Paddington Bear costume designer ‘overwhelmed’ by response to musical’s puppet

The Paddington Bear costume designer has said she was “overwhelmed” by the public response to the life-like puppet following the musical’s opening night.

Costume and creature effects designer Tahra Zafar has worked on a number of productions and national events, including the 2012 London Olympics where she met the late Queen to design a replica wig for a stunt double for a James Bond sketch.

More recently, she designed the Paddington Bear for the West End musical adaptation, which was written by McFly star Tom Fletcher and is based on the Michael Bond book A Bear Called Paddington and the 2014 film Paddington.

The show has received rave reviews since it first opened at the Savoy Theatre in December, notably for bringing to life the famous bear through a two-person team consisting of James Hameed as remote puppeteer controlling the expressions and delivering the voice, and Arti Shah embodying the character on stage.

Zafar told Lauren Laverne on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “It has been a long project of like research, getting him right, looking at kind of different inspiration.

“He’s been very loved by us, but kind of private to our theatre production family, and it was our first preview, we were just kind of taking stock and thinking, we’re about to show him to the world, and he’s not gonna be ours anymore.

“I really (was) overwhelmed by the response.

“It feels like everyone needs a nice, furry Paddington to love and have in their lives when things get a bit tough, a nice, polite bear is what you need.”

Discussing the process of creating the on-stage bear, Zafar said: “We’ve looked at all of the different Paddingtons that have been, including the original illustrations.

“We created this quite delicate bear who left a few gaps in your imagination.

“He’s not quite real, he’s not quite a toy. He’s sort of something in the middle.

“By having him slightly ambiguous in that way, we think that your mind or your emotions can kind of fill the gaps.”

Zafar was also the head of costumes for the 2012 London Olympic Games, tasked with managing a team and being in charge of 23,000 costumes, including designing the outfit for the late Queen Elizabeth II’s James Bond sketch, which saw the Queen “skydive” into the opening ceremony.

The costume designer recalled meeting the late Queen for “as long as you could boil an egg” to design a wig for a stunt double, however, it was never used because of how involved the Queen wanted to be in the sketch.

Speaking on the process of making the wig, Zafar said she worked really closely with the Palace and that it was “wonderful” to see how much people work behind the scenes.

She added: “We had these hair samples and we had to match them.

“The light wasn’t very good and we all had to shuffle over into the bay of the window with the late Queen there, and she was very game.

“Then I had to write all these very complicated labels with all the different samples, with her watching me.

“We got this very beautiful wig made and you could have done shot to shot back of head, front of head, with our copy, but we didn’t need to use it in the end because she did the whole thing.”

Zafar also helped to create some of the creatures in the first Harry Potter film and was in charge of costumes for the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest held in Liverpool.

The full interview can be heard on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds from Sunday February 8 at 10am.