Gabriella was spotted in Paris for the Fashion Week and she attended the Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2017-2018 Show on July 3, 2017. Many thanks to my friends Emily and Nicole for their help.
‘Poldark’ is back tonight at 9pm on BBC One and to celebrate its return on the small screen, here are some promotional pictures of Gabriella as Caroline Penvenen. We also added stills from the first episode of the new series thanks to FFA. Enjoy!
On June 6, Gabriella was at the Glamour Women of The Year Awards in London. I’ve updated the gallery high quality pictures from the event with thanks to my friend Emily at Marvelous Margot for her help.
THE TELEGRAPH – Gabriella Wilde’s career started unconventionally, to say the least. She is recounting the fairy-tale-like story over an afternoon coffee in a London hotel, peppering the retelling with apologetic looks and half-shrugs. ‘It is totally ridiculous,’ she says. ‘I don’t identify with it at all any more, I feel like it happened to someone else.’
This comes from someone currently starring in Poldark, one of the BBC’s biggest and most successful series. As Caroline Penvenen, the coquettish orphaned heiress who refuses to play by polite 18th-century rules of behaviour, Gabriella’s standout performance last series won her Best Newcomer in the Radio Times Reader Awards.
Softly spoken and thoughtful, any signs of her former status as Burberry model and second-most-eligible girl in Britain (as decreed by Tatler in 2007 – Kitty Spencer, the eldest daughter of Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, came first) are few and far between.
Gabriella was ‘discovered’ when she was 14, through a chance encounter with the late style icon Isabella Blow, who she met through a friend of her mother’s. Taken with Gabriella, Blow requested they do a few shoots together. ‘I say it was low-key – but, really, how low-key was Isabella Blow?’ Gabriella laughs.
At a party soon after, she met Naomi Campbell, who insisted she be introduced immediately to her agency, Premier Model Management. ‘I was 15. She took Polaroids of me in the bathroom and sent them to her agent. The next day I was in her agent’s office and started working with them. It was totally mad and so surreal.’
Gabriella graces the cover of the Summer 2017 issue of Town & Country magazine. And what can I say? This photoshoot is probably one of my favorites! Make sure to grab your own copy and to check the scans and outtakes in our gallery. Enjoy!
TOWN & COUNTRY – It seems to be Gabriella Wilde’s fate to be surrounded by highly-strung animals. At the Town & Country photo-shoot, she played second fiddle to a truculent peacock who had his own ideas about what constituted a good pose. And, as fans of the period blockbuster Poldark will know, she spends a large portion of her working life in the company of a little black-faced pug. Playing the deliciously manipulative heiress Caroline Penvenen, Wilde has brought a touch of glamour to the 18th-century copper mines, capturing the heart of the local doctor and defying her guardian, all the while with a lapdog clasped to her chest.
“I don’t think anyone anticipated how difficult it would be to film with a pug,” she says. “They’re so noisy – Horace snuffled over every track so each bit of the recording had to be edited. But the dog was perfect for Caroline – she’s like a child at the beginning, very young and naive, and her pet almost fulfilled the role of a teddy bear.”
There was another reason that Horace featured so prominently in Poldark; he was a convenient prop to shield Wilde’s figure, as shooting of season two coincided with her second pregnancy. “I got the role and three days later I discovered that I was pregnant,” she says. “As it was a seven-month shoot, I assumed that I probably couldn’t take it. But the writer and producer Debbie Horsfield said, ‘Hang on a second, why can’t we do this? Why can’t she work, and be a mother and pregnant, if she feels that she can?’ So we made it happen, which has been really wonderful and quite refreshing. They even let me bring Shiloh on set for the latest series when he was just a couple of months old. In my industry, it’s often assumed that if you have babies, then you’re not going to have your career.”
Gabriella is featured in the May/June issue of The Gentleman’s Journal. Can we all agree that the new photoshoot is stunning?! Head over to our gallery for more outtakes and make sure to read her interview below.
THE GENTLEMAN’S JOURNAL – ‘I really know how to use the music now,’ says Gabriella Wilde, from behind black eyeshadow and a mess of tousled hair. Looking every inch the rock chick, she adds: ‘It’s become a huge part of my life.
And that’s no understatement. Wilde, a model-turned-actress, married musician Alan Pownall – of electronic outfit Pale – in 2014, and has since been using selected songs and playlists in her day job, listening to music to get into character, or prepare for scenes.
Today, under the speakers of an East-London studio, Wilde is singing the praises of musicians.
‘I’m totally in awe of them,’ smiles the 27-year-old. ‘In another life, I’d have loved to be musical – if only I had the talent!’
But, despite her enthusiasm – and eagerness to cue up songs ranging from Bruce Springsteen to Frank Ocean – Gabriella isn’t the wild child she appears. The tearaway look may be hers today, but the actress has two young children at home – and has never been interested in pursuing a socialite lifestyle.
‘I’ve just never felt comfortable in those circles,’ says Wilde candidly. ‘I was never pulled to it, and always found myself uncomfortable in those situations. When I was younger, I really tried to go in an opposite direction. But I guess that’s the thing about being a teenager,’ she continues. ‘You don’t want to be put in a box. I’ve never really liked people who make assumptions about who I am and, whilst I obviously realise there’s nothing wrong with partying, it’s just never been something I enjoy. Instead, I broke out of that box – but by not doing rather than doing. I simply didn’t turn up in that world. I didn’t exist there.’
Instead, Wilde – who began modelling at 14 – spent her younger years balancing school with work and regarded herself as ‘quite a serious child’.
‘I was also extremely shy,’ reveals the actress. ‘I never spoke when I was modelling, because I was terrified the entire time. I still can feel uncomfortable as an actress now. In fact, some people wonder how I even can act, but you feel safer in character. You can disconnect yourself.’
RADIO TIMES – The next series of Aidan Turner drama Poldark will start on BBC1 in June, RadioTimes.com can exclusively reveal.
A BBC spokeswoman confirmed the news: “The earlier filming schedule on this series means that we can bring the much anticipated third series back sooner for fans to Sunday nights in June.”
The second series aired in the autumn against ITV drama Victoria but senior BBC sources were insistent that the decision for series 3 was not about avoiding a clash with rival show but about giving viewers a “summer treat”.
Other sources also point to the fact that the first series of Poldark aired in the spring, with production sources noting that it would fill what can sometimes be a barren time for drama lovers.Filming for series 3 started in September, a little earlier than series two started filming, as the team sought to get some better weather than the rather gloomy and wintry recent run of episodes.
However fans of both dramas and Mammoth Screen – which makes both Poldark and Victoria – will be happy that the Cornish period drama avoids a likely clash with the second series of the rival ITV drama starring Jenna Coleman which is expected to air in the autumn again.
The scheduling clash split the audience last autumn with both shows averaging just over 6 million viewers. Series 1 of Poldark averaged more than 8m viewers per episode and a move to earlier in the year has long been on the cards as RadioTimes.com revealed last September.
Earlier this year, Poldark star Eleanor Tomlinson said that the decision to schedule the drama against ITV period show Victoria last autumn was a “real shame”.
Speaking at the Radio Times Covers Party, the actress, who plays Ross Poldark’s wife Demelza, insisted that the audience shouldn’t have had to choose between the Cornish period drama and ITV’s series.
“I think it’s a real shame that they came out at the same time. It doesn’t make any sense to me!” she said in the interview. “I think it did split the audience. At the end we were equal and that’s really good. I think Poldark pulled through.”
