Latest / The Art of Costume Podcast / Creating the World of Wednesday with Production Designer, Mark Scruton

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Creating the World of Wednesday with Production Designer, Mark Scruton · The Art of Costume Podcast

• 0:14
  I am so excited to be here today with production designer Mark
• 0:18
  Screw in. I am so excited to talk to you,
• 0:21
  Sir. I am such a big fan of your work
• 0:23
  and I'm bit of a Burton nerd myself, so I mean, your work on
• 0:27
  Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice is something that
• 0:28
  I've just been loving over the past few years.
• 0:30
  It's a real honor for you to be here today.
• 0:32
  Thanks for being here. That's nice you invited me on.
• 0:34
  Thank you. Well.
• 0:35
  Before, but first before we. Get into everything Wednesday
• 0:39
  Season 2, which I'm sure probably feels like quite a
• 0:42
  while from now. Not only were you nominated for
• 0:46
  your work on season 1, but you also won an Emmy and which is
• 0:49
  amazing. Congratulations, now you were
• 0:52
  again and you were nominated for outstanding Production Design
• 0:55
  for a Narrative Contemporary program once again.
• 0:58
  So how do you feel? Tell me about this moment when
• 0:59
  you heard the good news it. Was, it was pretty special
• 1:02
  actually, because that kind of, you know, winning one for Season
• 1:06
  1 was, was amazing for me just because we had no idea what that
• 1:10
  show was going to turn into. So to, to sort of go from the
• 1:14
  time in Romania where no one knew what we were making and
• 1:17
  nobody cared. And it was, you know, this show
• 1:19
  that nobody was interested in to suddenly being this huge hit and
• 1:22
  winning the Emmy was was a huge journey.
• 1:25
  And I kind of thought that was it.
• 1:27
  And, you know, we've done it and everyone's going to kind of lose
• 1:30
  interest and you know, the, the interest is going to fall away.
• 1:33
  You know, we put a lot of effort into season 2 to try and make it
• 1:36
  something bigger and better and more exciting and, and, and, and
• 1:40
  all the things that you want to see in a second season and for
• 1:43
  people to actually watch it and, and still, you know, give it the
• 1:48
  same kudos that we got first time around.
• 1:51
  To the point of, you know, my peers nominating me was was
• 1:54
  really great because I didn't expect that at all.
• 1:56
  Well, I mean, from everyone watching, it's so obvious that
• 1:59
  you all really had to step it up and evolve in this season.
• 2:03
  You know, every it was so successful the first time around
• 2:05
  that where can we go from here? And I think you guys definitely
• 2:08
  found it and I'm sure you're finding it going further.
• 2:12
  So I have to be honest, you are the first production designer
• 2:15
  that I've gone to talk with officially, so I've would love
• 2:19
  for you to set the stage for us a little bit.
• 2:21
  To me, production design is all about world building, and I
• 2:25
  think Wednesday is such a supreme example of that.
• 2:29
  So why is production design so integral to the storytelling
• 2:32
  aspect of filmmaking and television?
• 2:34
  You know, world building is a is a good summary, but I think
• 2:38
  world building, you know, something like Wednesday, it's,
• 2:42
  it's a broad stroke, but you know, the reality is you've got
• 2:45
  to set every level of the environment.
• 2:49
  So, you know, when I first get a script, you have to drill into
• 2:54
  it and find out what all the key points are, what all the, you
• 2:57
  know, from the big ticket items. Like, you know, you've got a
• 2:59
  huge boarding school to design that somehow fits into the, you
• 3:04
  know, when the, the Adams family universe and the Tim Burton
• 3:08
  universe and all those things that go with it.
• 3:10
  But then you've got to then rent to those specific characters and
• 3:13
  the individuals and, and you go right down to, you know, the
• 3:16
  type of pen they use and the type of notebook they'll have
• 3:19
  and being able to get a broadview and all that, you
• 3:23
  know, And then at the same time leading the other departments in
• 3:27
  terms of special effects and in terms of lighting and all those
• 3:30
  other wind and just just trying to build, bring those groups
• 3:34
  together to try and create that environment.
• 3:36
  Is, is, is, you know, it's a key role and it's, you know, it's
• 3:41
  changing a lot at the moment in terms of my world.
