Victoria season 3: Jenna Coleman and Tom Hughes on why this series sees Victoria and Albert at their ‘most broken’

For the first time in the history of ITV’s Victoria, Jenna Coleman, the actress who plays Queen Victoria, is finally the same age as the royal.

“She’s 30/31 now, but has seven children,” Coleman explains. “And what is interesting is when you look at portraits of her at the time and when I look at the edit of the show, I think, I look so young to have had seven children. But I am at that age now when she is now in the series and I just think, I don’t know how she managed, all the time.”

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Why did Victoria series 3 air in America before the UK?

Victoria, the popular dramatisation of the life of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, written by Daisy Goodwin, returns to screens for its third series on Sunday 24 March. Viewers will rejoin the retelling of history at around 1848, where revolutions are brewing around Europe and Victoria is pregnant with her sixth child.

Speaking at a press event for the show, Coleman says: “It’s difficult to think about how she even physically coped, childbirth without pain relief. Childbirth as dangerous as it was then. I mean, she was only four foot 11 and I think physically what that did to her, carrying children for that long.

“Also every time she just recovered and was just about to get back to having her independence and having all of these freedoms that she valued, it was always the moment she found out she was pregnant again. She called it ‘caught’. She was ‘caught’ again.”

Queen Victoria’s diaries give Coleman inspiration

Coleman spent a lot of time reading Queen Victoria’s diaries to help her understand what she was going through: “It’s so great to be able to dip into these. I could literally spend my life researching each series, as you get to kind of hear her voice and get into the rhythms of her day to day life.

“For  the revolution in particular, historically you can read Victoria’s version of when King Louis Philippe from France is overthrown and turns up at her door. I think for the first time for her to be face to face with what could happen to her, that kind of gives her quite a big identity crisis. But it’s interesting, as it really fills in history in an emotional way because you can see the story literally through her eyes and she’s really descriptive about all of this.”

For Albert, played by Tom Hughes, the series will cover his great exhibition of 1851 while he’s dealing with his own demons – namely the truth of the relationship between him and his uncle, Leopold, and the marriage issues between him and his wife.

Hughes says: “The revelation that came from Leopold [in the last series] changed the fabric and structure of everything for him – his whole life is a potential lie. The emotional impact has really rocked him. He’s also adjusting to being a father of four. But all of this causes friction with the person he’s emotionally closest to, which is Victoria. They’ve drifted from each other.

“In this series, I don’t think they’ll ever be more fractious from each other in this moment.”

While Hughes is currently playing Albert aged 32, he obviously knows that his time on the show is limited, as Albert died aged just 42.

When asked how he feels about this, he says: “Well, I can’t change the history! To be honest, knowing the arc of this story from the beginning to the end was something that allayed my usual reticence to join a long-running series. The beauty of Albert in trying to bring him to life is that I know where his story  begins and ends.”

The truth of Victoria and Albert’s sex ban

While Coleman and Hughes are reported to be dating in real life, the show’s creator and writer, Daisy Goodwin says she has great fun finding out what really went on behind the on-screen romantic life of the royals.

When asked about the truth of Victoria putting a “sex ban” Albert during this time in history, she says: “I think from the pattern of children – she’s having a child a year, then there’s a gap – and if you look at what’s going on their marriage, there’s a reason. They’ve come to a point of great conflict and that’s something we seen in the show.

“Why is there this gap of no children for three or four years? I looked at her diaries and I discovered why that was. It’s a real turning point as they’re a very physical couple, but tension are exacerbated by the arrival of a two new character, Feodora, Victoria’s sister – who really gets under her skin- and Lord Palmerston, who is a swaggering, arrogant, entitled womaniser.”

If it sounds like it could be a soap opera, or tabloid gossip, it’s all there in the history books – and one of the reasons that make royal-based shows like Victoria or Netflix’s The Crown so popular.

Goodwin is quick to point out: “Gossip is a great deal of history, and I put a lot of that in. All the juicy bits.”

Coleman also talks about one of the most emotional storylines for her to play in this season, which is when unflattering etchings of Victoria as a mother are released to the press and she looks “like a nursemaid”. By today’s standards, she’s mum-shamed online.

Coleman says: “She is absolutely mortified and hates it. It’s taken so much for her  to overcome people’s perceptions of ‘she’s just a little girl’ and ‘she’s not experienced enough, she’s just she’s a woman and she’s small’. It’s been so hard for her to get that authority and the fear is that if people see her just as ‘just a woman’ and as a mother in particular what does that mean? Can she no longer have authority?”

The future of Victoria

As this series controversially aired in America before the UK, we know now that it ends at the Great Exhibition, and that Albert is still alive. Both the actors and the writer are thinking about the future though – and how long Coleman can continue to play HRH.

Coleman says: “You know, these are conversations that still need to be had. We kind of have always done it on a series by series basis but there definitely has got to be the point where someone else takes over.”

Goodwin adds: “Jenna is such a great actress she can do whatever she wants, there’s definitely another series for our current stars. And then, who knows? Definitely at some point we’d have to recast as although Jenna is very convincing, right now she’s playing her real age and she very brilliantly played 10 years younger and she could play 10 years older, but 20 years would be a stretch.

“I have an actress in mind, but I don’t want to say in case it’s jinxed.

“Who says it has to be a woman?” she jokes.

Victoria starts on ITV on Sunday 24 March at 9pm.