THE QUEEN AND I
Creative Direction and Design
The answer was to put the story where it happens. The final executions are set in front of Westminster and Buckingham Palace, and I treated those buildings as characters rather than backdrops. Pairing the most familiar symbols of British power with Walliams’s scheming gave the images an instant tension. It rooted a far-fetched story in places everyone recognises, and that made the joke land faster.
It started with the scamps. These rough sketches sold the idea to stakeholders before anything was shot or built, and they set the tone for everything that followed: the comedy, the dynamic between the characters, and the sense of a country turned on its head. I’ve included them alongside the finals because they show the thinking behind the finished work, which is often the most interesting part.
We explored several routes, but kept returning to the simplest. In Sue Townsend’s story, a newly elected republican Prime Minister abolishes the monarchy and moves the royal family into a council house. The whole premise comes down to one act: taking the crown. So that became the image, with David Walliams’s Jack Barker lifting it away.
Everything depended on his expression. Too gleeful and he’d become a pantomime villain; too serious and the comedy would be lost. On the shoot we worked on finding the point in between: the sly, barely hidden satisfaction of a politician doing something outrageous while appearing perfectly reasonable. That subtlety is what makes the image funny, and it’s what sells the tone of the series.
Other Projects
LAST PANTHERS
RELEEESE