• 3:44
  You know, it used to be you draw some concept sketches and and
• 3:48
  there's over and that was that was kind of, you know, he's set
• 3:51
  drawings and that kind of thing. But it really is an integral
• 3:54
  part now of, of, of making a show, certainly like Wednesday,
• 3:57
  something where it's, it's of eight hours of effectively a
• 4:00
  feature film, you know, where every detail is scrutinized and
• 4:04
  every part of it is sort of, you know, agonized over.
• 4:08
  It's it's a big job and it's, but it's a very rewarding one
• 4:11
  from my point of view. And that big job creates like
• 4:14
  this really immersive universe that we all get to live in, all
• 4:17
  the actors get to live in. It just feels so very real.
• 4:20
  Like I'm ready to, you know, sign up for Nevermore.
• 4:23
  I don't know if I'm I've if I've aged out of it a little bit, but
• 4:25
  I would love to be there. And I think most people watching
• 4:28
  a show would as well. So let's dive into the second
• 4:32
  season. One thing that was major that I
• 4:35
  learned about, and maybe people watching might not think it's
• 4:38
  such a big deal, but you all had to relocate production for this
• 4:41
  season to Dublin. So like I said, it might be so
• 4:46
  simple to people just watching casually on Netflix.
• 4:49
  But for you and your team especially, I have to imagine
• 4:51
  that was a little bit of a big deal 'cause it served as a major
• 4:54
  reset for you. Yeah, it was, it was huge for
• 4:57
  us. And but lots of reasons, I mean,
• 4:59
  not least the fact that we'd sort of set up home a little bit
• 5:03
  in Romania. You know, we had standing sets
• 5:05
  there. We had things there that we
• 5:07
  thought we might well be going back to.
• 5:09
  And actually for all sorts of reasons that that just wasn't
• 5:12
  going to work in the end. And we had to find a new home.
• 5:14
  And we looked at many different countries.
• 5:16
  We sort of, we looked at various places that may or may not work
• 5:20
  for us. But in the end, Dublin, you
• 5:22
  know, became our base. And that took a long time to
• 5:26
  solidify. You know, I spent a long time
• 5:27
  driving around locations, you know, scouting, trying to see if
• 5:31
  that was going to work for us because Romania gave the show a
• 5:36
  lot, you know, the architecture, the look, I, you know, I got a
• 5:41
  lot of inspiration when we were there.
• 5:43
  So it's kind of given our world a good steer and how it was, you
• 5:48
  know, how it was stylized. So to shift to Dublin, I had to
• 5:53
  make sure we weren't going to sort of stitch ourselves up and
• 5:56
  end up at somewhere which didn't have that world.
• 5:59
  You know, we we knew we always had to have America.
• 6:01
  You know, that's that was one of the biggest problems actually
• 6:04
  finding America in America. But a?
• 6:07
  Little bit of a mind mind scramble there.
• 6:11
  It's a mind scramble, especially when you get lured in by cool
• 6:13
  locations and then you realize that doesn't work, but you know.
• 6:17
  But there was, there was enough, you know, just on my first round
• 6:19
  of scouts. So it was enough there to tell
• 6:21
  me that we could make it work. The landscape for Vermont is
• 6:23
  very similar, you know, that we found there's some really great
• 6:26
  locations that that continued that sort of eclectic gothic
• 6:32
  sort of melange of styles. You know, that was one thing
• 6:34
  that was very keen to keep going was the fact that Nevermore
• 6:38
  wasn't just a sort of generic Gothic building.
• 6:41
  You know, it's just sort of mishmash of different styles
• 6:44
  from everything from Brutalism to, you know, more Irish design
• 6:48
  and, and, you know, everything in between.
• 6:50
  It was, it was a, it was a proper eclectic crash rather
• 6:53
  than, you know, a standard sort of Gothic mansion.
• 6:58
  And and we found that so, so that we let me assume so we
• 7:00
  landed in Dublin and then we had to basically recreate a lot of
• 7:04
  their sets that we wanted to keep and then reset on the ones
• 7:07
  we wanted to either develop or move on from or change and which
• 7:11
  they'd left ourselves in a good space.
• 7:13
  You know, we'd burned down half the score at the end of season
• 7:16
  1. You know, we, we, you know, we
• 7:19
  found out that that really Wednesday's dorm had kind of
• 7:21
  been the linchpin. You know, everyone loved the
• 7:24
  principal's office with the giant fireplace.
