Back in the Office for "The Other Two"

Still a pandemic, but back in the office to finish decorating “The Other Two.” Much like when we were working on “The Flight Attendant,” “The Other Two” was in the middle of filming when NYC was shut down with the initial outbreak of COVID-19.

Maggie Ruder, the production designer reached out to join her to decorate the remainder of the season and I happily agreed as a fan of the show myself and eager to work with Maggie.

Because of COVID compliance, this room was slated for just an occupancy of 1, whereas in pre-VOID days easily a whole department would have been squeezed into this space.

Ok before you start wondering why I’m totally fetishizing this office I need you to know what production offices are usually like: whatever random suite of available offices happen to be empty at any given moment in New York City, a bunch of people crammed into a makeshift small space on folding tables and folding chairs sort of like a traveling caravan that sprouted overnight since most production offices are only occupied by the crew for a few months. Often windowless.

I’ve worked in so many weird and strange spots around NYC ranging from nice studio offices above the soundstage in Queens, to three rooms above a dentist’s office and liquor store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, to lofts slated for destruction in Tribeca, to some producer’s family connection offices that are mostly empty in Rockefeller Center, to a WeWork office, to the bowels of an old decaying neglected floor in an office building in downtown Brooklyn…the list goes on but you get the idea.

For a bunch of people focused on beautifying and decorating interior spaces we are usually working out of the most uninspiring interior spaces you can think of. Luckily we are not usually in the office that much—part of what makes set decorating so fun: we are always out and about around the city.

So when I walked into my new office in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, my jaw dropped and pretty much knew this will probably the best office I will ever get. Also in large part because Maggie gave me this amazing office instead of taking it for herself which tells you almost everything you need to know about Maggie.

This is the view. !!!!!!!

As someone who basically gets paid to think about re-arranging furniture, obviously the first thing I did was move the desk so that when I was sitting I was looking out of the window not away from it (DUH).

This is how I my desk was oriented and how the wall behind me looked while we were in the thick of things in furniture selection and option

Since we were still very much in the thick of COVID and had regulations of the distance we were supposed to keep, I thought I could capitalize on all those big empty white walls and get a projectioner so we could look at photos and options large and sit a distance from each other to discuss some creative decision making.

the window sill became a handy place to consider fabric swatches for the plane set.

Hah some moody little winter shots while I was still smitten and in disbelief I got this wonderful huge office all to myself—which oddly is maybe one of the very few upsides of working through a pandemic.

Annie's Rooftop: A HOLLYWOOD HIGH STAKES CHASE!

Jess and me having a rare moment of time and leisure to be a little silly while dressing a set.

If you are wondering how they do this…(answer is above)

So one of the last sets I worked on for The Flight Attendant was Annie’s rooftop.

While pretty straightforward: it was more of a logistical challenge. The two biggest challenges being:

1. Enough outdoor flooring that would cover a huge outside rooftop and be safe for the actors to run on.

2. Some huge AC rooftop units like the ones on the top of big apartment buildings here in NYC but also big enough for the actors to hide behind.

Jessica Petruccelli, Emmy-Award Winning Set Decorator and occasional rooftop sweeper.

The flooring was a whole thing. The factory messed up, we had to find someone to drive the literal ton of rubber mats overnight from Ohio but thank heavens they arrived in time thank you to our wonderful vendor, old school New York business: Canal Rubber. There’s more drama related to installing this flooring but I’m not going to go into it here. Just know the flooring you absolutely didn’t notice on screen was A WHOLE THING.

It was such a debacle in our department that we decided the best inside joke wrap gift for our wonderful crew of set dressers (almost all of them ended up helping lay down this flooring) were some custom printed coasters using the same rubber flooring material.

The funnier story, for our purposes here, is the drama that surrounded the logistics of these two huge AC units that I bought used from a dealer in Florida.

Since we didn’t need ones that worked, and in fact preferred ones that were emptied out I was looking for used AC dealers. I called some in the tri-state area but none were as responsive as this guy Bob in Florida. I’m telling you if every vendor I worked with was as responsive and on top of it as Bob, set decorating would be a breeze.

I mean Bob even sent me a photo of the units we bought from him strapped onto the flat bed truck as it left his warehouse in Florida en route to us in New York City. He gave me the number of the driver who called me as he was leaving and I was basically in touch with the driver during their drive up.

