Gabby: Yeah the group of helpers were friends from work, friends from the gym, James' students from University, basically anyone who breathed an interest and wasn't strong enough to say no. It was a slow start waiting for the first load to be picked up. As we started filling the flat my worst thoughts were realised, we are going to need more and more stuff just to make it look lived in. We did so many trips picking up lamps, photo frames, mugs, pictures. Watching the end product is actually very surreal for those close to us because you keep on getting constant glimpses of things that are familiar to them.
The easiest room for me in the end, was the very thing that had given me such a bad headache the day before - Beth's bedroom. A few weeks earlier I had asked my boss Steve at DEFRA what sort of nicknacks his 14 year old daughter had in her. He kindly brought me photos the next day. The day after he offered a spare bed, bedside table, lamp...in the end he brought a people carrier full of stuff, including his daughter (also named Beth), who completely constructed the whole room without me even stepping foot in it! It looked great, and we managed to get around the wooden chest problem, just, by covering it with a curtain and making it a sideboard. The single bed only literally squeezed in, and if the cover wasn't in the way you could actually close the door, but that's literally how tight it was! I brought in my sister to cook Indian for the masses, then I send a group of friends out with money and a shopping list of things to dress the set, and finally after a lot of effort we started to have something that looked like a home.
James: By chance I saw Selina, Chris & Jen and they drove past my house. They were all quite jovial and excited from the looks of things. Larry and I took them shopping to get some food and then we showed them their rooms in student halls. I think it was all quite surreal.
When I took them up to the set they were quite impressed that we had managed to make this home out of nothing. It was certainly an achievement. I think the natural reaction would have been to just film in an already established house, but that flat was their flat. Every piece of furniture that was in their had been put there, saying something about their character. Yoga books beside Ann's bed, childish posters on Beth's wall... all of it was intentional and built around their character.
That night, Gab and I stayed at the location. It felt like the moment of truth. There was nothing we could do at this late stage to stop, it either works tomorrow or it falls on it's ass.
Gabby:It was all very nerve racking and very stressful.