• 7:26
  So we know, we knew the bits we wanted to keep, which we had to
• 7:29
  recreate. So the, the principal's office
• 7:32
  was a location in Romania. So we had to rebuild that as a
• 7:35
  set, you know, minutiae detail. Because again, you know, as I
• 7:38
  said, these things, that is you can't escape anymore with the
• 7:41
  Internet and everything else, everything has to be, you know,
• 7:44
  exactly right. Otherwise people how you know,
• 7:47
  foul and say, hey, that's not the same place or that's not the
• 7:50
  same. So and the same with Wednesday's
• 7:53
  door. You know, Wednesday's dorm was
• 7:54
  quite a big set in Romania. I mean, there was, there was the
• 7:58
  only thing remaining was the window.
• 8:00
  So which we brought over. So the window is the same
• 8:04
  window. Everything else had to be
• 8:06
  rebuilt from the ground up, which is, which is harder than
• 8:10
  you think because it's not kind of a case of pulling out the
• 8:13
  drawings and rebuilding it. Because, you know, I think a lot
• 8:16
  of designers will say, you know, as you're building, you adapt,
• 8:20
  you walk onto the set as it's being put up and you actually
• 8:22
  know actually it would be better if that was 3 foot bigger.
• 8:26
  And now this detail is not working.
• 8:28
  Let's try something else. You know, And yes, the the
• 8:31
  plans, you know, are your plans, but you always adapt and change
• 8:34
  and shift. And you know, what ends up being
• 8:38
  built is never quite what's on paper.
• 8:39
  So you got to remember that process, so when you're
• 8:43
  rebuilding it identically, you had to remember exactly why
• 8:46
  you'd moved the wall 2 foot that way and you know what what the
• 8:50
  knock on effect for that was. And of course the other thing
• 8:52
  with that was we'd built the whole set in reclaimed timber in
• 8:55
  Romania, which we didn't have in we didn't have when we had
• 8:59
  reclaimed timber. But obviously all has a
• 9:01
  character. That was why we chose it.
• 9:03
  So we chose all the master beams because they had their own
• 9:05
  characters, so we had to copy them, which seemed so annoying.
• 9:10
  I think had to do to sort of get these big photos of the beams
• 9:15
  with the splits. And we were literally cutting
• 9:17
  the splits back into the timber to get it to look the same.
• 9:20
  However, it did look the same. And it was important that
• 9:24
  because when Wednesday news, you know, Jenner and and and Emma
• 9:29
  walk onto the set, it felt like home to them.
• 9:32
  You know, it didn't feel like we'd we'd shifted halfway across
• 9:35
  Europe. It felt like they were back in
• 9:38
  their own environment and that was kind of really important.
• 9:40
  And it was important to Tim as well.
• 9:41
  He loves real world environments and and the comfort of and the
• 9:46
  of what that brings for production.
• 9:48
  So yeah. So once we've done that, then we
• 9:51
  had the job of designing the rest of the show.
• 9:54
  Right, which is we're about to get into that sounds crazy but I
• 9:59
  mean it's it's so funny though, the fact that it felt like home
• 10:02
  to them when they got there and that's so important also at the
• 10:05
  same time it you don't want to look like it changed somehow
• 10:08
  over their summer break like they were doing renovations or
• 10:11
  something in their bedroom We. Didn't want people to to watch
• 10:14
  the show and go, oh, they've clearly moved.
• 10:16
  They've clearly, you know, shifted.
• 10:18
  It was, it was and it was a big worry.
• 10:20
  You know, it was a worry to me that people would watch it and
• 10:22
  go, well, you know, didn't look the same, right, Well.
• 10:24
  It felt seamless to me. I had no idea until I was
• 10:27
  preparing over. The stress was.
• 10:30
  Worthwhile. Yeah.
• 10:31
  Well, before we go any further, you were talking about style and
• 10:35
  Tim Burton. So I would actually love to get
• 10:36
  a little insight into your collaborative process with
• 10:39
  Timber. And I mean, over the many years,
• 10:41
  we all know he's established a sort of visual language that of
• 10:44
  course, does evolve, you know, project to project.
• 10:48
  So was, I'm guessing though production design is obviously
• 10:52
  very important to him, so I was hoping he could give a little
• 10:55
  insight into what that collaboration looks like.
• 10:57
  Yeah, I mean, yeah, as you say, you know, Tim's, Tim's all about
• 11:00
  the design and, and you know, it obviously the season 1 was
• 11:07
  really great for us to get to know each other and to get to
• 11:10
  understand, you know, for me to understand how he works and vice
• 11:13
  versa and, and build that level of trust, which is vital.