So many things can go wrong on a long drive like that and man, the whole scene was depending on these very specific units to make it to us in time and in tact.

When the drivers hit NYC I breathed a big sigh of relief. …But then the driver called me an hour later saying he was having trouble finding our warehouse address. Our office and warehouse were in a fairly confusing section of Greenpoint, Brooklyn where addresses aren’t so prominent and the driver said he had never been to NYC before.

So I offered to drive over to meet him and personally escort him to our warehouse. I met the guys where they were waiting and drove slowly back to our warehouse so they could follow.

We were three blocks away and then…

Wait why was the truck stuck? And then I saw…

😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱 😱

exactly how I felt

Yes, these AC units traveled all the way from Florida to Brooklyn and then in the last three blocks, THE LAST THREE BLOCKS, there was an accident.

It was so tragicomic the only real reaction was to laugh. The police basically had to help close down a street to facilitate the truck (with our AC units!) out, but as you can see from the set photos and on screen, they finally made it safely and on time to their intended final destination.

I sent a copy of this photo to Bob in Florida AND the super sweet and wonderful (and probably slightly traumatized) truck drivers who safely escorted these babies to their cinematic destination.

HOW DID WE KNOW we would have a parallel shot of Cassie and Miranda on the rooftop taking this photo before the crew even arrived to shoot this scene? I guess not only are we set decorators, Jess and I, are also able to see into the future!

Annie's Apartment

Annie’s Apartment in The Flight Attendant is hands down one of the most fun and challenging sets I’ve had the chance to work on to date (close competition is the main loft apartment in Russian Doll). It was a wonderful opportunity to play with an aesthetic I haven’t had much chance to indulge in for work yet and learn many new vendors.

I’m so grateful Jessica entrusted me to be her key collaborator on this set and we worked together very closely on each detail to bring Sara, the Production Designer’s, vision to life. Not to mention that basically everyone else on the set dec team pitched in on some aspect of this pretty epic set that had a lot of custom made elements.

This is what the process of consolidating our options and putting together all the elements looked like in the office.

L to R: Christine Foley, Art Director; Jessica Petruccelli, Emmy-Award Winning Set Decorator :); my laptop and water bottle; Sara K White, Production Designer.

Part of the decoration process Jess and I enjoy using is making boards so we can see how everything is going to work together.

There were so many custom elements, which is always challenging on our production timelines, but I think one that really stands out is the curved transparent shower in the middle of the room (as scripted!). You can read more about the custom elements Sara and Jess talk about in their Architectural Digest interview (yes, so fancy right?).

Thankfully, the other Assistant Set Decorator, Jeanelle gave me a tip of a guy she had worked with before to make a custom piece and he turned out to be the perfect contact for helping us making a custom curved shower door. Wow I was working on finalizing this custom shower wall exactly 1 year ago today.

I know earlier I talked about how sometimes you work on a set, and the parts you care about the most never show up on screen which is always a big bummer. Thankfully for Annie’s, we really see every last corner of the apartment. All our little details really have their moment in the sun on screen!

I love the custom painted HVAC pipes as a very inspired detail Sara came up with.

Another one of my favorite details on this set, are the round light switch plates and electrical outlets. Katie Lobell our Set Dec shopper found those! Those coat racks on the left, we were one short and nobody in America had them in stock. I had to order one FROM DENMARK which thankfully arrived in time.

A Crys Yin painting prominently featured!

If you are loving the photos of Annie’s set, there are more photos in the portfolio section here.

look even Buckley is impressed with the design and decoration in Annie’s apartment!

How Do You Make a Warehouse Look British? 🇬🇧

In episode 6 of The Flight Attendant on HBOMax, we get a few brief shots of Cecilia, Miranda’s associate, in an undisclosed warehouse. What you may or may not have realized is that even though this warehouse was actually located in Brooklyn, NYC it was scripted to be located in London.

So when Jess gave me the responsibility to do this set the first interesting question I pondered was, “how do you make a warehouse look British or that it is located in London?”

I mean if you are in a car and the scene is supposed to take place in London you just need the drivers side to be on the right and voila we have the visual cues we need.

But what about a warehouse? 🤔

The first thing I tried to do was google search as many permutations of the words “London warehouse” “warehouse in Britain” as I could. And believe it or not, the internet is not rife with photos of the insides of British warehouses, and even when they are it’s hard to see anything particularly British about them.

