Given that the U.K.’s wolves and moose expired long ago, the country’s largest land predator today is, somewhat embarrassingly, the European badger. Other aggressive species include the horsefly, a venomous sand-burrowing fish, and the cherubic-looking pine marten, a kind of cute but angry weasel. (Be warned!) Fittingly, perhaps, England has adopted, as unofficial ambassador and strategic diplomatic envoy, a polite, anthropomorphic bear in a red hat and blue duffel coat. North America may have grizzlies; Britain has Paddington.
Paddington first arrived in the U.K. in 1958, in a children’s book written by Michael Bond. In the story, an English family finds the bear sitting in Paddington Station, with a note: “Please look after this bear. Thank you.” Bond, a BBC cameraman, was inspired by a sad-looking Teddy he once bought for his wife on Christmas Eve, as well as by memories of child evacuees during the Second World War. “Paddington, in a sense, was a refugee, and I do think that there’s no sadder sight than refugees,” he told the Guardian.
Since then, Paddington’s star has risen, with dozens of books, a beloved BBC program, a Netflix show, three feature films, and countless units of merch. In 2022, an animated Paddington met Queen Elizabeth II for tea. When she died, people placed toy Paddingtons at the palace gates. Last month, he opened in a buzzy new West End show, “Paddington the Musical,” at the Savoy Theatre. As the première approached, speculation mounted: How would the production handle the bear?
A few days before the opening, Tahra Zafar, the costume-and-puppet designer who created Paddington for the stage, arrived at the theatre to give him a final tune-up. The bear was scheduled to appear on “Good Morning America” that afternoon, and Zafar wanted to make sure he was up to scratch. She was wearing a blue sweater vest over a red shirt, chunky purple eyeglasses, and a red bandanna around her neck. She settled into a row of empty seats to wait for the star. “We’ve all got an idea of Paddington in our minds,” she said.
Earlier in her career, Zafar worked for a decade with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, crafting Hedwig the owl and Scabbers the rat for the first “Harry Potter” film. Later, she designed creatures for “Star Wars,” as well as the donkey in “The Banshees of Inisherin.” (“Poor Jenny!”) In 2012, she was the head of costume, hair, and makeup for the opening ceremony of the Olympics. “Nine hundred million viewers, and it’s one live show,” she said. “High stakes.”
But “Paddington” presented its own challenges. “The producers explored different ways of doing the bear in a sort of scattergun approach,” Zafar said. “Maybe we’ll do it as a child, maybe we’ll do it as a puppet.” They held workshops, but the bear never felt right. “We wanted to see Paddington alone onstage, without being surrounded by puppeteers or anyone, just to show that vulnerability of him, and how lonely he is before he’s found.” The result: an intricate bear suit, created by Zafar, and inhabited by the performer Arti Shah, who is four feet tall. (She played a goblin in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and was the stand-in for the C.G.I.’d Rocket Raccoon in “Guardians of the Galaxy.”) Paddington is voiced by James Hameed, who also controls the bear’s facial expressions remotely. “The two of them are Paddington,” Zafar said. “They’re completely synchronized.”
In her studio, Zafar and her team designed a number of versions of the bear before settling on the final product. (The discarded iterations remain in storage.) The original Paddington book’s illustrations, by Peggy Fortnum, “are quite delicate,” Zafar said. “There’s a lot of things that she doesn’t draw, and certain things left to the imagination.” Zafar wanted to try for a similar lightness. “Looking at the fur, you know, it’s not dense fur. It’s got lots and lots of movement to it. And we didn’t want to go for an uncanny-valley real bear, you know, because he sings!”
An assistant materialized and told Zafar that Paddington was nearly ready. “There’s bits of him that you could say are quite like a bear,” she said. “He does have claws. He has pads on his feet. But he has got a sewn nose, like a toy bear’s nose. Some people might look at the bear and remember the younger members of their family. Some of them might look at him and think about the toys that they loved. We wanted to leave a lot of these thoughts just like a soup in your head, and in your heart, so that you’d feel emotional towards him.”
Paddington sauntered onstage and blinked. He was holding a marmalade sandwich. Zafar looked on, proudly. “Lovely,” she said. And then: “Can I just do one thing?” She stepped forward and smoothed a tuft of fur above the bear’s left eye. “He always has one eyebrow that’s looking slightly anxious.” ♦
