The Gentlemen is real-world escapism. The Netflix series, like many of Guy Ritchie‘s films, portrays the good life. Of course, there are the consequences that come with that life, especially there are more questionable business practices and figures involved, but… it’s a good-looking life nonetheless.
Ritchie’s go-to production designer, Martyn John, takes audiences into the posh world of London and the England countryside. John also depicts underground boxing, pot farms, and decaying manors. It’s all with an eye for what’s both exquisite and specific to a character.
Literally 25 minutes after wrapping Ritchie’s next film, The Fountain of Youth, John kindly made the time to talk to Immersive Media about his work on The Gentlemen.
[Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length]
Let’s start with the home for Vinnie Jones’s character. It’s the warmest in the series. Where’d you find that location?
What we did was, the manor took place over five different locations. Badminton house is in a very different location to Vinnie Jones’ cottage, which was on an estate in Guildford. Anyway, we found the exterior of the cottage near the big house. The trouble with any location is the size, especially because we wanted the owls, the ferrets, the crow, and the fox in that set. We used real animals for a very short amount of time; we had to do that in a studio. I built this cottage based on the exterior location, but I stretched it.
We didn’t have enough money on The Gentleman, I don’t mind telling you. So what I did is I recycled a lot, I got some set donated to me by my construction manager for a show that he did, and it was all oak paneled, half-timbered flat edge. I used that for the interior of the cottage.
It was just in the right place because it had woods near it. We could see open fields. It was the perfect location, but the wrong interior. So, I just stretched it and made it much more, what’s the word? Rustic.
For the manor, how did you want to create family history there?
Well, a lot of it was to do with the portraits we put up. In all of these country house estates in England and Scotland and Ireland, there’s a huge amount of ancestry; it’s all down to portraiture, really. Whether it’s portraits of the landscape, portraits of the house, portraits of the family, that gives you a huge dynastic back catalog. As soon as you start putting loads of portraits up, it instantly gives you that world.
A lot of those houses were sort of built around 1600, 1700, 1800 depending on when the crown gave out land or money. Because aristocrats went on the grand tour through Europe, they wanted their interiors to look like the palaces of Europe, the Venetian palaces or whatever. That’s why I started using silk wallpaper in the manor.
How do you get manage to get the manor’s interiors done in four to six weeks?
I’ve just got really fantastic people that work for me. Great carpenters, great plasterers, incredible painters. I’ve got a set decorating team to go and scour prop houses or we go to a lot of auction sites and auction houses and markets. There’s a great market called Kempton where people from Europe bring stuff to London. We buy a lot of stuff from there, actually. And I bought a lot of furniture for the house from there.
Anything in particular you’re very happy to have found there?
There was the sofa, the gold one where the guy gets his head shot off against Gainsborough. I couldn’t rent a sofa or a chair there. I had to buy it since we’re going to cover it in blood. So, I found this sofa and it was so perfect for that age of house, for Badminton house, and it was completely fucked. It was all thread bare and the silk was in tatters.
Everyone said to me, “Why are you buying this shitty bit of sofa?” And I said, “Because it’s perfect, the house will be rundown.” The backstory is they’re land rich and cash poor. So, they bought this furniture and they’ve had it for 150 years, but it’s absolutely rotten and a dog sleeps on it. I found this perfect sofa, and that led me to the color scheme of the room, the gold room, et cetera. Gold looks great when you put blood all over it.
I really the color in Guy Ritchie’s work. He’s never shy there. How do you two decide on color for characters and locations?
Well, he’s got several houses. He’s got a beautiful big house in central London and an amazing house in the country. What I’ve been doing, as I’ve been having meetings with him, I ask him, “Can I go and have a look at your house please?” He’s got this amazing dressing room in London, which is British Racing Green. It’s gloss green, this dark blacky green. I didn’t use it on The Gentleman, but I used it on another film that we did called Wrath of Man. And then, he’s got this living room that is blood red.
