Sports Cars, Italian Villas & Bobby’s Sauna: What’s New In The Gentlemen Season 2?

The Gentlemen returns to screens today – and it promises all of the dark humour, criminal action and stunning locations we loved in season 1, and more. Season 2 of Guy Ritchie’s Netflix hit picks up at Halstead Manor with the same countryside charm that made its first outing such a success, but trades a handful of its British backdrops for the sun-baked villas of Lake Maggiore. Production designer Martyn John was tasked with building (and extending) The Gentlemen universe this season, returning to the show with a brief to go even bigger: more locations, more grandeur, and an entire new country to play with.

So, what can we expect from season 2? ‘You’d better buckle in, because it’s a faster, scarier, more wonderful, more colourful ride than last time – and we go to some incredible places,’ says John. ‘I just think audiences are going to love it. I loved working on it and designing it – it was a real treat, and I feel very privileged to create a world that’s so high-octane.’

Ahead of The Gentlemen season 2′s official premiere on Netflix, we caught up with John to find out how he constructed the grand country homes and classical Italian villas in the show – and how he built a lakeside sauna specially for Guy Ritchie.

Martyn John On Designing English Estates & Italian Villas For The Gentlemen Season 2

Hi Martyn, how was it coming back to The Gentlemen for season 2?

Season 2 was quite amazing, because it was bigger, better, more lavish and grand – and the storylines were bigger. It was quite a challenge, actually, but I think we’ve made something that’s going to knock everybody’s socks off. I’m really excited about it.

Talk us through your planning process – what was new for you this time round?

In The Gentlemen season 1, we wanted to establish Halstead Manor as Badminton House. I think we used around five locations. We had some set builds, we had on-the-ground locations and we had Badminton, and that all made up Halstead Manor. Going forward for season 2, we couldn’t go back to the places where we’d been previously, because those locations were no longer available and we didn’t have the wherewithal to build sets for Halstead again. (And when you’re building sets of that grandness and stature, it costs a lot of money.)

So I had to find more locations that would match Halstead Manor. We switched a lot of spaces we already had – we used bedrooms for offices, found new rooms, and we didn’t go back to the drawing room, so we could put things in different areas. We had a ballroom, we had garages for where the hunt happened, and things like that. It was a lovely progression, and we could explore different sides of Halstead that we didn’t have before. It ended up being really exciting.

Badminton House stands in for Halstead Manor

Did you beat your dressing plan record this season?

I usually do about 50 dressing plans [scene illustrations] for each episode – every set gets a dressing plan, and every episode has a number of scenes or sets. So yeah, it’s usually about 50 per episode, and that’s for just under an hour. If you think about the whole eight episodes, you’re looking at 400 set plans.

It feels like a graphic novel at that point, doesn’t it?

Well, it is, really. You see my file at the end. I do everything hand-drawn and then we convert it digitally. So it is like a storyboard of the show, but with the practical, logistical side of it too – where the furniture is going, how many sofas, how many pictures, where the lights are going, the drapes, and so on.

What runs through your mind when planning out the rooms in Halstead Manor?

When scouting for locations, I always think that it has to be appropriate – for the story, the character, the scene. My likes and dislikes don’t come into it – it’s just got to be: is it grand enough? Is it big enough? Does it have enough doors? Can we light it? What’s the colour scheme? (I like to thread a colour all the way through an episode.) Does that fit, or does it jar? Sometimes we want it to jar – do you have men in dark suits walking into a dark-panelled room? Do you have the lady then in a white suit? We play with that all the time as designers.

You can also have fun playing around with what the historical details; we think a lot about how we can contrast or emphasise these characterful features. For instance, we went very Ralph Lauren with Eddie’s office, but it still had a Georgian/Edwardian, feel to it. So you can play with different styles, genres and colours – it’s very exciting, this show, for me.

Lake Maggiore

Part of the charm of The Gentlemen is these grand stately homes in the British countryside – but what sets season 2 apart is that you go beyond Britain to Italy. Were there any specific locations or scenes that were a highlight for you this season?

One of the major plotlines of season 2 is the idea of two crime dynasties marrying. Halstead Manor is the face of the British dynasty, so I wanted an Italian equivalent. There were lots of fantastic villas around Lake Como, but when we went to Lake Maggiore, I found this villa which was a very similar colour to Halstead – the stucco was painted this ochre colour – and it had the most amazing lake frontage, so we could bring the Riva boats in.

It was everything we couldn’t do at Halstead, and it was the Italian version. It had the scale, it had the grandeur, it had the religious connotations that Halstead had, but a bit more muted – and in Italy they go for it, with pictures of Madonnas, sculptures on the staircase, the way it’s all carved. The villa was faded as well, a bit like Halstead is faded. So it was the perfect fit.

Then the big problem was we couldn’t film everything in the two weeks we had in Italy, so I had to bring certain things back to Britain – the tiger cage, for instance, that was built at West Wycombe in High Wycombe. We had to match it so that the audience believes it’s just behind the villa in Italy – matching the planting, the sculptures, blending it all together. That was a really big thing. And then we had to find the hotel, the church where the wedding takes place, and the square and the villa, all in the same village. I managed to do all that, and then it became, logistically, a winner.

(L to R) Harry Goodwins, Kaya Scodelario, Logan Dean, Michael Vu in The Gentlemen season 2 (c) Netflix

What was it like finding the wedding location and preparing it for such a massive occasion?

We had to ask permission from the priest, and he said, ‘Yes, you can film in my church – provided no one dies.’ A bit of a tricky ask for The Gentlemen. I was like, ‘How are we going to know if someone dies or not?’