• 11:17
  And then as you say, we've done Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice as well
• 11:19
  before season 2. So we had a good working
• 11:22
  relationship going. You know, I, I grew up sort of
• 11:26
  binging on Tim's films. So I had a pretty good, you
• 11:31
  know, so I already had a pretty good, you know, mindset when I
• 11:34
  first started working him about, about what he liked and what he
• 11:37
  didn't like and, and, and it, and it was interesting because
• 11:40
  actually when you start working with him, you find it's not
• 11:42
  quite what you thought it was. You know, like I, I said it
• 11:46
  before, you know, I think actually what surprised me was
• 11:48
  he's much more of a minimalist than you would think he was.
• 11:52
  You know, even though he's he's cute, you know, credited with
• 11:54
  these sort of elaborate keep using term gothic, but that's
• 11:58
  not the right term. But it's kind of a catch all.
• 12:00
  But you know what I mean? That's his his world building is
• 12:03
  renowned. And yet actually, when you get
• 12:04
  into with him, he's much more about a much more, you know,
• 12:08
  pared back, refined finish and a refined look to things.
• 12:13
  So once you get that in your head, then actually things are a
• 12:17
  lot easier to design for him. And he's very generous in the
• 12:21
  process. You know, he will let you go
• 12:23
  away and come up with your ideas and then then you'll look at it
• 12:25
  together and he'll tell you what's working and what isn't.
• 12:28
  And then what I always find fascinating is no matter what
• 12:32
  we're designing, and obviously Wednesday particularly because
• 12:35
  it's the huge breadth of it, there's all sorts of things
• 12:37
  you're designing, not just the obvious, you know, you're
• 12:40
  designing, you know, more mundane things and sort of more
• 12:44
  normal environments as well as the fantastical.
• 12:49
  But you'll go to Tim and you'll you'll talk it through and it'll
• 12:51
  tweak it something and it'll just change, you know, small,
• 12:54
  sometimes small changes. He'll tell you, well, let's move
• 12:56
  that a little bit. And, you know, I don't like that
• 12:59
  big. Get rid of that.
• 13:00
  And then suddenly you have a Tim Burton set.
• 13:02
  Yeah, it's mostly. Yeah.
• 13:04
  You know, it's like, it's like the little sprinkling of Pixie
• 13:08
  dust over things that that, and as I say, they're not the
• 13:10
  obvious ones. It's not like he suddenly drums
• 13:12
  a big spiral in the middle of something and there you go.
• 13:14
  It's timber. It's it's smaller changes.
• 13:16
  You know, it's like he'll, he'll either adjust and you know, I
• 13:20
  sometimes try and pre empt it and I'll, I'll either overextend
• 13:23
  A doorway or I'll I'll, you know, give a little bit of a jog
• 13:27
  in a set and he'll always go, yeah, make that a little bit
• 13:29
  bigger. A little bit more and.
• 13:32
  Then so, yeah, now it looks, yeah.
• 13:34
  And it's sometimes it's very, it's a very subtle influence,
• 13:38
  but it, it, it, it always, you always come away thinking, yes,
• 13:42
  that's a Tim set. Yeah.
• 13:44
  Which is, which is fascinating to me, I know.
• 13:46
  And it never, it never fails to sort of amuse me that that's how
• 13:49
  it works. I mean, that's amazing.
• 13:50
  I could, I could listen to you talk about that collaboration
• 13:53
  all day long. Because like you said, I've also
• 13:55
  grown up watching all these films and they are quite
• 13:57
  minimalist. Thinking about films like, you
• 13:59
  know, minimal Mars Attacks and Edward Scissorhands.
• 14:02
  They do have a very minimal feel to them, despite what the common
• 14:07
  thought is. Yeah, when I say when you get
• 14:09
  back and revisit them once, I'd sort of understood that on
• 14:12
  season 1. I know.
• 14:13
  And I, you know, I still, it's a bit of a Bustam Solar now, but
• 14:17
  you go back into his films anyway.
• 14:18
  Just, you know, they're either on or you fancy watching him or
• 14:21
  whatever, and you go, Oh yeah, you know what?
• 14:22
  Actually, you, you can see it much more.
• 14:24
  This, you know, it's all about simplicity of silhouettes and
• 14:27
  it's about, you know, the the curve or you know, the shapes or
• 14:31
  the shadows rather than endless fiddly, fiddly detail, right?
• 14:37
  It's not all just black, black and white spirals like it's a
• 14:40
  common. Conception.
