Inside new Paddington in Peru movie filming - as author's daughter tours spectacular set

While the beloved star of the children's book may hail from darkest Peru, most of the sets used in filming the third instalment of the Paddington film series were built in deepest Hertfordshire

One day in 2023, Karen Jankel was handed a lanyard with a sepia “tarjeta postal” bearing a Peruvian stamp, ushered aboard a jeep, and left the rolling arable fields of Hertfordshire far behind her.

Within seconds, she was plunged into cascading tropical plants and trees, thatched huts, a crumbling monastery and rivers zigzagged by rope bridges. Not to mention signs for Aunt Lucy’s Home for Retired Bears.

She had been driven into the darkest Peru imagined by her father, Michael Bond, who died aged 91 in 2017 . As his famous character, Paddington Bear, might have advised, she stared – hard. “This was beyond what my father would have imagined,” she says. "It was extraordinary. My father never even went to Peru. He wasn’t a great fan of flying. I suspect he wouldn’t have imagined anything quite so exotic!”

Karen had been invited to spend a day behind the scenes of filming for Paddington In Peru – the third instalment in the blockbuster series. She expected a colourful scene, having grown up with one paw in another world. Paddington was like a sibling to her; a character she and her parents would often talk to at home as if he were with them.

This, though, was something else. In the new movie, Paddington and his adopted family, the Browns, travel to his native Peru – because Aunt Lucy is missing him badly. Several landscape scenes were shot on location, including some at the majestic Machu Picchu.

But the cast – Hugh Bonneville as Mr Brown, Emily Mortimer replacing Sally Hawkins as Mrs Brown, Julie Walters as housekeeper Mrs Bird, and new arrivals Olivia Colman and Antonio Banderas – did all their acting in Britain. So Peru needed to come to the Home Counties.

The decision was taken to commandeer acres of farmland and build a monastery, thatched rainforest dwellings and a Peruvian village. They dug rivers for real boats to bob in, planted wildflower meadows – including one just for a single Sound of Music homage – and sourced thousands of authentic tropical Peruvian plants.

“They brought in something like 50,000 trees, it was extraordinary,” says Karen, 66. “I have done set visits on all three films and this one was a really huge step up. Often on a film set a building is just the facade, but they built the complete Home for Retired Bears, everything was three dimensional, it was all beautifully done.

“The main living area was open sided with a thatched roof. To get to Aunt Lucy’s cabin, you had to go over a rope bridge across a river. It was just amazing, a total world.”

Inside the buildings, the attention to detail was minute. No aspect of a retired bear’s life was ignored. Karen recalls: “There was a reception desk in the home piled with leaflets for activities like bear bingo. The funny little puns would have amused my dad and impressed him too, he had great attention to detail.”

So immersed did she become, it was a shock when The Reverend Mother, played by The Crown star Colman, began making calls on her mobile. She chuckles: “Between takes, Olivia Colman was on her phone dealing with something like a plumber coming round. She’s in her nun’s habit sorting out some domestic issue from the Home for Retired Bears!”

Production designer Andrew Kelly travelled extensively in both Peru and Colombia to get a feel for the landscape, buildings and local materials. The animated Paddington, voiced by Ben Wishaw, and other CGI characters will be added in later. Actors in brown bodysuits stood in on set while the actors were filmed.

“I have never done anything to that scale before,” Andrew admits. “We visited the farm in the dead of winter – me, my art director and my dog! It was frozen, snowy land and us trying to imagine a beautiful Peruvian, sunny jungle there… It was fun.”

It was his first time applying for temporary planning permission to build a set. He adds: “For the tropical trees and plants, we had lots of big mobile greenhouses on the go. Around 90% of them were in pots, you dig a hole and put the pot in, a lot of labour and love went into it. Every evening, the more susceptible plants were wrapped in cloth.”

Separate from the Home For Retired Bears, Andrew’s team built a Peruvian village. “We had 12 buildings there,” he says. “We built a beautiful big tree in the middle of the market, it was fiberglass sculpted. We also did that in the middle of the Home for Retired Bears. They get coated in a resin and painted.

“We built a second river in the village, about 100ft by 30ft but probably only four or five foot deep. We had 14 boats. There were 150 extras who were Peruvian – they said in parts it felt like being there.”

No less attention was paid to the interiors, which were bursting with props, many sourced in Peru. Andrew explains: “We sculpted little bears on the top of the chairs, we hid oranges in a lot of the wood panels, there were photographs of the bears’ winning croquet team and drawings from the bears’ art classes! The detail was in every nook and cranny.

“The result was one of the calmest sets I’ve ever been on. Everyone who came said they’d love to retire there!”

• Paddington In Peru is in cinemas from Friday, November 8.