So then I started looking up warehouse shelving and solution companies based in the UK and combing through their brochures, catalogs, and websites to try to get some good reference photos. This method elucidated some good warehouse photos—but they were mostly very sterile looking, huge industrial scale warehouses that looked borderline like stock photos.

The ideal photo I was hoping for was a chaotic-in-the-middle-of-fulfilling-a-lot-of-orders warehouse on a Wednesday morning at 10am with lots of life layers and details I could study. I never found that photo of my dreams.

So I started thinking of ways we could express Britishness (or at least distinguish the space from an American counterpart) and this is what I came up with:

1. A4 paper

2. British office supplies—particularly those file holders I always see on British and European shows but which we don’t really use in America cause we use binders instead.

3. Some British snacks.

4. British style light switch and electrical outlet covers (which are very different since they are on a whole different voltage and outlet prong system).

5. British premiere league football (soccer) team paraphernalia.

Ultimately these are very small and specific details that most people wouldn’t notice on screen one way or another (we’ll get back to them later though). When you are doing a set that is 93% boxed air (literally), you gotta keep it interesting for yourself though.

A lot of the main work of this set was of course filling a completely empty room by finding the shelving, furniture, and a quantity of boxes, crates, and containers of varying sizes, color, and texture to make a convincing looking warehouse that also had visual interest. None of which (boxes, shelving, basic warehouse furniture) was that distinguishable between British vs. American.

Warehouse Before

Warehouse After—93% boxed air.

I also gave myself the added challenge of not using ULINE (for political reasons) for this set—when definitely this is a set MEANT for ordering from ULINE. It would have definitely been the easiest and most straightforward way to get the great majority of shopping done fast and cheap. And normally I advocate for not making things more complicated than they need to be, but…in this case no.

I mean just that above was enough to keep me busy (its the quantity and volume I was talking about!). When you have an empty room, you really gotta make the calculations to make sure you are going to have enough stuff to fill the space with enough variation to look natural and interesting.

The worst fear of all decorators is to be dressing a set and realizing you don’t have enough stuff and no time (or money left) to get it. I wish I had the picture of the paper I used to calculate and plan each shelf ahead of time to make sure we had enough things to fill all the space but I definitely threw that away.

So after I got that taken care of Jess supported me on my mission to find all the British details listed above.

1. A4 Paper.

   I special ordered a carton of A4 paper from a paper supplier to use for all paperwork and printed signs in the warehouse.

Living in Asia for 10 years (for my first career), one of the weird small frustrating things I encountered is how standardized paper sizes outside of the US are different from what we use in the US (haha America likes to do that). So my American folders, document covers, and binders wouldn’t work with the local document sizes. If you want to learn everything about American letter size paper vs. A4, click here.

I thought this was a fun detail that yeah absolutely nobody will notice at home and likely not even the actors, yet it brought a level of authentic realism to the set that at least Jess and I could enjoy knowing.

2. British Office Supplies

I got in there looking for the British equivalent of Staples and scrolled through all their inventory to see what actually looked different than what I would find at Staples, and I discovered quite a lot actually!

This was August during COVID so shipping times and fulfillment were dicey especially for an international order. I even reached out to a few British office supply companies to see if they would work with me on shipping times. They all said no, but one guy suggested Amazon.co.uk which was 💡.

A glimpse of my Amazon.co.uk order (there was more not pictured here too!)

👀 some of the British office supplies from the order? To me those yellow pens are emblematic because they look very un-American to me. You might notice the British electrical cover and some British snacks in here too (we will get to that in a second).

You might be thinking 🧐 “wait a minute, I don’t ever remember seeing this desk in the warehouse…” Which I unfortunately have to say “yes 😔, sadly we never even see this part of the room at all on screen in the final cut!” (The angles that were scouted were not the same ones that ended up on screen in the final cut of the episode).

This actually happens all the time in our work, and 🤷🏻‍♀️ you gotta be doing it for the love of the game and the enjoyment of the process. Because besides that we have very little control of what ultimately ends up on screen after the final edit.

anyways here’s another angle of the desk with all the A4 paper, imported British office supplies and British snacks…

On one hand, it was a slight blessing in disguise because the biggest pieces of distinctive British (and all European actually) office supplies that are visibly different than American ones were the document file holders they use instead of the binders we Americans use.

