A real Catholic cardinal let Ralph Fiennes try on his robes for ‘Conclave’: ‘Invited to his chambers’

nypost.com:

the pope movie “Conclave,” in theaters Friday, and wanted to spend time with the real deal.Head-first Fiennes went a bit further than that.“I get a text from Ralph, who had met a cardinal, and the cardinal had invited him to his chambers,” Oscar-winning director Edward Berger told The Post. “On the bed in his chamber was laid out the cardinal robe,” Berger continued, “and then Ralph sent me a [photo] of him … in those robes, in the real robes, with a beaming smile … so proud.”There was a problem, however, because Berger, who directed Best International Feature winner “All Quiet on the Western Front,” was going in a different direction with the official’s outfits.“The costume designer and I knew that we don’t love the way the present-day cardinal robes look,” he said. “The red is a little bit orangey and the fabric is not as luscious as you might think.” But, as actors often do, Fiennes, 61, had instantly clicked with the garment. “I needed to call him and say, ‘It looks great, but that’s not what it is going to look like,’” Berger recalled. “He said, ‘Look, that’s the real thing.’ And so it took a little bit to convince him to put on this one.”Clothes weren’t the half of it.

Berger and production designer Suzie Davies (“Saltburn”) went to extraordinary measures to re-create, embellish and occasionally invent the mysterious world of Vatican City and the papal conclave, the secretive meeting of cardinals who pick a new pope.“They won’t tell you what happens behind closed doors in the conclave,” the director said of the tradition-bound church.