• 14:41
  We do those. We do do those occasionally as.
• 14:43
  Well, yeah, they're still there, but it's more than just that.
• 14:49
  Well, let's dive into the specifics of season 2.
• 14:53
  Now we have to talk about the Venetian Masquerade, the gala
• 14:58
  put on by Morticia. I mean, when I watch this
• 15:00
  episode, I just I couldn't believe it was real and just how
• 15:04
  practical it was. I mean, you even had a canal
• 15:06
  with in the running through the middle of it with a boat.
• 15:09
  I mean, so first I just had to start.
• 15:11
  I mean, was it really a boat? Was that practical?
• 15:14
  And talk to me just about the scale of this episode.
• 15:17
  It was it was huge. And, you know, we've done we've
• 15:20
  done the dance last season and, you know, miles an hour, this
• 15:25
  showrunners came to me and said, you know, we're going to do this
• 15:27
  Venetian gala, go to town. Great.
• 15:33
  OK, and that's pretty you know, that's that's sort of as a brief
• 15:37
  goes, that's kind of as good as it gets really.
• 15:40
  You know, so there was there's a lot of practical problems with
• 15:45
  it because we didn't have, you know, this is quite a long way
• 15:48
  into the season by this point. And the schedules on on shows
• 15:51
  like this. I was just freight trains and
• 15:53
  the turn around of sets. You know, you're, you're
• 15:56
  changing sets all the time, constantly opening new ones,
• 16:00
  trying to get rid of old ones, you know, because it's just huge
• 16:05
  and I needed a lot of space And you know, you couldn't, you
• 16:08
  couldn't go anywhere to shoot this particularly, you know, no
• 16:11
  way really existed that that work.
• 16:14
  We found that out last time. When you can't, you can't take
• 16:17
  over somewhere of that scale for the amount of time you need and
• 16:20
  do everything you need to do to it.
• 16:22
  So we had we had on on about big stages.
• 16:26
  We had this giant forest set that we've been using a lot of
• 16:30
  the, a lot of the forest scenes have been done on a sound stage,
• 16:33
  right? Because you don't want to go out
• 16:35
  in the middle of the night with kids and all those sort of
• 16:37
  things. So we've built this, we built
• 16:39
  the sounds, we built the forest set.
• 16:42
  And then and that was like, well, that was that actually
• 16:44
  come to an end at a certain point.
• 16:46
  We knew we had an out for that. So I had a very specific window
• 16:50
  of time before, you know, when the forest set had finished and
• 16:53
  the, the gala was going to start, which is about four
• 16:57
  weeks. And somehow we had to shoehorn
• 17:01
  in a gala in that four weeks. So that was, that was basically
• 17:07
  the starting point of my design process.
• 17:10
  It's like we've got a, we've got to fill the stage in four weeks
• 17:12
  and it's got to be amazing. But you've got, you know, so you
• 17:17
  then, then, then that's your parameters.
• 17:19
  You know, I knew I had to design stuff that we could build off
• 17:21
  site and bring in unique some to put off the be built from the
• 17:25
  ground up when you're building something like that.
• 17:27
  But now, you know, everything had to be built elsewhere.
• 17:30
  So that led me down the sort of the root of like theatre design
• 17:35
  and opera design particularly, which, you know, big, big sort
• 17:39
  of grand operas of, you know, the sort of the 20s and 30s.
• 17:43
  We'd often use big painted canvases to create very simple
• 17:47
  but very effective shapes or, you know, very quick changes and
• 17:50
  all that sort of that world. So I, you know, I knew I wanted
• 17:54
  to create big shapes that were actually canvas frames that we
• 17:59
  would then scenic paint up to give it a lot of detail.
• 18:03
  And the idea there was a gala was great for that because you
• 18:05
  could say a lot of it had been brought in or was, you know,
• 18:08
  scenery for the thing. So, so we designed these repeat
• 18:11
  patterns in these big arches to sort of give us a big space very
• 18:16
  quickly. And then the rest of it I, we
• 18:20
  dug into and we, you know, came up with the idea that it was
• 18:23
  really all about fabric, so we could build these huge drapes
• 18:26
  and do it all with drapery and light, you know, first thing,
• 18:30
  lighting and all that world. But then, of course, I said,
• 18:36
  well, we know it's Venice. We need to canal, must have a
• 18:41
  canal. So, so then, you know, then we
• 18:46
  sent it around this, this canal piece and, and we know with the,
• 18:49
  with the bridge forming the entrance.
