‘The Buccaneers’ Finale: Designing Nan’s Wedding — and What It Would’ve Looked Like If She Married the Other Guy

Caroline Brew
·3 min read

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 8 of “The Buccaneers,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

The season finale of Apple TV+’s “The Buccaneers,” aptly titled “Wedding of the Season,” culminates with a traditional chapel wedding between Nan St. George (Kristine Frøseth) and Theo, Duke of Tintagel (Guy Remmers). However, the events that transpire before and after the wedding are anything but traditional.

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Costume designer Kate Carin and production designer Amy Maguire sat down with Variety to discuss how they reflected the contrast between the wedding and the chaos occurring outside of it in the set and dresses.

The series, which is based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel of the same name, follows a group of fun-loving American girls who infiltrate 1870s London, sparking an Anglo-American culture clash. Following a season-long love triangle between Nan, Theo and his best friend Guy Thwarte (Matthew Broome), “Wedding of the Season” sees Nan finally come to terms with her feelings for Guy — only to go through with marrying Theo in order to secure the power and privileges necessary to protect her sister Jinny (Imogen Waterhouse). The girls orchestrate a plan for Jinny to escape her abusive husband during the ceremony, which she does successfully with Guy’s help.

Nan’s bridesmaids sport striking blue dresses, a nod to the color Nan is seen wearing throughout the season. “It was as a bit of a homage to where Nan had started out,” Carin says. Mrs. St. George (Christina Hendricks) also wears a blue ensemble — not only to show her support for her daughter but also to represent her growth as a character, with her deciding to leave her husband.

“She’s becoming more of a strong, independent woman. I really want to be able to reflect that in how you come across [by using] a really bold, brave color,” Carin says, calling the look her favorite of the season.

Amidst a sea of blue dresses, the chapel is primarily red, which Maguire says represents “the ancestral weight and the enormity of what Nan is marrying into.”

“We wanted it to feel very strong and momentous. The whole series is building up toward her decision, so it felt apt that it would require a strong color,” Maguire added.

The series was filmed throughout Scotland, and the location they chose for the wedding was a private chapel on the estate of Murthly Castle near Perth. The chapel contained an ornate mural with gilded wooden carvings at one end of the chapel, which Maguire said was built in the mid-1800s.

“We tried to imitate what was at that end of the chapel around the rest of it by repainting and adding marbling and panels along the edges of it and putting murals and CNC cut carvings at the end to fill in the panel work and added in doors,” she says. “That mural was one of our main inspirations, and it really afforded us the chance to add quite a rich color palette into what would otherwise be quite a muted environment.”

As Nan steps into this extravagant world, she must prepare to play the part of a duchess — which is reflected in her wedding dress.

“The reason that was so structured was because she was buying into what she was buying into. When you consider the journey that had taken her there — you know, everybody finding out that she was illegitimate — I think maybe that was her one time where she felt she needed to toe the line a little bit, but still keeping her elements of it not being overly fussy,” Carin says.

However, if Nan had it her way and married Guy instead, Carin envisions her dress looking quite different.

“If Nan and Guy had run away and ran through fields of daisies, she would have probably just worn a petticoat and definitely not a corset,” Carin says. “She definitely would have been barefoot. She’d have been much more hippie-dippie and much freer and much less dressed up.”

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