Q&A: Annie Atkins on Grand Budapest Hotel, smoking princesses and Spielberg

With nine Oscar nominations and 11 BAFTA nods, the team behind The Grand Budapest Hotel could be forgiven for spending the last week in a champagne-fuelled fugue.

Wes Anderson's brilliant caper is one of JOE's favourite films of the year and we caught up with the film's lead graphic designer, Irish-based Welshwoman Annie Atkins, to talk about her part in the film's success. Congratulations Annie, first of all, on being part of the team nominated for 11 BAFTAs for The Grand Budapest Hotel - how did it feel when you found out the news?  It’s such great news! I actually didn’t hear about the nominations until JOE contacted me, as I was fast asleep in California when they were announced. I woke up to your email and a flurry of activity on Twitter and I was delighted. I worked closely with Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock every day, they really made something very magical come together for that movie and I’m very proud to have been there with them. I'd love to see them win this, it's such a special film. How did you get into the business?

Annie Atkins

I was a graphic designer for years before I went to film school. I was quite into photography at the time so I thought maybe I’d get into camera work and leave design behind. I didn’t really understand that making graphic props for film could be a career. My first job was on the TV show The Tudors out at Ardmore Studios in Bray. It was so exciting – just seeing prop guys lugging pillars and thrones around the place, and princesses in corsets drinking coffee and smoking roll-ups. There’s nothing as thrilling as the first days you see behind all this make-believe. If we got a call from Wes Anderson we'd quite possibly wee ourselves on the spot - how did you react when you were offered the chance to work on The Grand Budapest Hotel? Right?! I was just quietly working away in my studio at the time. One day the phone rang with a strange New York number and it was Wes’s producer Molly sounding me out about going with them to work on “a film set in the Alps between the wars." It was startling. I was shocked. Wes Anderson is extraordinary. Within a fortnight I was packing up my printer and off over to Germany for the winter. You know, whenever I tell this story I feel like I’m telling it about someone else, that it wasn’t me that it happened to at all, and then I start feeling jealous of this girl who got so lucky. What are you currently working on, and what does 2015 have in store? I just wrapped up work with Adam again on Steven Spielberg’s new spy thriller (written by the Coens), so that was also really exciting.  

Senor Spielbergo

Adam is fantastic to work for and he's really taken me on quite the ride this past couple of years. This film is set in the 60s in New York and Berlin, so it’s the most contemporary period I’ve worked to yet, which was interesting, as I’m usually making old scrolls or Victorian shopfronts. You're no stranger to the accolades, given your previous successes at the Irish Blog Awards - have you been doing much writing of your own or has design taken over completely?  Ah yeah, sometimes I really miss writing, but I bared my soul on that blog and after a while it just became too much. It was so exposing. Thinly veiled fiction is the way to go! One day I’m going to write a tell all novel about the Irish film industry, but I’ll set it in an American travelling circus in the 19th century so nobody will ever recognise themselves. Final question now, what's your favourite single memory of working on The Grand Budapest Hotel?  When I look back at it now, it was like being IN a Wes Anderson movie. We were in this tiny little snowy town on the German border – you could walk over a footbridge and have your dinner in Poland. The bars there were great – sheepskin rugs and roaring fires. I remember plonking myself down by the fire one night next to a couple of crew members, without my glasses on, and it turned out to be Jude Law and Ralph Fiennes. They were really nice but I get tongue-tied around actors. I’d rather be at home with my font collection. That’s why they hired me you know - I’m a nerd.