• 18:51
  So it was a sort of appropriate process of what can we achieve
• 18:53
  in the time, you know, what's important, you know, can we
• 18:57
  build a canal in the four weeks we've got on set?
• 19:00
  And, you know, in that respect, can everything else get built
• 19:02
  off set and be brought in? And then, then, you know, then
• 19:07
  you really got into the nitty gritty of what it actually wants
• 19:09
  it to be. And, you know, the color tones
• 19:11
  and, and you know, getting into the world's of Reds and blacks
• 19:17
  is, is not the cleverest of ideas when you, you know, when
• 19:20
  you really think about it, because actually they're quite
• 19:22
  difficult colors to work with on mass without it looking like
• 19:25
  some sort of 80s nightmare or something.
• 19:29
  We spent, we spent a lot of time getting the Reds right and the,
• 19:33
  the choices of fabrics right. And, and we had to get huge
• 19:38
  volumes of it because, you know, the, the drapes, the main drapes
• 19:41
  that sort of repeat down the length of the, of the stage were
• 19:44
  vast. And I wanted it to be very much
• 19:47
  an eclectic feel. So not all the drapes are the
• 19:50
  same fabric when you have dark, darker red, lighter Reds, some
• 19:53
  with more of a damask pattern in it.
• 19:54
  So it gives you more texture, so it doesn't just get boring and
• 19:59
  any give it gives the space a bit of shape and then getting
• 20:03
  all that set up. You know, you then you then you
• 20:06
  find the right fabrics, but then they don't react very well to
• 20:08
  the camera. So we then had to cover a lot of
• 20:10
  those in sort of black voiles to give you a deeper range and then
• 20:15
  offset that with the Grays and the blacks of the, you know,
• 20:18
  there's a lot of Gray in the floor to sort of lift that floor
• 20:20
  up and stop it disappearing into nothing.
• 20:24
  So a lot of a lot of time spent getting that color palette just
• 20:27
  right. So it didn't become just sort of
• 20:29
  a garish sort of mess, you know, And that was before we started
• 20:34
  designing the gondolas because, you know, you can't just pop out
• 20:37
  and buy some gondolas. And they had, you know, they all
• 20:40
  had to be rigged for special effects and they had to be as,
• 20:42
  you know, flat bottom. So they because, you know, the
• 20:45
  actual canal was any like 6 inches deep.
• 20:50
  So there was a lot of moving parts in getting that right, you
• 20:54
  know, And of course, the more, the more people get into the set
• 20:59
  design, you know, the more the writers saw opportunities and
• 21:02
  the more Tim saw opportunities. So then what you thought was
• 21:05
  just a nice bit of background dressing suddenly becomes more
• 21:08
  prominent, you know, So suddenly we had, you know, Hester enters
• 21:12
  on the, the, the, you know. Which is so incredible the.
• 21:18
  Bridge, you know, all those sort of things suddenly became, you
• 21:23
  know, huge deals. And, you know, we had to design
• 21:25
  the gondola in the end around Hester's dress because Hester's
• 21:30
  dress was already well underway when we designed, when they came
• 21:34
  up with the idea of her coming in on the gondola and getting
• 21:38
  off. And she had these amazing sort
• 21:40
  of panniers, you know, that were almost, you know, huge, great
• 21:44
  things. So we had to sort of get very,
• 21:47
  very kindly asked costume to lend us the spare versions of
• 21:50
  those so we could actually get, you know, somebody in the boat
• 21:54
  to get the right measurements to get the right width of the boat
• 21:57
  for. The penny.
• 21:58
  And, and also to make it in such a way that she'd get out because
• 22:01
  she, you know, it wasn't very easy for Joanna to sort of move
• 22:04
  in this thing. So the, the, the seat had, you
• 22:07
  know, the height of the seat had to be right to let it get out
• 22:09
  and stuff. It was there was a lot to think
• 22:12
  about on that side. That's amazing.
• 22:15
  I, I love how complicated this gondola is.
• 22:17
  But I mean, when you watch that scene, though, I mean, it's
• 22:20
  breathtaking, honestly. And I remember thinking in a
• 22:22
  moment like, gosh, like this season was so good.
• 22:25
  I mean, I liked the first one, but I loved the second one.
• 22:28
  It was so much fun. Never forget that image.
