If you needed another reason to watch The Collection, the first interview with Tom about the show has been posted by Drama Quarterly, and he reveals that in the first scene he shot, he was naked in the bath while his on-screen brother, Richard Coyle, chatted to him on the toilet! Read the article in full on Drama Quarterly. The Collection begins on Amazon UK Friday, September 2nd.
Riley (Da Vinci’s Demons) picks up: “It was really visceral and there’s an element of it that, despite being a fashion show, felt kind of ugly, which was appealing. The darkness behind it, just beneath the surface, is very appealing as far as a world that seems so shiny but all that glitters is not gold. “It all starts from the script and if the script is great, it makes your job a lot easier. It’s like driving a really nice car – it makes it easier to do your thing on top. If you’re polishing a turd, it makes your job a bit harder but thankfully they’re brilliant scripts.”
The actor is also full of praise for director Dearbhla Walsh, who he says shared the same passion for The Collection as Goldstick. “Dearbhla was the perfect backup because she was very excitable and cared very deeply about the project and had strong opinions,” he explains. “Even if you don’t always agree with them, it’s always nice to have someone who clearly knows what they want. You can disagree but at least you can trust someone has a vision for the show. It makes you feel safer about slipping up.”
The Collection is set in post-Occupation Paris. The story plays on the traditional upstairs-downstairs dynamics often found in period drama by splitting the fashion house into front-of-house and backstage areas.
“There’s a place where it’s all elegance and then there’s backstage where it’s catty and there’s a lot going on,” Riley reveals. “It’s something I don’t think has been done before; I don’t think anybody’s really opened the doors on a fashion house and said, ‘This is what it’s like.’ It’s an interesting backdrop. It’s like another character, this sense of having just come out of this incredibly shameful period of French history – it’s so fresh. Everyone’s reeling and trying to recover from it.”
Speaking to the trio, it’s clear they have an affinity for each other as well as the show they’re working on – a relationship they say came very naturally and easily to them. Coyle reveals he first met Riley in a Starbucks just before the first script read-through: “It was a fateful meeting. I feel like we immediately slipped into an easy working relationship.”
Riley continues: “The first scene we shot was very indicative of the brothers’ relationship. I was in the bath, getting completely naked while your brother just sits on the toilet chatting to you. It really said a lot about their relationship very quickly.
“It showed a great deal of confidence from the producers in our abilities to do that kind of thing on the first day. Similarly, the first couple of days with Mamie were crazy. They gave us our biggest, most fraught emotional scenes. Normally they let you get a feel for it but they were just like, ‘Here you go.’ But we got through it. There was a lot of generosity and goodwill and care. It’s hard when you’re thrown those tough scenes straight off the bat and everybody’s getting used to everybody else. It’s really tricky to pull that stuff on early on.”