I just wander around his house, see what he likes, and then I try to blend that into the world that we’re creating. But I love color. I just think of an exciting and strong color, it goes back to the art as well. When you look at grand paintings from Rembrandt and Gainsborough, whenever they did portraits, they’re always painting their portraits in dark rooms a lot of the time because they didn’t have the light sources that we have. Dark colors make people look so evocative.
Does working with a director with good taste make your job a lot easier?
The people that work for me that are choosing things, I tell them, “Listen, we know that’s not good enough and we know that Guy’s going to reject it. Let’s just spend the money or go up a scale or just try and make it as brilliant and as fabulous and as wonderful as possible.” I treat Guy as if I was working for the King, so it has to be the best of the best. With that remit, I find it quite easy, actually.
Since you said it was your first job with him, I’ll just say as a quick aside, I’m a fan of Wrath of Man.
Oh, really? That was my first job with him, my first production design job. I had such a nightmare getting those cash trucks. We flew one over, we flew one in a transporter plane from America, and I drove one from Ukraine. We filmed it in London and in LA, but I had to make West London look like West Hollywood. It was really, really difficult.
Well done. For you, what’s iconically London? What qualities do you really want to capture?
Oh, I think it’s the red brick. It’s the River Thames. It’s all the wonky streets, the old wonderful buildings, the half Timbered buildings, and then the new skyscrapers. You’ve got the shard, the wheel, the Tower Bridge, and Tower of London, all those iconic things. I think it is such a lovely mix of all those different historical styles and architecture. Everything comes together.
Let’s talk about cannabis farms. How’d you want to get an underground pot farm just right?
Well, I was the art director on the original movie and I found this guy, called the cannabis guy, only because he has fake cannabis plants. I said to him, “Listen, I really want to go to a dodgy cannabis farm.” He said, “I can’t take you, Martyn. It’s too dangerous.” So I said, “Well, can you get me pictures?” So, he got me pictures.
They’re in basements, they’re in attics, they’re unbelievable. And then there’s all these, you can go to these shops in London and buy cannabis farm equipment. So grow lights, water feeding stations, everything you want. You can even buy the seeds because only at certain times are the plants illegal. So, the seeds are not, but the plants are and the seed heads are, and it’s illegal to move them, but you can grow some. There are all these different rules. It was about developing a world.
Of course, for the film, we needed a lot of plants. And so, it was about making that a bit more industrial. So, taking the quirkiness of the underground plants and then making it industrial but believable that a team of five people could manage them. So, it was great.
We even went to a hemp farm in the south of England where you can grow cannabis legally. The trouble is you can’t move it. So, we bought cannabis plants, but we couldn’t move them. We needed a license to move them. It’s why we ended up going the silk route. We got silk plants made in China and then brought them over and assembled them, and 3D printed the seed heads. It was quite a process.
As someone who also writes about cannabis for a living, it looked very good.
Well, it’s really funny, I’ve got one in my bathroom in my house. Every time we have a party and people are going in the bathroom, I know they’re just trying to touch it and get the seed head off. It’s really funny. So realistic.
There’s a very unique prison for Ray Winstone’s gangster character. I mean, that barbecue alone, that’s fabulous for prison.
Listen, that’s one of the Guy’s own barbecues and tents. We had to do that really quickly. Ray [Winstone] was only available for a certain amount of time, so that was in the location garden and I brought in lots of greenery to hide the trucks and things like that. It was a very, very cold morning when we put that up. So there was frost everywhere. It was quite beautiful.
It’s funny, Pedro Almodóvar does that a lot with his productions. He’ll just run to his home and bring items to the set.
We have that all the time with Guy. He’ll say to me, “Martyn, these aren’t the right claret glasses.” And I’m going, “Oh my God, I don’t really drink claret. I dunno. What is the right one?” He says, “Don’t worry, I’ve got some in my trailer. You can borrow those.” He’s incredibly knowledgeable about the proper life and, let’s say, the improper life.
The Gentlemen is available to stream on Netflix.
