It's not easy taking over as a director of a beloved show with a completely new cast, but for Kiwi Jessica Hobbs, The Crown has been her most rewarding job.
Last week at the UK Women in TV and Film Awards Helena Bonham-Carter declared Hobbs to be her 'favourite director' as Hobbs was awarded the "Director of the Year" award.
Hobbs has been directing Bonham-Carter and Olivia Colman in the third series of the wildly popular Netflix show.
Jessica Hobbs on the set of "The Crown" Photo: supplied / Des Willie
Also under her belt are stints on Broadchurch and the four part TV thriller Apple Tree Yard.
Christchurch-born Hobbs got her first big break directing Australian show Heartbreak High after 8 years as an assistant director.
Hobbs tells Kim Hill that working on The Crown is the best thing she’s ever done.
“I’m not being paid to say that, it was a brilliant experience. Wonderful people, incredibly supportive, really well-resourced, and really interesting material. As a New Zealander coming onto this, you have a full research team and each decade you can go into the details and specifics.
“I’ve never worked on something of this scale before and I’m relishing it.”
She says the show is in-between truth and fiction and part of her job is to broaden the appeal of the show to people who might not necessarily watch a drama or be interested in the royals.
She says that while show did not need to seek a royal approval to go ahead, they have royal advisors on the team.
“There’s a lot of truth and there’s some fictional threads, I would say… it’s a historical drama based on events that have happened.”
Hobbs had a bit of a challenge on her plate taking on The Crown in its third season and its completely new cast after the success of the previous two. However, she thinks people have taken to the new actors.
“We were petrified. Every day we shot, every day we talked about it… it was a huge risk and, I thought, a brilliant thing to do.
“I know, for the actors, they really needed to find a way they could inhabit it. The really beautiful thing that happened is that the previous cast and the new cast had contact with each other and blessings were given.”
She says the show is the most time absorbing thing she’s worked on and the reason they have multiple directors is because it takes a year alone for her to direct two episodes.
“Because you’ve got more time, you can really go into huge amounts of detail. You still move at a relatively fast pace on set, that’s to do with the logistics of the programme. You’ve got two directors working at the same time shooting in different parts of the country… that’s where the complications come in, the scale of it.”
As for what’s next, Hobbs is already hard at work on The Crown season four which introduces Princess Diana.
