The production designers of “The Favourite,” Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton, who just won their first BAFTAs, are best friends. As the explained in our backstage interview, they met making “Macbeth” (2015) and now live minutes away from each other in London. “The whole thing has been so much better for doing it with Alice,” says Crombie. “We spend our whole time just living our best lives – being mums on tour! We’ve been in LA and – you know, there are some stories.”
Sadly, neither Crombie nor Felton would divulge on any particulars, but they did comment on how much they loved working on a film with so many women and, even more so, other mums. “I’ve got three kids,” says Felton. “Fiona has two, Olivia [Colman] has kids, Rachel [Weisz] has just had her second – it was so great for all of us mums to be working together on such a great film.”
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As Crombie notes, while the film may look vast in scope in terms of production design the experience of making it, like that of the three central characters played by Colman, Stone and Weisz, was quite intimate. “It was a small set – we were a little, tight-knit crew. Nothing prepared me for the response we’ve got. I knew we were making a beautiful film, I knew it was quality – but you just don’t know that this is going to happen. I feel very blessed.”
With 10 Oscar nominations, “The Favourite” is tied for the most with Alfonso Cuaron‘s “Roma.” And Crombie just cannot get over that. “It’s a complete thrill and a surprise. I’m so happy about it – I loved this film at the time when making it and so for it to be loved by such a wide variety of people is just brilliant.”
They almost missed the Oscars announcement while they were making lunch together at Crombie’s house with the nominations show on in the background. “It’s so surreal. It’s just so exciting. You kind of say ‘life is good,” and then you get nominated for an Oscar and you go ‘oh my God, life just got even better!'”
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