The ones I ordered got held up, our filming date got pushed earlier, so in the end they didn’t arrive in time 😭.. So we ended up having to use some binders (and it was killing me on the inside because I knew they weren’t right and we had ordered the right ones they just weren’t here on time!). Well turns out either way you never saw the shelf where the document file holders should have gone.

3. Some British snacks

This one was pretty easy, I knew there was a British food importer in Connecticut, and just ordered some snacks off their website, and called them to make sure the shipping would arrive in time. Any food item you catch on screen is from them!

4. British style light switch and electrical outlet covers

You might have noticed from the above image of my Amazon.co.uk order that it included two outlet plate covers. Anyone who has traveled to the UK will realize, hmm we speak the same language, share a lot of cultural heritage, and yet I can’t charge my cellphone here without getting a voltage adapter…

Covering up all the American outlets with British outlet covers seemed like an easy win and way to convey visually this warehouse is in LONDON.

5. British premiere league football (soccer) team paraphernalia.

This idea to communicate British-ness was not only seemingly low-hanging fruit in displaying a different sports culture than America, but it was also intended as a tribute to one of Jess and my favorite prop house warehouse workers: Josh at State Supply Props.

When State Supply was at their Harlem location, Josh’s workspace at the loading dock was a living altar to the Mets. He had so much sports fan paraphernalia hanging up everywhere so we thought it would be fun to make the British warehouse loading dock character’s working space an homage to Josh just with a British football team.

Turns out WarnerMedia’s legal team only gave me the ok to put up ONE branded British football team fan item…so I tried to chose wisely and we put it here:

That’s a British football team scarf hanging over the bulletin board…do you know what team?

Now of course, which team should our warehouse worker character support was a whole thing. As an American and someone who pays so little attention to sports, I had no sense of what fandom of each team signified. Even though I don’t really pay attention to sports, I do understand the many unsaid and understood signifiers of a Yankees fan v.s a Mets fan in NYC.

So I turned to the internet to try and figure out what team would make sense for our warehouse worker, and stumbled upon this wonderful gem from Reddit:

I found this breakdown hilarious despite its…shall we say crudeness. I double checked this with a British friend who said it was startlingly accurate.

“White van drivers called Tony” sounded like exactly the profile of the character I was thinking of, so West Ham it was!

AND YOU ACTUALLY GET TO SEE THE WEST HAM SCARF ON SCREEN!

Those boxes behind Cecilia were custom printed and had kg and cm units of measurement.

BONUS!

Oh one last bonus one: if you notice all these boxes have the weights in kg and dimensions in cm because the rest of the world (including the UK) uses the metric system. We had these boxes custom printed and I asked our graphic designer, Ambika to please make sure the dimensions were in metric.

I’m 100% aware that 0 people watching the show noticed any of these details I went through painstaking trouble to realize and now just recount to you, but I’m so grateful Jess gave me the space and encouragement to do it anyway.

I mean, a lot of times these small decorating details are just for the actors or ourselves or the abstract belief that even if they aren’t noticed explicitly the sum total of their presence creates an overall tangible feeling of authentic natural realism.

Like I said earlier, you gotta be doing it for the love of the game and the enjoyment of the process so that even if the work doesn’t ultimately appear on screen or get noticed by viewers, at least you can be proud of the work.

The Quest to Find All that Shredded Paper

Cassie and Alex in her mind palace of trying to piece together what those shredded pieces of paper mean.

In episode 4 “Conspiracy Theories” of The Flight Attendant, after Cassie stole the shredded paper remains from Janet Sokolov’s office in episode 3, we see her wrestling with all this new and puzzling information in her mind palace space/subconscious with Alex. They are back in the hotel suite but now it is is COVERED with shredded paper.

Cool idea. But when set decorators read a scripted idea like that we think “!!! going to need to find or make tons of shredded paper!”

One of the cool things about set decorating is, it is translating a scripted idea from the writers or design idea from the production designer into an actual physical reality. And sometimes it is the simplest things that are the most challenging. Honestly often it is.

Shredded paper: sure anyone knows how to find that. You go to Staples, you buy a home office paper shredder and shred some paper. Done.

But once you start getting into larger quantities, the kind of quantities to make a cinematic effect and really
”read on screen” like in the shot above, it becomes a lot more challenging. Quantity is a big thing when finding things for sets—I could write a whole thing on that but I won’t right now.

