Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1260764
T H E C R O W N | P E R S P E C T I V E 6 1 much of a stretch to read The Duke of Edinburgh as Kay Corleone.) After three attempts to create the most versatile palace interior—bedrooms, a multi-purpose breakfast room, stairs, landings, offi ces that could turn into other offi ces, corridors, passages to locations yet to be found—all on a fairly limited soundstage No soundstage is ever uite big enough). Art Director Hannah Santeugini said to me, "I think this is your best Buckingham Palace yet." The deal was sealed. So, as far as London went, we had The Look. The Crown, however, is not all about palaces. It's also a road movie with the wealthiest of protagonists. In seasons one and two, the rest of the world was played by South Africa, and it proved perfect. The production even got to build a treehouse fi t for a princess, for real, high up, in a tree. And then again, lower down, for more accessible interiors. South Africa would in season two become the farthest parts of a world tour—Tonga, Papua New Guinea and beyond. If establishing The Look was season one's biggest challenge, season two's was the Royal Yacht Britannia. Not what any layperson would call a yacht, Britannia is most certainly a ship, over four hundred feet of ship. Called by its interior designer, Sir Hugh Casson, "a country house at sea," it would, in season two, travel the world, or at least appear to. The real thing is now in dry dock and a museum. Director Philip artin and I fl ew to Edinburgh to take a look. It came over as not so much a country house, more a suburban bungalow on a vast scale. To be fair to Sir Hugh, he hadn't designed it as a place to make a movie but as a comfortable, fl oating home. In its conversion to museum, walls had been turned into voids through which to see the rooms the word cabin is inadeuate. The Crown's Britannia needed to sustain visual interest—on deck, at sea, docked, inside cabins, state rooms, below decks—on tour over several exotic locations, taking up much of the fi rst three episodes of season two. On the fi rst scout of South African locations, Britannia loomed like the biggest design problem I had ever been presented with. It was therefore with some relief then that it became one of my brightest light bulb moments. We were taken to Cape Town harbour and shown a polar research vessel, the Aghulas. At just over a hundred feet it is a uarter of the length of Britannia and looks nothing like it. But it has a helicopter deck and, assured we could take the Aghulas out to sea, I went ahead with designing a chunk of Britannia that would fi t the platform. The gains of using this piece of fl oating real estate would be real sea, real movement, real horizon, real coastline, real weather, real sky, real light. Everything would chime with our unwritten but oft-spoken wish to always have at least two-thirds of every set—no matter its scale—a physical build. Surveys were undertaken, designs signed off , drawings completed. Then, while I was at my most relaxed, scouting a golf course whose landscape I could do so little to change that I wasn't even carrying pencil and paper, we were informed by telephone that we couldn't, after all, take the Aghulas out to sea. So, while the rest of the crew were looking at ways to shoot the golf, I stayed in the clubhouse bar and constructed a model Britannia using a coff ee table for the sea, a golf magazine for a harbour, four shot glasses as superstructure, an iPad for a deck, four tour leafl ets for a cabin and my camera for a wheelhouse. I photographed it with my phone, then, back at the hotel, turned it into a sketch. Art A. PRIVATE DINING ROOM IN WINDSOR CASTLE. SET SKETCH BY IAN CROSSLAND. B. BANQUET HALL. SET PHOTO. C. MODEL OF THE ENTRY STAIRCASE. THE PRIVATE APARTMENTS WHICH PROVIDES ONE OF THE LINKS BETWEEN LOCATION AND BUILT SET. D. BUCKINGHAM PALACE ENTRANCE HALL. SET MODEL. E. BUCKINGHAM PALACE STAIRCASE. SET MODEL. F. BUCKINGHAM PALACE ENFILADE, THE VIEW BETWEEN THE ROYAL BEDROOMS. SET MODEL. G. THE ROYAL TREEHOUSE. PLAN, ELEVATION AND SET PHOTO. G