Tahra Zafar, costume and effects designer
From Desert Island Discs by BBC Radio 4
March 8, 2026 · 51 min
About this episode
Tahra Zafar discusses her career as a costume and creature effects designer, highlighting her work on various productions and her family background in theatre.
Tahra Zafar is a costume and creature effects designer. She designed the Paddington Bear puppet featured in the hit West End production Paddington: The Musical. Born into a theatre family, she grew up with an Armenian American father who worked as a choreographer in the first West End production of West Side Story, and a mother who moved from a career as a ballerina to theatre work around the world. Her interest in making began early, helping her father with practical projects such as restoring their house, even learning to build walls and spending her spare time model making, with Airfix creations suspended from her bedroom ceiling. After studying theatre design at Central Saint Martins, she began her career making theatre costumes. She spent some time at the Jim Henson creature workshop where she made some of the creatures for the first Harry Potter film including Hedwig the owl and Scabbers the rat. After her daughter was born, Tahra worked on some of the characters for In the Night Garden with her daughter, a willing judge of what worked for toddlers. In 2012, Tahra was in charge of 23,000 costumes for the London 2012 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. This role included…
People in this episode
Guest: Tahra Zafar
Topics covered
- costume design
- theatre
- creature effects
- family background
- Olympics
- musical theatre
Keywords
- costume design
- creature effects
- Paddington Bear
- theatre
- London 2012
- West End
- family
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: BBC Radio 4
Books & works: Paddington: The Musical, West Side Story, Harry Potter, In the Night Garden
Places: London
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