• 22:32
  It's interesting. The next question you brought up
• 22:34
  a couple things. Which kind of time was going to
• 22:36
  ask you. You know, one of the things I
• 22:38
  love about Wednesday is how intentional the use of color is
• 22:41
  or the lack thereof. And I actually interviewed
• 22:44
  costume desire Colleen that what a few weeks ago.
• 22:47
  And we talked about how Morticia this season embraced these rich
• 22:51
  Crimson and scarlet tones this season.
• 22:54
  And it felt like that influence also extended beyond just her
• 22:57
  costumes and into the environments around her.
• 23:01
  So even something like Morticia's cottage, which was
• 23:05
  once Maryland's very bright pink home, now feels completely
• 23:09
  transformed. And Morticia got to put her own
• 23:11
  twist on it. So how did you approach using
• 23:14
  colour across the season, and what was it like reimagining
• 23:17
  that cottage as an extension of Morticia herself?
• 23:21
  Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.
• 23:22
  And it's great that you've already spoken to Kleen about it
• 23:24
  because that that, you know, she LED that she she introduced the
• 23:27
  red into the costume and it was like, well, that's great.
• 23:30
  That gives us a steer because, you know, other than Wednesday's
• 23:34
  environment, and I'll sort of come back to that in a minute.
• 23:36
  You know, we don't really do sort of just black gothic, you
• 23:41
  know, not not you know, everyone.
• 23:44
  You know, it's like we're saying about Tim being a minimus at
• 23:46
  face value. You'd say one thing, but
• 23:48
  actually, when you dig into it, we're not really.
• 23:51
  So it's a grave is a great steer for her cottage And and you
• 23:54
  know, by extension the gala, because it was her gala and
• 23:57
  that's why it had that colour theme to it.
• 24:00
  But again, that red into the cottage was vital really,
• 24:02
  because otherwise it would have been AI think it would have been
• 24:05
  a hard set to get a shape on be right.
• 24:09
  You know, the, the pink set was, was far more fun in many ways.
• 24:13
  I mean, I know, and I think I've said this before, that it was a
• 24:17
  direct homage to the 60s TV show that if you look at the if you
• 24:23
  look at the original set photos from that show, they're all
• 24:26
  vivid pinks and vivid colours. But it was shot in black and
• 24:30
  white. So, you know, no one ever saw
• 24:32
  that. They always watched a black and
• 24:33
  white TV show and it had this great gothic look to it.
• 24:36
  But the sets were actually got garish.
• 24:38
  They were, you know, ghastly and in many respects, you know, in a
• 24:41
  good way. But so that was our homage that
• 24:43
  we started off with the set, you know, and these pinks and the
• 24:46
  wallpaper was specially designed to be this vivid pink.
• 24:48
  And, you know, we went to sort of town on those sort of
• 24:51
  tasteless furniture and soft furnishings and then it flips.
• 24:56
  So we've like particularly the wallpaper was exactly the same
• 24:59
  design of wallpaper. We just changed all the color
• 25:02
  registers and we actually had one under the other because we
• 25:07
  had a quick turn around from when it was pink to when it was
• 25:09
  black and red. So the wallpaper peeled off and
• 25:12
  revealed the the black and red version underneath, which is,
• 25:16
  you know, I like doing tricks like that.
• 25:17
  No one ever knows we do it. But it means you can turn this
• 25:19
  around in a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks.
• 25:22
  And it's the fun thing. People go, you know, the unit
• 25:24
  come, goes away and then come back and it's transformed.
• 25:28
  You know, we had to restain all the woods.
• 25:30
  I mean, one thing, you know, we always try and do is, is
• 25:34
  especially when Wednesday sort of lead in the leading that in
• 25:37
  terms of her styling is the fact that we want to keep the
• 25:41
  original materials and colors and tones of the environment.
• 25:45
  So if you if there's wood, it's just not painted black, you
• 25:48
  know, it's actually the wood with a very dark sort of oak
• 25:51
  stains over the top of it and make, you know, crafting mix
• 25:54
  things together to to reveal the wood underneath it.
• 25:57
  So it's not just jet black or, you know, the fabrics, you know,
• 26:01
  we start off with a fabric with a, with a bit of colour and a
• 26:03
  bit of pattern in it. And then we dye it into the
• 26:05
  greys and the blacks so that it always has underlying sort of
• 26:09
  texture and colour in it. So nothing's just, you know,
• 26:12
  blatantly just black and white. So that was, that was a really
• 26:16
  fun set to do. That switch particularly was, it
• 26:18
  was a great one for us. It was just a nice, a nice
• 26:21
  reveal as well when everyone came back, you know, into that
• 26:23
  set. And it was like, yeah.
