Production design panel: ‘The Great,’ ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,’ ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ ‘Schmigadoon!’ and ‘Severance’ Emmy nominees [Exclusive Video Interview]
“It’s story and daydreaming,” says “Severance” production designer Jeremy Hindle about his favorite part of the creative process. “Literally daydream everything that you could possibly daydream first without any budget or any other conversation. Just be free.” We talked to Hindle as part of our “Meet the Experts” panel of Emmy-nominated production designers along with Francesca Di Mottola (“The Great”), Bill Groom (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), Gianna Costa (“RuPaul’s Drag Race”) and Bo Welch (“Schmigadoon!”). Watch our exclusive group discussion above. Click each person’s name to view their individual chats.
For Costa, the joy of production design is “going on deep dives, which is very easy for me to do.” She loves “finding very interesting things to pull into a set … I have so many folders of images, it’s ridiculous, but I could spend hours upon hours finding cool references.” Groom is also partial to the early “discovery phase of the project” when “you start getting into it with the research and all the references and all of the conversations with the director.”
On the other hand, Welch is sometimes “happiest when it’s over,” though in the case of “Schmigadoon!” his happiest moment was when he saw his sets fully realized and inhabited by singers and dancers: “That blew my mind to see … This huge inanimate object become so alive I wept.” But for Di Mottola “it’s all of those together really,” from the daydreaming to “getting lost” in the research, to “the collaboration if you get the right team,” and then “the biggest joy it’s when it all comes together.” Judging from their Emmy nominations this year, the Television Academy thought it came together quite well for these artists.
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