April 29, 2002 
An Extra's report about filming at Wilton House 
by "R-bob"

The main rooms used for filming were the single cubed room and the double cubed room - which has already been used in many films such as Sense and Sensibility, Mrs. Brown, The Madness of King George, and Barry Lyndon.  It was also used in real live to plan the Normandy landings in WWII.  

In C&F the double cube room was being used as a room at Westminster. A party was taking place in the room when Holles (James Bolam ) enters with his wife.  Fairfax confronts him and asks, "Holles, when will the troops be paid?"  With indifference, Holles replies, "As soon as we  can, Parliament has more pressing matters."  At this point Cromwell bursts in through the crowd with a pile of papers and says angrily, "This is not the treaty!" The argument escalates till Holles departs and Cromwell says to Lady Fairfax, sarcastically,  "Now do you see why I saved his life?"  before departing himself. 

The only reason I remember all this is because of the amount of takes due to the main cast forgetting their lines, especially Tim Roth, but despite being annoyed with himself he was in a good mood and very entertaining/inventive with his expressions of anger every time he fluffed a line, which would be good for a bloopers reel on DVD.

Another scene that was filmed featured a group of looters holding flaming torches breaking into a hall and ransacking all the valuables.  Perhaps the most interesting thing I heard was that a crate of champagne was being offered to anyone who could come up with a better title for the film.

The filming took place there [Wilton House] between 11-18th of March.  The casting call for extras was back in January and they said they'd tell people they wanted them by end of March, however no one got contacted till about 4 days before filming because they were going through budget problems.  All the crew were worried that they weren't going to get paid.  

Having heard how badly extras were often treated on other film sets, I was pleasantly surprised to find that every one was really friendly.  The assistant directors who were in charge of the extras were real helpful and we were well treated (they even let members of the public come and see the filming if they wanted - despite the fact it was inside the house.). Considering the budget and tight production schedule it was nice to be treated so well especially considering the things your read about mistreatment on big budget Hollywood films.  Plus the actors were down to earth. I only recognised Roth and Scott, and didn't realise at one point I was stood next to Olivia Williams, (or as I call her, Bruce Willis' wife from The Sixth Sense.)  

I hear that Roth ate dinner with the extras the night before and no one seemed to mind when some random extras were sitting in the chairs with the main casts names on at one point.  Since I guess your a Dougray Scott fan I should mention he seemed quite friendly and according to some female extras a bit of a charmer.  

In case your interested the camera work seemed very stylised and the camera movie around on the dolly in practically every shot (which is in keeping with the style Mike Barker talked about in the press release).  I didn't hear anything about release dates, but I am willing to bet my life it will be distributed in America and I get the feeling it's going to be one of those high profile/award winning/critically acclaimed - you know what I mean, type of films.

You might want to mention to British readers that James Bolam (Holles) Is currently starring in 'Born and Bred' on BBC 1 on Sunday nights.

- "R-bob"