Vanity Fair, ITV

Vanity Fair, which tells the story of Becky Sharp’s quest to rise through the ranks of society despite her low-class background, is one of the most-loved and critically acclaimed British novels of all time.

The challenge for me as the director was to adapt this Victorian classic in a new and original way, accessible to a modern, mass audience.

I wanted to make a period drama, for people – like me – who don’t normally like period drama. Too often it can have a reverential quality that permeates both actors’ performances and the camera work, which makes the stories hard to relate to.

For me, this Vanity Fair had to feel relevant and contemporary. This begins with casting: we strove to find actors that could embrace the eccentricities and madness of the story but still deliver grounded and relatable performances.

As it is very much a London story, we strove to shoot as much as we could on location in the capital. The huge spread of the novel meant people were constantly moving between different sets and locations, and it was thanks to our brilliant location manager Ben Mangham and production designer Anna Pritchard that we able to deliver such scale and beauty. 

It also meant close collaboration with our VFX team to add what was missing at each location.

For the shooting style, I wanted a beautiful reality with huge scale and production values but still intimate and performance-focused. The story jumps from the wide vista of a battlefield with tens of thousands of men to a character alone in their bedroom. Both are equally important.

Ed Rutherford, our director of photography, and I developed a visual style that was bold and dynamic but always authentic. We chose a range of lenses to show the scale of our sets, but then added zooms to draw the viewer’s eye to the significant emotional elements.

I worked closely with the costume and design department to develop characterful colour palettes. The soft pastels and warm welcome of the Sedley house contrasts with the dark, forbidding chill of the Osbornes.

The sheer scale of the shoot meant we had to move through a huge range of locations and cross-schedule episodes constantly. It meant we were never in one place for long – and this, compounded by tricky talent availabilities and unpredictable weather, meant my first AD, Liam Lockspeiser, was one of the most important members of the crew.

As well as my right-hand man/psychiatrist/life-support mechanism, he singlehandedly masterminded the intricate complexities of this enormous endeavor. The centrepiece of this adaptation of Thackeray’s novel is the Battle of Waterloo.

Despite the battle only being mentioned briefly, its events dictate the rest of the story. Thus we were determined to portray it and really try to show the bloody, terrifying horror of the battle.

Boot camp

I wanted to surround our characters with real elements where possible, to give some sense of what it must have been like. To that end, advice from historical and military sources ensured our actors and supporting artists looked and behaved exactly as soldiers of the time would have done.

Our supporting artists went through a rigorous boot camp in the week prior to arriving on set and then surrounded our actors on the shoot. This helped us ensure their reactions were as real as possible once the cannons started fi ring. The final stage was the editing.

Here we could bring the most radical and modern elements to the show, cutting with the pace and attack of a contemporary drama and with the use of music (a score by Isobel Waller-Bridge and commercial tracks). This perhaps may ruffle a few purists’ feathers – but, as I said, this is a period drama for people who hate period drama.

Vanity Fair was an enormous production from start to finish. It was exhausting, exhilarating, difficult and delightful in equal measure.

As a director, it was the ultimate gift, and I hope the audience feels the same way. With the best cast and crew one could wish for, I went all out to deliver what I truly hope will be seen as the definitive adaptation of the story for many years to come.