Locating ‘Bridgerton’

marble and such. Welcome to Bridgeton the Official Podcast. I'm 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.

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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. 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, 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 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. 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 your favorite podcasts.