Celyn Jones knew he wanted to make a film about Henry Paget, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, a long time ago.
“I think I knew the picture before I knew the story,” begins Jones about the British peer, whose most famous photograph shows a man in an extravagant, embellished gown and an elaborate winged headpiece atop his head. He is draped across a chair, jewels on his hand glistening, and fur rugs lining the floor. “I just assumed it was some sort of an album cover or glam rock image — it was Bowie-esque, a Marc Bolan-esque picture. And then when I realized it was 1890, it was Anglesey, and he was the Marquess.”
Paget, while Marquess of Anglesey — an island located just off the northwest coast of Wales — has been immortalized in history books as “the dancing marquess.” His short life at the helm of his family’s country seat, a castle on the water named Plas Newydd, was spent squandering the inheritance on lavish parties, garments and setting up his own theater company, at the center of which he would perform. Though well-liked by locals and notorious for his Butterfly Dancing in a transparent silk robe, Paget accumulated debts of over £60 million ($68 million) in today’s money and died at just 29 years old from complications of tuberculosis in 1905. His lifestyle and the breakdown of his marriage to Lilian Florence Maud Chetwynd have prompted historical debate over Paget’s sexuality — Welsh historian Norena Shopland noted: “There is little doubt that Henry must be included in the history of gender identity.”
Madfabulous, which premiered at the BFI Flare London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival in March and is in theaters across the U.K. during Pride Month, tells his story. “I always think about the monster and the man, and the man and the monster,” Jones continues to The Hollywood Reporter. “I think about what the inner life is and what the public life is. [For] Henry, what was the motivator, the drive? The need for acceptance, the need to be his authentic self — or have time to even find out what that is — in a time where the world was projecting all these rules on your shoulders, and you just wanted to experience the world in the way that you felt natural.”
At last, Jones also thought, there was a chance to spotlight the dynamic between North Wales‘ working-class community and its aristocracy on the big screen, a corner of Britain’s social history that has long been sidelined. Screenwriter Lisa Baker grabs at this opportunity with both hands: The product is a real love letter to the region.
Callum Scott Howells as the “dancing marquess” Henry Paget in ‘Madfabulous.’
Courtesy of BFI
Paget is embodied with impish charm and affecting vulnerability by It’s a Sin breakout Callum Scott Howells, who was top of mind for producers. “He was the first person I thought of, and the first person I asked,” explains Jones, whose production company, Mad as Birds, had signed onto the project early on. Jones, an actor and filmmaker best known for starring in ITV’s crime drama Manhunt and directing The Almond and the Seahorse, was quite keen to nab the free director’s chair, too.
He continues about Howell’s performance: “We needed an actor that, on paper, could be a bit of a dick. He spends all the money and seems to not care about the consequences. [But] I felt the story was not going to be that,” says Jones. “I think we’re dealing with addiction, I think we’re dealing with neglect. All those things that make us human. So we needed an actor who not only had range and ability, [but] who could move, who could dance, who could be quiet, who could be bold, who could be theatrical, who could be cinematic, who had a range of emotions and charisma. Callum has it all, and he’s Welsh.”
Admittedly, Jones isn’t a big fan of auditions — adding that it’s often a real roll of the dice whether you audition someone 100 times or give them a straight offer — but when Bridgerton and Lockwood & Co. star Ruby Stokes came in for the role of Paget’s cousin and wife, Lily, he was eager to watch all of her work. “It was a quality of an actress who could go from a young girl to a woman,” he recalls. “She just has that charisma and that ability and that joie de vivre.”
