When watching The Gentlemen, I’m sure a lot of us went through the same thought process of wondering, ‘they didn’t actually buy a bunch of weed plants for this… did they?’
Wonder no more, as a production designer for the new Guy Ritchie show has revealed the way in which they created the family’s sprawling marijuana empire.
The show, a spin-off of the 2019 film of the same name, features an aristocrat inheriting a mansion, only to find out it has a secret weed-farming business hidden within the grounds.
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With Guy Ritchie directing, it has unsurprisingly been a smash hit on Netflix.
The show features an absolute load of ‘weed’, but we can confirm that Guy Ritchie was not actually buying tonnes of the illegal drug for his show.
In an interview with production designer Martyn John for Variety, he revealed that the weed created for the show wasn’t weed... but also wasn’t even hemp.
Regarding using hemp, the production designer said: "You can’t move it. Every time you move it from the studio to say the back of a lorry, you need a licence, so we didn’t do that."
Rather than go through this hassle, he found an ingenious solution – printing leaves onto silk in China.
He went on to say: “We imported them and made the weed plants in various stages of growth. And I 3D printed seed heads to stick on the weed plants.”
Whilst many of us will be devastated to find out that Guy Ritchie wasn’t actually starting his own weed empire for the show, this is as cool an alternative as you can think of.
This wasn’t the only hack for the show which the designer revealed, either.
In creating the grand set of the mansion needed for the show, he used existing pieces from the location as much as he could.
The goal was aristocratic drug dealers – so quality was a necessity – but when the location wasn’t able to provide for him, he had to turn to other methods to fill out the set.
In some cases, this was eBay, country house auctions, and furniture dealers.
In others he had to go the same route as those of us decorating our first post-uni home.
He said: "I also used TJ Maxx and Ikea, but I’ve got to be very careful with how I use that stuff.”
There you have it – if you fill out your new home with TJ Maxx and Ikea furniture, you share more similarities with this shows opulent mansion than you’d think.
John’s practical methods to get around these issues may not be ‘Christopher Nolan planting 500 acres of corn then reselling it for a profit on Interstellar level cool’ – but it’s definitely much cooler than you’d expect.
Topics: Netflix, TV, The Gentlemen
Michael Slavin