• 26:27
  I mean, the transformation felt so in ways like dramatic, but
• 26:32
  then also subtle because you could still kind of see the
• 26:34
  bones of Maryland's apartment on there too, which I love so much.
• 26:37
  But I I prefer Morticia's take on it, quite honestly.
• 26:40
  Me too. I'm trying to remember it all
• 26:45
  now, but as you say, it was a little while back we did it.
• 26:47
  But like when when it's Maryland's house, we have these
• 26:50
  big tall Wind Bay windows and they're square with sort of
• 26:54
  leading on them, but they have a, they have a bit of a Gothic
• 26:56
  sort of glazing bar in them. I mean, when we came back the
• 27:01
  second time, we actually filled in the top panels to make the
• 27:04
  windows. So these tall and pointy windows
• 27:06
  as opposed to these square windows.
• 27:08
  There's all little details like that that just change the shape
• 27:12
  without, you know, without just making some big sort of gaudy
• 27:16
  statement. Well, so we've had now the The
• 27:19
  Masquerade and Morticia's Cottage, but let's get into
• 27:23
  Willow Hill, which was such a fun location for our characters
• 27:26
  to explore. But from what I've read, Willow
• 27:29
  Hill is actually a location. So this makes it quite different
• 27:32
  to some of the other pieces that we've been talking about.
• 27:34
  How different is your process developing a location such as
• 27:38
  Willow Hill, where you kind of have these bones to work with,
• 27:41
  compared to, say, the Masquerade where you're building canals and
• 27:45
  gondolas? No, it's actually that's a good
• 27:48
  question because you know you have to when you when you get
• 27:52
  the scripts and when you get, you know, your schedule, you
• 27:54
  know how long you've got to develop all these things.
• 27:57
  You just have to make a judgement call quite early on
• 28:00
  about what you're going to build and what you're going to try and
• 28:03
  find or, or you know how you're going to play those cards
• 28:07
  because you know, you haven't got enough space or money to
• 28:09
  build everything right. You never did.
• 28:12
  You know, you want to because production wise they love to
• 28:14
  have everything on stage because it's much more convenient.
• 28:16
  But you know, sometimes the scale and you and you don't
• 28:20
  always going to get bogged down in the studio sets and Willow
• 28:23
  Hill just screamed to me that we wanted an environment that took
• 28:27
  us away from Nevermore and took us away.
• 28:29
  You know, it was very much a design wise for me was a it's a
• 28:33
  reaction to Nevermore because Nevermore is this very, you
• 28:37
  know, collect eclectic sort of mishmash of styles and colors
• 28:42
  and and characters and it's very busy and in our sense of the
• 28:47
  word. But I wanted, you know, we had
• 28:50
  to take that and make a very spooky, scary space that was
• 28:54
  almost, you know, paired back to the bones.
• 28:58
  And I spent a long time looking at buildings.
• 29:00
  I looked at real, you know, psychiatric hospitals and I
• 29:03
  looked at, you know, abandoned government buildings and
• 29:06
  everything else. The place we ended up with was
• 29:09
  an abandoned seminary. But when you're looking for
• 29:13
  places to, to work into you, you know, the things you need to try
• 29:16
  and find and you know what you can bring to it.
• 29:19
  So I needed a sense of symmetry and I need to somewhere there I
• 29:24
  could could assemble a gatehouse and an entrance way because I,
• 29:28
  you know, that was very specific to the show.
• 29:30
  And I went to something that was a big, you know, it was your
• 29:32
  reaction to the Livermore gates again.
• 29:34
  Production designer Mark Screw and thank you so much for being
• 29:37
  here. This has been such a joy.
• 29:38
  I like I said, I love your work and I'm excited to see what's
• 29:41
  coming up next. It's going to be a lot of and I
• 29:43
  hope you'll come back and talk to me about whatever new wacky
• 29:46
  things that Wednesday and crew finds themselves in the next.
• 29:50
  The Costume House with Spencer Williams is a production of The
• 29:53
  Art of Costume. This episode was hosted,
• 29:55
  produced, and edited by Spencer Williams.
• 29:57
  To discover more conversations with the designer shaping film,
• 30:01
  television, and theater, visit theartofcostume.com or follow us
• 30:05
  on social media at The Art of Costume.
• 30:07
  And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at Host Spencer.
• 30:10
  If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to.