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‘Napoleon’s’ Oscar-Nominated Production And Costume Designers On The Challenges Of Ridley Scott’s Latest Epic – Contenders Film: The Nominees
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The Oscar-nominated artisans from Ridley Scott’s epic Napoleon joined me as part of Apple Original Films’ presentations at Deadline’s Contenders Film: The Nominees event. Veteran production designer Arthur Max and costume designers Janty Yates and David Crossman talked extensively about what it was like to work with Sir Ridley on the ambitious, large-scale production that saw Joaquin Phoenix play Napoleon Bonaparte and Vanessa Kirby his wife Josephine.
With six major battles, hundreds of extras and several challenging locations this was no walk in the park. But for the 85-year-old Scott it is quite common, and Max and Yates have both been through this drill before. In fact, Yates won an Oscar for her work on Scott’s Oscar Best Picture-winning Gladiator in 2001.
For Max, who had to re-create an entirely different country — the film shot in England and Malta — it was not easy.
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“Yes, I think the biggest challenge was not going to France and trying to find it in England,” he said. “We also did a lot of work in Malta. And Malta was the port of Toulon and also the islands of Elba and St. Helena. The rest of the film was shot in locations all over England and central London.”
“Malta is where Gladiator was shot, a favorite kind of location for Ridley to work at. He loves it and it’s got a lot to offer us in terms of the landscape, which portions of are very unspoiled, and also the port facility there is an enormously interesting harbor,” Max said, adding that in England there are other challenges. “There are just so many kind of places [in England] that will fit and it’s a matter of getting permission and all kinds of things. There’s quite a lot of stately homes in England that we looked at and ended up choosing the ones that were most similar to French architecture of 18th and earlier centuries. There was a very enjoyable process I have to to tell you, so a lot of beautiful places all over the home counties and in central London.”
For Yates, there were other challenges with the costumes, particularly when they lost their leading lady and Kirby was cast with just weeks to go before production started.
“It’s always a challenge, it’s never just people in a kitchen. It’s always an epic. Arthur will agree with me, it’s always, ‘Okay, so we’re doing Napoleon next,’ that’s the way we roll,” she said. “However, Vanessa came to us very last minute, but because we had Jodie Comer in place [before she left], she’d been fitted twice, and luckily her body size is only slightly different to Vanessa’s — Vanessa’s taller and the shoes were perfect. So we had to do a lot of last-minute alterations. I think my cutter said her fingers were worn to the bone because Vanessa was cast at Christmas and we started shooting in February.”
Crossman is a veteran of big movies including several with Steven Spielberg like Saving Private Ryan, and he is a world expert in military costuming, which came in very handy here.
“I think we were trying to be really authentic as authentic as possible and trying not to be beaten by the kind of logistics of it which were very tough. So we were trying to anticipate all the embroidery that we had to do. So we were guessing who might be cast, who might play this and just going ahead and getting certain things embroidered because the hand embroidery takes months,” he said. “At the same time, we were … finding original samples of clothing of the copying patterns and and just producing items that could be copied in factories so you could go into kind of mass production. So you were just trying to get ahead of without it being just little quick cheap makes. You were just trying to make kind of good quality shapes, good silhouettes.”
Check out the panel video above.