Going against the rules: costumer Lynsey Moore on creating the look of ‘Anne Boleyn’

With just five weeks to organise costumes for the period drama, Moore made it work by breaking the rules.

Jodie Turner-Smith in one of the spectacular gowns in ‘Anne Boleyn’. Credit: Fable Pictures

Nothing should have gone right on the set of the new miniseries Anne Boleyn. Starring Jodie Turner-Smith, the three-episode saga exploring the final months of the queen consort and second of six wives of Henry VIII was shot during lockdown. Two days before the UK went into another lockdown, in fact, the filmmakers got word that their production would proceed in spite of this.

It was a whirlwind arduous design process for costumer Lynsey Moore, who had five weeks to come up with the concept and get the opulent Tudor period pieces made – all during a global supply shortage. So she broke the rules.

“Going against the Tudor rules, which were all about embellishment, we decided to focus on making the shapes more structural, the square neckline more prominent, and using more colour,” Moore tells SBS. “That was the only way to tackle this without making it look like some local youth theatre production!”

Jodie Turner-Smith. Credit: Viacom/CBS Networks International

Moore, who has previously worked on Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You, says that the success of Bridgerton opened up the possibilities of what she could do with costuming on Anne Boleyn. “We want to be presented with something different; show us something that we haven’t seen before.”

Pre-Bridgerton, many period pieces could be quite dull, but the use of colour on Anne Boleyn is striking and recalls tapestries from the time that Moore was inspired by. “The ladies in waiting that surround Anne Boleyn wore the pastel tones of the tapestry, and then you’ve got Anne Boleyn in the centre with the jewel, acidic tones. The audience’s eye was always drawn to her,” she says, noting that men weren’t the focus of this series and were shifted into the background both in terms of story and in the dark, unremarkable clothing Moore outfitted them in.

“We wanted to bring out the strong, bold, vivacious temperament that Anne Boleyn had, and that’s what we wanted to communicate about our Anne Boleyn [in the costuming],” Moore continues.

Lynsey Moore’s costume design boards. Credit: Supplied by Lynsey Moore

Because Moore and her team didn’t have time to make several full gowns for Boleyn and her ladies in waiting, they went with a “paper doll” approach, starting with a base gown for each character which they would then pin different skirts, bodices and sleeves in varying colours to, depending on what the scene called for.

“What I hadn’t factored in was that when you lace someone up, you can pull it in tighter from the back. This had to line up perfectly, which [is difficult] when you’ve got women whose bodies fluctuate throughout the month” – not to mention that Turner-Smith was breastfeeding at the time. “It caused me headache after headache, but it was the only way to tackle it.”

The costumes of ‘Anne Boleyn’. Credit: Photographer Parisa Taghizadeh/Fable Pictures/The Falen Falcon Ltd/ViacomCBS/Sony Pictures Television

Other fascinating details from during filming include the ingenuity of using waterproof Ikea bags with holes for feet cut into them to protect the long, voluminous skirts from the mud, which in turn creased the fabric (Moore says that they ended up relying on hair dryers and brushes to get rid of the mud. Why weren’t women allowed to wear pants until 100 years ago again…?), and a missing green pearl earring.

“On one infamous day, which I think is probably the proudest moment of my career, [the actress who plays Elizabeth Browne, Isabella Laughland] had two green, misshapen pearl earrings, and one of them went missing. We couldn’t buy another one…” owing to all the shops being shut and a very tight production schedule. “Lunch was served, and this pea jumped off the plate and I was like, could I? So we painted it with metallic paint, threaded it onto an earring, so in one of the scenes she was wearing a pea in one ear and a normal bead in the other, and you would never know!”

Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne and Mark Stanley as Henry VIII in ‘Anne Boleyn’. Credit: Fable Pictures

Despite all this, “we were very lucky that we were able to get all of our ducks in a row,” Moore says. “One of the good things about having such a short prep is that you haven’t got time to second-guess yourself and you have to be braver. Given more time, I don’t think I would have come up with this. I probably would have talked myself out of that decision and stuck to the rules.”

Scarlett Harris is a culture critic and author of the book A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler: An Abbreviated Herstory of World Wrestling Entertainment. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris and read her previously published work at her website, The Scarlett Woman.

 Three-part miniseries Anne Boleyn is now streaming at SBS On Demand.