We had a window of about two days to get the church ready, really, really quickly. I brought florists over from London – we used a lot of silk flowers, made in a warehouse, and transported them to Italy day before. I wanted it to feel really Italian, so I brought olive trees into the church. It was just a lovely thing to do. You don’t often get to do weddings on TV, but when you do, you can really explore and make it more fabulous than you’d normally be able to. It was wonderful.

You got to play with a lot more props in Italy too – the Ferrari, the seaplane. Did you have more fun there?

Oh definitely. It took some planning though. If you’re driving a car through an Italian landscape, you’ve got to think about what colour it’s going to be. The silver Ferrari we had was incredible – it looked beautiful. And then I found this yellow seaplane, flying against the blue sky, and the Riva boats with the aquamarine upholstery – it was just a dream.

We were very lucky, because everything looks amazing in Italy. It’s got a faded grandeur – they build their buildings and do nothing to them for hundreds of years, and they get better and better. They don’t have the same extremes of weather that we do, for as long as we do. So, for us, it was just about choosing the right colours. For instance, in the hotel they had upholstery that was orange and cream, and I found these orange and cream umbrellas for the terrace. (The hotel actually said, ‘Can we keep them, because they work so well?’) It’s just about seeing what people already have and maybe moving it from one room to another, accentuating the palette. But Italy made the job much easier.

Bobby Glass’ sauna was built from scratch by Martyn John and his team (c) Netflix

Back to Britain. One space we’re loving this season is Bobby’s sauna. I heard you built it from scratch?

So Guy [Ritchie] has a sauna on one of the lakes at his estate, and we ended up talking about it at some length. Eventually, he said to me, ‘Do you know what, Martyn? I’d love it if it was on a pontoon, and we could float it out onto the lake.’ And I had to say that we couldn’t really do that, because of electrics and the film crew – think about it, there’s 200 people behind the camera and five in front.

But we didn’t have to scrap the idea completely. We could put it on the edge of a lake, so we can still see the lake. Guy then asked, ‘Can we then go down through the floor into the lake, as a plunge pool?’ And I said, ‘Of course we can’ – grandly agreeing to it, and then having to make it work. I wanted it to look like a Russian dacha, with all the lovely detail, as if it had been there for a long time. It was a really fun set to do – really, really fun. After filming, Guy wanted it for his own lake, but things like that don’t really move.

Another standout comes early on in season 2: the gun room. What was it like kitting out that space and leaning into the Britishness of the hunt?

Okay, that was fun. I went to look at a few rooms at Badminton House – and while they have amazing shoots with a hundred guns, their actual gun room was tiny. You can’t ever have tiny spaces on a film set. So I found a location – a beautiful panelled room at Swakeleys House [also used for the rehab centre in season 2] – and I built the cabinets. There were six of these beautiful cabinets, and we covered them in baize. I originally had doors on the cabinets, because every gun has to be locked away, but then the reflections were a real problem, so I built units in the middle for the cartridges and the belts and everything, and put the trophies around the walls. The guns we used were also a highlight; we had some British-made models from Holland & Holland, ad a small collection of international brands. It was just the most joyous set to do. But it was all based on what they have at Badminton – I just made it bigger.

Swakeleys House stood in for the gun room at Halstead Manor (c) Netflix

What was your standout space from The Gentlemen season 2?

I think it was Bella’s [Benedetta Porcaroli] bedroom in the Italian villa. We found this villa with the most amazing room, which had a balcony – you open the doors and you can see the lake. The villa had been built in the 1820s or something, so it was really historic, and they had some – I’ll say odd – furniture in there, which they’d obviously had for a while, or inherited from another house. I asked if we could remove the bed and some of the furniture, which they agreed to. But a lot of the other furniture was really beautiful, so we kept that, and the wallpaper was beautiful.

I had a portrait painted of Benedetta, based on a John Singer Sargent painting that Italian Vogue used for a photo shoot of her – one of those lovely, cyclical, full-moment things. I put this portrait – it’s huge, about six foot tall – over the bed. And then we found a bed, believe it or not, on eBay, which had mirrors, and we had it upholstered. I thought that was the most beautiful set. When it’s full of flowers, it’s very romantic. It was rather beautiful.

Bella’s room looks out over Lake Maggiore (c) Netflix

Any fun behind-the-scenes stories you can tell us about?

I was moving house while we were preparing for season 2, and I cleared out my storage shed – which is three garages. A lot of the stuff I’d outgrown ended up furnishing Geoff’s cottage. The leather chairs he sits in, a lot of the pictures, are from my old house.

He has such an eclectic space as well.

Yeah, it was the most wonderful set to put together. We bought the kitchen off eBay – somebody was throwing it out. The kitchen table is mine, the leather chairs are mine, there’s some cabinets in there, and a lot of the knick-knacks too. When we’re finishing on a film or series, sometimes there’s a load of stuff that’s just going to go in a skip, so I’ll put it in the boot of my car and take it home – it’ll come in handy. And it did this time, for Geoff’s cottage.

Italian interiors from The Gentlemen season 2 (c) Netflix

We heard that last season you took a piece of The Gentlemen home with you: the silk wallpaper.

Yeah, Loulou [Bontemps], the show’s costume designer helped me with that. I said to her, ‘Look, I’ve got a metre of this silk wallpaper, could you make it into a waistcoat so I could wear it to the Emmys?’ She said, ‘Absolutely, darling.’ So I’ve got a piece of the wallpaper as a waistcoat. It was really, really wonderful – I felt so dandy, and so Halstead Manor-ish. It was great.

WATCH

The Gentlemen season 2 is now streaming on Netflix. netflix.com