Katie got so cold on set of Merlin that the costume department had a tiger-shaped hot water bottle made for her to keep warm.
🐯❤️
Of course, she named him Hugo 😂
I appreciate that this is sweet, but like. Can we maybe consider? Giving her better clothes??
I just. I don’t see Richard Wilson having such shit trousers that offscreen he was given a safety-pin shaped like a cartoon whale to keep the back up.
I get that it was budgeted. Was it just budgeted for one of the only women in the entire cast though?
@username0derogatory0
The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have the budget for wardrobe. Although Merlin admittedly did have a smaller budget compared to a lot of shows at the time, but Morgana’s costumes were intentionally made differently from what most of the other noblewomen wore.
Her dresses were thinner and used less fabric, which meant they weren’t as warm. It also made it harder to add padding underneath without changing the shape of the dress.
If you compare Morgana’s dresses to Gwen’s, for example, Queen Gwen’s are noticeably thicker and have a lot more fabric.
Morgana’s costumes were designed to be bold and eye-catching, but also much more fitted and revealing of her figure.
That was a deliberate choice by the costume designers.
You can see the same thing with her sparring armor, which was much more corset-like and fitted than one would expect.
In fact, one of the official Merlin books actually mentions this. Arthur notices that Morgana doesn’t stay out on the castle battlements for very long because of the wind. He even thinks about how her dresses are basically all gauzy sleeves and flimsy material, so it makes sense that she’d get cold.
Arthur: “That dress of hers, all gauzy sleeves and flimsy material, had been the wrong choice for watching the show from up here on the battlements.”
And what’s interesting is that the show itself makes it pretty clear that Camelot’s wardrobe is from incredibly expensive materials.
In Season 5, Gaius looks at Queen Gwen’s cloak and says: “Raw imported silk. Traders ask a small fortune for it. Whoever that belongs to is extremely wealthy.”
Merlin then asks about the embroidery, and Gaius explains that it’s woven with silver and gold threads and that only people of the highest rank could afford something like that.
So Camelot clearly wasn’t cheaping out when it came to clothing.
And when it came to Morgana, Uther definitely wasn’t going to spare the expense. She was his ward and a member of the royal family. He was going to make sure she had the best.
Morgana’s dresses were clearly a deliberate choice.
Her character simply liked wearing gowns that were lighter, more delicate, and fitted in a way that highlighted her figure. And honestly, that fits her character perfectly.
(Source: The Poisoned Chalice book)