Then came some much-welcomed star power in British acting legend Rupert Everett, whose casting as Paget’s doting, aging butler, Gelert, is inspired. “There are so many different levels to Rupert,” says Jones. “I love the idea of the older, leading man, who’s been across the industry, been in our lives, introducing to the world a new leading man [in Howells]. They’re very open about their sexuality […] so there’s a whole meta quality with Rupert and Callum, that sort of guidance and authenticity.” Everett came in and floored everyone with his ideas, including playing Gelert as much older than his 67-year-old self. “He wanted that stoic survivor. The last thing he’ll do is stoop in front of his master, and then when the door closes, he’ll sit down and rub his knees. So when you see him crumpled in a chair, you really feel it as an audience: ‘Oh my gosh, even Gelert is broken down by this addiction.’”
It’s a movie in which the blend of English and Welsh talent is on top form, including Paul Rhys, Louis Hynes, Louise Brealey, Tom Rhys Harries, Siobhán McSweeney, Guillaume Gallienne, Steve Speirs, Kevin Eldon, Ian Puleston-Davies, Roger Evans, Lisa Jên Brown and Leisa Gwenllian, who star in supporting roles. This extends to the costume department, led by Francisco Rodriguez-Weil, as well as cinematographer Laurie Rose, production designer Keith Dunne, and Oscar-winning makeup and hair artist Nadia Stacey (Poor Things).
Jones felt it was important that the movie honor its heritage. It was filmed on Paget’s real estate, Plas Newydd, and a distant relative of the Marquess, Clara Paget, plays the head of his theater company. The filmmaker says he couldn’t have predicted the impact it’s had in and around his native Wales: “What’s so beautiful — it’s so gorgeous — [is] when we started this film years ago, Henry Paget was a photograph next to the toilets in Plas Newydd. Now, we’ve filled a bedroom with the costumes from the film. He’s back in the house, he’s celebrated, and people are going to see [the movie].”
“The audience around North Wales, [they’re] on fire at the moment for the film,” he continues. “They’re so in love with it, and if you take your cinema ticket, you can go and see the costumes for free at Plas Newydd. In Bangor alone, it’s been the best-selling film since Barbie — over 3,000 people have seen it in a small cinema in Bangor in about two-and-a-half weeks.”
Ruby Stokes and Callum Scott Howells in ‘Madfabulous’
Mad as Birds
What’s moved him even more is the interactions with these fans at Q&As around the U.K. “[A man] wanted to ask a question, and his husband was holding his hand, and he couldn’t get through the question without crying every time, so we had to keep coming back to them. You can’t write that, you can’t sit in a production office and go, ‘This is what I wanted to create!’ You don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says, “But [hearing] somebody say, ‘I wish this film existed when I was a young man”… The Madfabulous filmmaker is still at a loss for words.
Maybe it’s even prompted something of a moment for Welsh film, THR suggests. But Jones disagrees: “It’s not a moment, it’s a movement. That’s what it is.” At a time when British independent film continues to struggle, this feature is keeping the cynics at bay. “As long as there are some mad people out there like myself who go, ‘I’m going to tell this story. I’m going to do it that way,’ the more work there is for people, the more entertainment there is for people and therefore, more representation,” he adds.
Riding the wave of the unprecedented enthusiasm and passion for Madfab, Jones is just about to start production on his next feature, The Hollywood Reporter can reveal, a film called Mountain. “It’s a coming-of-age story set in the ’80s, and even though it’s a fiction, it feels very, very personal. That’s about as much as I’m allowed to say right now,” he teases.
He’ll be juggling that with more festival appearances for Madfabulous following the film’s raucous response at Flare and, on June 21, at its U.S. premiere (it bowed at the world’s oldest and biggest queer film festival, San Francisco’s Frameline LGBTQ+ Festival). It has another major European film fest appearance booked in for September, one we’re not permitted to know about yet, and Jones even has some unrelated acting gigs lined up, including with Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones in A Visit to Grandpa’s and Rhys Marc Jones’ Black Church Bay with Tom Cullen and Joe Locke.
Many more adventures await, but this Pride Month, Jones is just thankful for the Madfab cast and crew, Welsh audiences, and a certain dancing marquess: “I think Henry was for the people, and I think the film is for the people.”
Madfabulous is in U.K. theaters now.
