Transported through time
DQ hears from the cast of Belgravia: The Next Chapter about how the costumes, props and stately home settings of the sumptuous period drama help them prepare for their roles in this sequel to the original 2020 series.
Langleybury Mansion has more film and TV credits than a veteran, multi-award-winning actor. It sometimes seems as if it’s on our screens more often than the soaps.
This exquisite, vacant 18th century manor house is now employed exclusively as a film and TV location. More than a hundred productions have been shot there, including Downton Abbey (obviously), The Crown (also, obviously), Men in Black (less obviously), Paddington, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Endeavour, Grantchester, Harlots and The Little Stranger.
Situated just outside the M25 in King’s Langley, Hertfordshire, just 30 minutes’ train ride from central London, this elegant, Grade II-listed stately home is the go-to location for British period dramas.
Today, Langleybury Mansion is being used as the setting for Belgravia: The Next Chapter, a sumptuous sequel to the period drama that was broadcast on ITV in 2020.
This eight-part drama is set in 1871, three decades after the original series, which was adapted from a 2016 novel written by Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey, The Gilded Age). The new show, created by Helen Edmundson (Dalgliesh), began in the UK on ITVX yesterday.
Originally produced by Carnival Films and Epix Studios for MGM+, the drama centres on Frederick Trenchard, the third Lord Glanville (Benjamin Wainwright, soon to be seen in the title role of the forthcoming version of Maigret), who is a very eligible bachelor. He resides in the upmarket area of Belgravia in the centre of the capital.
When he meets the magnetic Clara Dunn (Harriet Slater, Pennyworth), who is fresh to London society, Frederick is immediately smitten. After a whirlwind romance, they swiftly marry.
The quick-witted Clara soon grasps that her husband is haunted by childhood trauma, though. After years of being ignored and resented by his father, who always preferred his younger son, James (Toby Regbo, The Last Kingdom), Frederick is emotionally repressed.
Clara believes that the only way to revive her husband’s happiness is by mending his relationship with his estranged brother. But, exposed for the first time to bohemian influences in London, Clara starts to doubt her place in the world. How will this impact her relationship with Frederick?
The drama very much focuses on the female characters. Edmundson explains: “I’m really passionate about Victorian literature, and particularly the heroines of that period. I love those courageous, spirited women who crop up. I was delighted to be asked to create a story – particularly about a young woman in that time – involved in this intensely romantic and difficult relationship.”
The day DQ is visiting the set, Langleybury Mansion is done up in all its finery for – you guessed it – a ball scene. In the corner of the ballroom, a string trio sporting white tie and extravagant 19th-century mutton-chop whiskers are playing toe-tapping dance music.
Extras circulate in dazzling period costumes. One woman is wearing a grandiose, beautifully tailored sage-coloured statement dress, which may well be worth more than the average family car. A liveried butler at the entrance announces the arrival of grandees such as His Imperial Majesty Emperor Napoleon III of the French.
The ballroom is decorated with more candelabras than you can shake a candlestick at. Porcelain angels frolic on the mantelpiece, and from the oil paintings on the walls impossibly grand women look down on proceedings with a faint air of disdain.
At the centre of the social whirl is the wondrously attired Duchess of Rochester (Sophie Winkleman, Peep Show). The mistress of all she surveys, she is dressed in a splendiferous purple ballgown adorned with a gorgeous, cream, floral, brocaded front. Could this whole scene be any more period drama?
Winkleman, who in real life is married to actual royalty in the person of Lord Frederick Windsor, the son of Prince Michael of Kent, tells DQ how this majestic setting helps all the actors get into character. “The splendour is so transporting, isn’t it? You feel like you’re really there,” she says.
“It’s such a group effort. So many hundreds of people are involved – from props, who have to find the most perfect period glasses, to continuity, who have to remember the height that the candles were at when a character said a certain line. I just love the intricacies of everyone working together to make a magnificent whole. It’s quite humbling.”
Belgravia: The Next Chapter has been filmed in a variety of stately homes across the UK. Every one of them has assisted the cast with thinking their way into the 19th century.
Miles Jupp (The Thick of It), who plays the Duke of Rochester, believes the authenticity of these locations is very useful for the actors. “These are the actual rooms in which these sorts of conversations would have taken place,” he says.
For his part, Wainwright marvels at the sheer diversity of the period settings in Belgravia: The Next Chapter, all of which ground the drama in the 19th century. “You have to pinch yourself sometimes because every day you’re walking into these increasingly elaborate places and you just think, ‘Oh, this is my place of work!’
“We were at a stately home called Manderston House in Scotland that was doubling for Lake Como. The atmosphere of the place and the amount of marble around meant there was still so much romance to it. It felt like it really could have been Italy. I have to remind myself that it’s not normal to be given access to these places.”
The precision of the period details has been guaranteed by the on-set presence of Alistair Bruce, a protocol advisor who has also worked on Downton Abbey and the original series of Belgravia. He has been a lifesaver for the actors. Hannah Onslow, who plays Clara’s sister Emily, says: “I had a lot of questions for Alistair, like how to hold your hands in certain places, how to make a cup of tea, how to drink the tea… It’s been great, but then you’ll pick up a teacup the wrong way and we have to redo the whole scene!”
The period accuracy of Belgravia: The Next Chapter is perhaps best reflected in its meticulously made costumes. Wainwright confesses that Frederick’s very uptight outfits “do mad things to my posture. But the stiff collars and everything buttoned up and hanging off you force you to put your shoulders back. You feel like you are obeying some unspoken god.”
However, the actor adds, the discomfort of Frederick’s clothes actually aids his characterisation. “There are days on set where you get quite frustrated with the costumes. But there’s a troubled undercurrent to my character. A lot of what he does is quite dark and moody. All I have to do is just think of the aches and pains in my shoulders, and it’s all there. But I’m not wearing a corset, so I will not complain!”
Winkleman is wearing a corset, but she is not complaining about it. “Because I love hunching, the agonising corsets actually make me stand up properly.”
The actor remarks that the extent of the pain inflicted by the corset depends on what you have eaten the night before. “I made the mistake of making the most of my room service in the hotel last night. So this morning, my liver and kidneys are meeting in places they’ve not met before. The corset punishes you!”
Before she goes back on set, Winkleman has one more subject to discuss: her majestic purple dress. “The Duchess of Rochester’s thematic colour is purple.”
The actor jokes self-deprecatingly that “purple does most of the acting for me because it’s a regal, imposing colour. The Duchess is like Prince – she only ever wears purple. She is the Prince of 1871.
“This is her Purple Reign.”
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tagged in: Belgravia, Belgravia: The Next Chapter, Carnival Films, Epix Studios, ITV, MGM