, I suppose.
10:13 She's usually wearing very pink and frilly costumes,
10:16 so we wanted her to ping off the darkness of the walls
10:20 in the space in here.
10:21 So one thing that we have to do in these standing sets
10:24 is to graphically design our rugs and have them printed.
10:27 We always have to make our own rugs
10:29 because we'll never find a rug of the right color
10:33 and design of the right size for a space.
10:35 The bookcases, you see, they're very tall, deliberately.
10:39 We had a scene where one of our characters
10:42 wanted to look at the books,
10:43 and Cressida was very nervous about that
10:46 'cause she's not actually allowed to touch the books,
10:48 being a woman, it's not her place to touch the books.
10:51 So we made the bookcases very tall
10:53 to make them feel very imposing for her
10:56 and to fill the room.
10:57 But actually, most of the books are fake.
11:00 So all of these are just the backs.
11:04 You can see nothing there.
11:07 Where we need to pick a book up in action,
11:10 we'll put real ones in
11:12 so that a character can pick something up
11:15 and it looks real for the camera.
11:16 But that's always preset depending on what the director,
11:22 where he wants to place his shot.
11:24 Sorry about the noises you hear in the background.
11:26 The second unit are in.
11:27 They're shooting some scenes from the ballroom
11:29 that we just shot last week.
11:31 So the columns, they're actually fiberglass,
11:34 as you can hear,
11:36 and they're all hand-painted with a marble finish.
11:39 We've got very, very talented painting team
11:42 on the construction guys.
11:44 In fact, a lot of the finishes that you see
11:47 on our sets are painted.
11:49 All of the wood grain on the doors,
11:52 on the bookcases, it's all hand-painted.
11:54 And we do that mainly because
11:57 if we tried to make this with real wood veneer,
12:00 it would take a hundred times longer
12:03 and it would cost an awful lot more.
12:05 So we have to cheat.
12:07 That's the name of the game.
12:08 We're not making reality, we're cheating reality.
12:11 But they do a remarkably good job.
12:14 And I think you'll agree
12:15 that you can't really tell the difference.
12:17 Another thing that we always have to consider
12:22 are the fireplaces in our sets.
12:23 Being a period show,
12:24 the main heating in the house would have been open fires.
12:28 Oh, must we sit around like statues?
12:30 We look at period fireplaces
12:33 and we pick the details that suit the space.
12:35 This is all made out of timber
12:37 and then it's painted and marbled
12:39 to look like a marble and slate fireplace.
12:42 Our special effects team had to devise a new system
12:46 of creating a real fire in our fireplaces
12:50 because we're in a big warehouse space
12:52 and we're not allowed to vent noxious gases
12:56 through the roof of the building.
12:57 So we had to figure out a system
12:59 whereby we could have real flames
13:01 and they use some kind of a bioethanol fuel.
13:04 I'm not exactly sure what it is.
13:06 It's a special mix, I believe,
13:08 that doesn't give off any gases.
13:10 So there's no need for us to have a ventilation system,
13:13 which was fantastic
13:14 because that would have been quite tricky
13:16 with so many fireplaces in the space.
13:25 So here we are in the Featherington main hall and staircase.
13:29 As you can hear next door,
13:31 we are in the middle of constructing a new set.
13:34 Sorry about the noise.
13:35 The Featherington family,
13:36 obviously their color palette
13:38 is the citrusy yellows and greens.
13:41 And they're also very, very much highly decorative.
13:44 So we spent a very long time
13:46 designing all the plasterworks on the walls here.
13:49 And it's a completely over the top treatment, really.
13:51 You don't normally see this many plasterworks in a space.
13:55 Lady Featherington is very concerned
13:57 with how other people see her.
13:59 She's very shallow.
14:00 She's all about wanting money,
14:02 wanting power and status,
14:04 wanting to get her daughters married off.
14:06 We reflect that in the way that we decorate their spaces.
14:09 They're always highly decorated
14:11 and we call them in our team
14:12 the Kardashians of the Georgian era.
14:15 So the furniture in here is, as you can see,
14:18 sort of black and gold, Versace style,
14:20 based on a designer of the time called Thomas Hope.
14:24 And he did a lot of black and gold
14:26 and Egyptian influenced furniture.
14:28 And we felt that that reflected their characters quite well.
14:31 It's very intense.
14:32 It's very in your face.
14:34 It's very Versace.
14:35 So here we have the actual staircase,
14:39 which is a suspended staircase,
14:41 which means that there aren't any internal supports.
14:44 So it's all hung from the exterior walls,
14:46 which you sometimes find in Georgian architecture.
14:49 The ironwork we didn't have made.
14:52 We pieced it together from existing companies.
14:55 Obviously the symbol for the Featherington family
14:57 is the butterfly.
14:58 So we decorated the staircase with butterflies.
15:02 Usually we use fake flowers for our floral displays,
15:05 simply because they have to last
15:07 for several days worth of filming,
15:09 usually under quite hot lighting conditions.
15:12 And you find that if you use real florals,
15:14 they tend to droop and wither over the course of the shoot.
15:17 So if anything was shown in real closeup
15:20 or if anyone had a bouquet as a hand prop,
15:23 they would be real.
15:23 Perhaps make the bouquets even bigger.
15:25 The Bridgerton spaces are quite iconic spaces.
15:32 From time to time, there are small changes to the sets,
15:35 but by and large, they do stay the same as a standing set.
15:39 So when we started designing the set,
15:41 we were looking at all the different architectural elements
15:43 that we wanted to bring in here.
15:45 When we're constructing a set, actually,
15:48 the carpenters do their work first.
15:50 They put the walls up, they put the flattage up,
15:52 then the plasterers come in,
15:53 they plaster finish everything.
15:54 Then the painters come in after the plasterers,
15:56 so it's like a conveyor belt.
15:58 Start to finish a set might take six to eight weeks
16:02 if it's this size.
16:03 For a ballroom, it would be more like 10 to 12 weeks.
16:06 They do a remarkably good job.
16:07 (gentle music)
16:11 (gentle music)
16:13 (snoring)
16:16 (door opening)
16:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]