When Rachael Stirling and Jodhi May, stars of erotic TV drama, Tipping the Velvet, had tea with designer Elspeth Gibson, it was an excuse to indulge their passion for gossip, gowns and gorgeous cakes.
Three acts of a real-life costume drama are being played out at the designer Elspeth Gibson's Knightsbridge shop. The scene is all set for some classic female bonding over seriously desirable cakes at a Victorian-themed tea-party, but the actresses are late. It seems their taxi has taken the scenic route to our photo shoot where their makeover awaits. With her melodramatic mobile screeching "like an Egyptian bordello", Rachael Stirling and Jodhi May, co-stars in the BBC's controversial and erotic new three-part drama, Tipping the Velvet, finally arrive.
The two girls dart behind the arras of the changing room curtains to get ready for their transformation scene from identikit T-shirted jean-queens to spangled divas in beaded, feathered and embroidered gowns. It's no accident that they've chosen to hang out here: the sensual luxury of Gibson's designs evokes the aesthetic and emotional mood of Tipping the Velvet.
Andrew Davies's adaptation of Sarah Waters's award-winning debut novel charts the journey of self-discovery by oyster-girl Nan through the demi-monde of 1890s London towards lesbian true love with suffragette Florence. In her first lead role, the 25-year-old Rachael, daughter of Dame Diana Rigg, stars as Nan, while 27-year-old Jodhi plays Florence, an intense bluestocking not unlike the Oxford-educated Jodhi herself.
"This is a new experience, being frivolous," says Jodhi, who has been known to wear the austere chic of Comme des Garça;ons. Despite claiming that the only label she looks for is a machine-washable one, Rachael pounces on an emerald-green medieval-style gown, which she slips off nut-brown shoulders (she's just back from a holiday in France with DJ boyfriend John Green) and accessorises with silver strappy Gina sandals and a long-stemmed red rose ("so handy for hailing taxis with").
Act Two unfolds as the girls establish their different personalities after being let loose on Elspeth's dressing-up box. Jodhi drapes herself across the sofa and sips tea, a veteran of so many tight corsets in costume dramas (Daniel Deronda is the next one) that she opts for the embroidered but casual clothes in the collection. "Jodhi is the dreamy one who likes floaty pastels, whereas Rachael likes to take risks with vivid colours and fitted shapes," observes Gibson, as Stirling grabs a pistachio suede jacket made from goatskin and trimmed with fluffy white fur. "I wanna be a snow pixie!"
Not only does Rachael look like Dame Diana, but she wisecracks with the same enticingly deep drawl. An impressive fast tracker, her film career began while still at Edinburgh University, where she co-starred with Jonny Lee Miller in Complicity and Timothy Spall in Still Crazy. Still only 24 when Tipping the Velvet was shot earlier this year, her first-ever sex scenes were Tipping the Velvet's lovemaking. Even before the serial reaches our screens, one tabloid has called for the BBC to be prosected for its obscenity. But although the reportedly notorious second episode features sex toys worn by Rachael as the love-slave of Anna Chancellor's capricious rich bitch, Stirling defends every daring detail.
"The hardest scenes to do were the ones with Anna," she admits, "but that was because my character, Nan, was in a vulnerable position. But there is no other part like it that I've read in my life — I'm hugely proud of it. The story is timeless in a sense, it's about a young girl's coming of age. That she's a lesbian is in some ways irrelevant to the fact that she learns to follow her instincts. I didn't have any qualms about it. If you believe in the story, then there's no room for self-doubt. For one scene, I was standing behind a curtain dais, stark naked, covered in gold paint and wearing a dildo. I just thought, 'Well, why not?' Because you're gold, you feel rather unhuman."
But like Colin Firth with his star-making role as Mr. Darcy, she thinks it might be prudent to leave the country while the series is transmitted. "I might just have to disappear when it comes out," admits Rachael. "I don't fear any particular reaction, but I don't particularly look forward to it."
The daughter of landowner Archie Stirling, she grew up on her father's Scottish estate and in the family's London home in Kensington, where she was given piggy-back rides as a little girl by Prince Charles. Despite that impeccably pukka background, the reaction of her nearest and dearest to her risk-taking new role has been completely supportive. "My mother read the book and she's seen the serial and she's more than overjoyed. It's the first thing I've ever done that really made her confident about my ability. She was worried protectively," admits Rachael, "but that's her being my mum. She didn't try to dissuade me. I've told my father a certain amount about it, and he has seen the first episode: he's gobsmacked and thrilled."
Tipping the Velvet's six-day-a-week, nine-week shoot proved demanding on Rachael's private life. "When you take on a job like that, you put your life in a jar by the door every morning and leave it."
We've reached Act Three and the coup de théâtre when Rachael slips a cream frock coat over her jeans and looks as sexily androgynous as her 19th-century alter-ego, Nan. She keeps her top on underneath, deciding not to show her breasts. "Done that already!" she says. "To me, life is about learning and Tipping the Velvet has been a big learning curve. But going from film set to film set doesn't always quench one's curiosity, so I may take a bit of time off for some outside experience. I'd quite like to go back to university and do a PhD in English, maybe on Victorian lesbian literature. If you are locked in a trailer for 12 months, you don't learn a thing except how to be a prima donna… or a witch," she grins.
No chance: she's the good guy, the Cinderella who has had herself a ball and cut a swathe through our cakes and sugared almonds to prove it. There's an impromptu final fight scene without which no self-respecting drama is complete, when the girls pelt each other with rose petals in a battle over the coveted white panelled dress that Jodhi is wearing. "Rachael and Jodhi go shopping — and leave the shop in tatters!" jokes Jodhi as Rachael, the victor, triumphantly bears off the spoils of war to wear at a forthcoming fashion awards show.
Exeunt both players, Jodhi to the screening of a short film she directed and to prepare for a play with Ralph Fiennes at the National, Rachael to await the release of her new film, the Bertolucci-produced, The Triumph of Love, and to read more scripts. She worries that the part of a lifetime in Tipping the Velvet might have raised her expectations too high. "After doing that, you could almost give up the business — because you'll never find another like it."
