Producer - Malcolm Craddock

Malcolm Craddock was always interested in the idea behind FRANCES TUESDAY.

“What first attracted me to the production was the writer Nick Collins’ original idea about a woman who has to change her entire personality and her face. I thought it was a very interesting notion – how would anyone cope with it?

“Frances hasn’t done anything terrible in falling in love with a man who turns out to be a criminal. When Trent accosts her in an art gallery she is put on the spot. From then on, she has to decide whether she should betray the man she loves. She doesn’t do it lightly, partly because he’s not the sort of person you’d cross.

“Frances hands over her boyfriend Lucas Pilgrim to the police but pays a huge personal price personally. She loses everything that she has - her life and her appearance. The transformation she goes through is incredibly painful.”

Malcolm had to decide how to cast the production.

“A lot of people said we should use two actresses and we were originally going to have Tamzin Outhwaite as the beautiful butterfly emerging from the chrysalis after surgery. But we realised the audience would know what she was going to look like, so we turned it around so that she would play the first Frances and then be disguised.

“I think it’s so brave of Tamzin to take on the role, having a whole 90-minute part where you are playing someone with a different face. She’s a very accomplished actress and a lovely person. I would have complained at going through that long make-up job but she didn’t.

“I’ve been really thrilled with all the cast. We’ve got actors like Douglas Henshall and Lennie James who have been in films and not overused in television drama. I particularly like the triangular situation between our three leads. Tamzin is playing a strong but vulnerable woman, Douglas is the villain but he plays it in a very low key way; he’s charming but you occasionally get an insight into what a terrifying person he is. And Lennie comes across as very pushy as Trent. He has a real urgency to see justice done.”

The drama has two distinct parts, focusing on Frances West before and after her change of identity. Part one tackles Frances’ dilemma over betraying Lucas and the consequences of her actions, while the second part asks whether she will recover the child she left behind in her old life.

“Frances is persuaded that her child Sarah would be safer somewhere else. That, of course, is a tremendous wrench. But when she finds out Lucas has been released from prison and wants to have access to their daughter she faces another dilemma. As the father he has the right of access and she can’t do anything about it because she’s supposed to be dead.

“Not only does Frances look different, but she is different – she’s tougher and stronger because of what she has to do. Will she recover her child or be exposed for who she really is and killed?”

Malcolm admits the production had its challenging moments.

“It’s ambitious drama and the stunt where Frances’ death is staged was very hairy. We only had a limited time to do it and needed to close roads, get helicopters into the air and plunge a car off a cliff. The schedule has to run like clockwork. If the weather is bad, all your plans go out of the window. It all went terribly well but I’ve done enough stunts to know that sometimes it doesn’t.

“Jon Sen handled the stunt really well. He’s quite a new director on the scene. The thriller is a much-used genre on television and I wanted someone who could help us give a fresh look to it. “I love the way he gets a feeling of location into his pieces and he managed to do that in FRANCES TUESDAY. We’re given a fresh look at London. There’s a tendency for television drama to feature a lot of domestic scenes. It’s a challenge to break out of that.

“Trefor Proud’s transformation of Tamzin is fantastic, too. I didn’t know him before but he stood out because of his experience. We all felt very confident with Trevor.”

Adds Malcolm: “I’m very pleased with how it looks. We wanted it to be high concept television and I think it has a contemporary, sharp, glossy feel. It makes the audience work a little bit, not spoon-feeding them everything along the way. People like something a bit more challenging without it having to be very gritty and grainy.”

Malcolm and his company Picture Palace Productions are now working on a number of new projects including a one-off film telling the real life story of a family who have their children taken away from them.

 

Make-Up Designer - Trefor Proud

Changing Tamzin Outhwaite’s face for FRANCES TUESDAY is the biggest transformation Oscar winning make-up artist Trefor Proud has ever had to do.

“I have been doing make-up for 18 years but I haven’t done anything that has involved such an extreme change before – it’s a total transformation. It was difficult because there were so many factors involved but I think we pulled it off.”

The two-hour process involved applying a prosthetic nose, changing the lift of Tamzin’s eyebrows and cheekbones, putting in a dental plate, together with coloured contact lenses and a wig.

“The first thing we would do is wrap her hair in a stocking cap then the nose would be applied and the edges blended away. The nose was moulded from a cast of Tamzin’s face and a fresh one was made every day – sometimes two a day.

“The nose itself was cast into a mould made out of gelatine. We made it slightly longer than Tamzin’s own and more turned up at the end. We matched it to Tamzin’s own skin tones and then she was made paler afterwards.

“A pale base was applied to make her look slightly washed out. She had face pulls applied to above her eyebrows, which lifted and pulled the whole shape of her eyebrows and upper eyelids.”

Tamzin’s brown eyes were turned grey using pale grey contact lenses and Trefor also used eye-shadows and lipsticks to bring out the changes in her appearance.

“Her eye make-up after Frances undergoes plastic surgery was the complete opposite of before. She started with blacks and browns to give her a sexy, bright look but in part two it was lavender and only on the top lid, with no mascara.

“I completely changed the shape of her top lip. She started with glossy, bright colours and afterwards changed to dark, matte colours. We deliberately switched the emphasis on to her mouth because as Tamzin the most noticeable thing is her eyes.”

The dental plate and wig, a short brown bob, were the final touches. “I put in a dental plate because it alters the shape of her front teeth and gives the impression of higher cheek bones. It was a process of trying things out and we went through a variety of different looks until we found one everyone was happy with.”

Trefor admires Tamzin’s enthusiasm for the project.

“Sometimes when I looked after her on set I didn’t know what to check first. Her contact lenses would make her eyes run and she couldn’t touch her eyes or scratch her head. Even though we got it down to one and a half hours by the end, it was a difficult make-up for her both mentally and physically. But she never complained once.”

Trefor won an Academy Award for his work on the film Topsy-Turvy and his other credits include Goldeneye, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gladiator and Underworld.