As the executive producer of not one but two current hit period dramas, Damien Timmer knows the importance of being historically accurate, down to the tiniest detail.
The man behind the Sunday night dramas Victoria and Poldark has now revealed quite how important – including spending three weeks and “a lot of money” getting the coloured contact lenses of the young queen exactly right.
Jenna Coleman, the actor who portrays Victoria in the ITV drama, has brown eyes, but the queen’s eyes, famously, were blue. Determined to be accurate, producers experimented with scores of pairs of contact lenses before settling on a colour that they hoped looked natural, Timmer told this week’s Radio Times.
However, he says: “Despite everyone’s best efforts in post-production, the contact lenses were really obvious and strange – you could see these big plastic rims around her eyes.”
All eight episodes were then scrutinised, frame by frame, so the conspicuous lenses could be digitally blurred. “It cost a lot of money and everyone was very cross with me,” says Timmer, the managing director of Mammoth Productions.
Coleman has previously said she tried on “about 70 pairs of contact lenses” before they got it right. They weren’t uncomfortable, she added, but: “I was living in a rose-tinted world because everything was a haze, which wasn’t unpleasant.”
Despite the hiccup, it has been a bumper autumn for the production company, which also makes Poldark for BBC1. With the two blockbuster historical dramas scheduled against each other on Sunday evening, Timmer admits he was concerned that it might not be possible for both shows to find an audience.
“Victoria was coming late to the party; it always felt like a high-risk strategy ... Poldark fans were already massively engaged with the show, they love it. Yet Victoria has found its place, and they both exist happily.”
ITV confirmed last week that it has commissioned a second series of Victoria, which also stars Tom Hughes as Prince Albert and Rufus Sewell as Lord Melbourne, after it has consistently beaten the second series of BBC1’s Poldark in the ratings.
