In the world of His Dark Materials, the Magisterium – the governing body of Lyra Belacqua’s world – has an extremely domineering presence, ruling with fear and the iron fist of extremist religious beliefs.
Season 3 of the BBC series, based on the book trilogy of the same name by Philip Pullman sees the return of Will Keen as Father President Hugh MacPhail as he continues to desperately search for and eliminate Lyra (Will’s real-life daughter Dafne Keen) due to the belief that she is a second Eve.
The Magisterium headquarters are stark and cold, an accurate representation of the men who rule behind its walls.
However, if viewers look a little closer, they might be able to spot secret Easter Eggs hidden in the decor by production design company Painting Practice, as revealed in a behind-the-scenes featurette shared exclusively by Metro.co.uk.
In the short clip, Robyn Paiba, the series supervising art director, and Joel Collins, executive producer and production designer, explain how a specially-designed frieze in the Magisterium’s new set in Geneva paid homage to several of the creators of the show.
‘The frieze in the Magisterium tells the story of the League of St. Alexander,’ Robyn said, referencing an organisation founded by Mrs Coulter to recruit children to act as informants in schools.
‘And within that we always like to have a bit of fun by carving in or painting in people’s faces,’ she added.
Joel added: ‘As a designer, I can’t help myself but use Easter Eggs. The frieze in the chapel starts with [executive producer] Dan McCulloch as a young man and ends with Dan McCulloch is an old man with a beard.’
Executive producer Jane Tranter is ‘right in the middle of it’, while the TV adaptation’s writer Jack Thorne can also be seen wearing ‘a jaunty pair of underpants’.
‘Basically, it’s quite a fun frieze, where we populated it with a lot of the people on the show. We didn’t tell anyone, and obviously, it’s quite obvious when you look at it. You can see our faces,’ he said.
Will shared how ‘fascinating’ he found it working as an actor on the set of the Magisterium, the base for which switched from London to Geneva in the third season.
‘All of the sets have been incredibly sort of clean and spare. They’ve been devoid of sort of elements of life, in a way. It’s a fascinating thing as an actor, that if that’s the world that you’re inhabiting, what that does to who you are,’ he said.
Another important aspect of the Magisterium is the chapel, where fresco paintings of Adam and Eve have been painted on the walls.
‘So that chapel is the heart of the Magisterium,’ Robyn explained. ‘And the idea behind that was that it had fresco paintings, which detailed the story of Adam and Eve. So that was its own special build of hand painting the frescoes. That was quite an achievement in its own right.’
Joel added that it was a ‘real pleasure’ to create and watch it ‘come to life’, so much so that the crew started acting as though it was an actual chapel or a museum.
‘People would get very quiet like you’re in a museum or something. I mean, the whole of the Magisterium had that impact on people. It was a real fun thing to do,’ he recalled.
His Dark Materials next airs Saturday December 24 at 7pm on BBC One and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