I often say it is being able to buy things in the quantity needed, on our crazy production timelines (need it yesterday), with a limited budget that makes set decorating a profession versus someone who is good at shopping, has a knack for interior design, or is resourceful.

In this case, I’m going to walk you through what a challenge it was.

Jess (THE set decorator for The Flight Attendant) and I talked about how our dream situation was we would find a vendor who already dealt in industrial quantities of shredded paper we could buy mass amounts of shredded paper from (I’m talking 1000 pounds of shredded paper to be exact) that we simply picked up or they dropped-off.

I believed deep down inside that I must be able to find this dream vendor.

little snapshot of the calling journey I took from my work notebook (on the other side was my list of things I was buying for an entirely different set. We are usually working at multiple sets at a time concurrently).

So I started googling and calling around all the shredded paper vendors in the NYC tri-state area. Quickly I discovered this was going to be tougher than I realized because what these companies sell their customers is security and peace of mind re: disposing sensitive documents. All of them said flat out no way were they going to sell me their old shreds—that would violate their whole confidential promise to their customers.

Think about it, why do you want to shred something? Because you have a document you want safely and simply destroyed. (Why did Janet Sokolov shred those documents in her office? To destroy evidence!)

Cassie uncovering the shredded documents in Janet Sokolov’s home office in Episode 3 (another set Jess and I worked closely together on!)

Okkkkk. So we discussed the possibility of renting some industrial size paper shredders, bringing them to our set dressing shop, buying obscene amounts of new paper, and then asking for the manpower hours required to have a few set dressers going to town shredding all that new paper.

We didn’t love this plan for three reasons:

1. omg why waste all this NEW paper (and squander the lives of millions of trees in the process) when the world and certainly New York City is already filled abundantly with people disposing of already used paper?!

2. New paper would lack the texture and dimension that used paper with writing and graphics and different color has. This plan costs way more money (renting the machines, buying the material, and budgeting for the manpower).

3. And lastly, renting an industrial shredder is possible but not as easy as we had hoped. Nowadays most companies who hire one of the paper waste companies get a service where someone comes to pick-up paper meant for shredding which then gets hauled and shredded in an industrial paper shredder truck.

I asked a few companies, what if I provide all the paper, could I hire you guys to shred it in your truck, but the truck just parks outside of our office and when it is done shredding we just take the contents? They all said no to this option citing that the trucks are often filled with multiple client’s paper so they can’t just give us our paper and anyways they don’t do that.

Feeling a bit stumped I even called a few other set decorator friends working on other productions to see if they had done something similar before and had any vendors they’ve used. They all said no and thought the best option was the DIY method (the one we didn’t love for the reasons stated above.)

…I really believed there MUST be the right paper shredding vendor out there. You know maybe a smaller firm less bound by all these corporate contracts, someone with a little more flexibility to cater to this very specific situation…

And just as I was giving up hope I got the call back from a vendor with whom I had left a message on their voicemail. He heard my message, googled this new show “The Flight Attendant” and saw that Kaley Cuoco was starring and his wife loves Kaley! He’s the owner of his paper shredding solutions company in New Jersey, had that can-do spirit that small business owners do, and believed he could deliver what we were hoping for. YAY!!!!!!!!

[I wanted to embed the GIF of Ari Gold from Entourage doing his “I LOVE THIS TOWN"!” celebratory dance after realizing he could negotiate with an intransigent school principal once he realized the principal’s son was interested in working as an agent, but I couldn’t make it work with this website’s interface]

THE HIGH. THE BEST HIGH. When that crazy quest you’ve been on finally sprouts a good lead. I’ll never forget how pumped Jess and I were in the office after I got off that phone call that evening.

I worked out all the price and delivery logistics with my Paper Shredding Guy, his company was going to deliver 1000 pounds of shredded paper to our stage two working days before we needed to film. Great, I can check that off my list.

But of course it is never that easy.

Friday Feburary 14, 2020 I was on location working on the set for Diana’s office (another set I was in charge of) and it was surprisingly a pretty chill day considering the high stress few months proceeding it. (Also little did we know what a calm before the storm it was considering what was about to engulf all of our realities COVID wise in just a few weeks).

Literally kicking back on set at Diana’s Office (Annie’s boss at the law firm) which we were dressing the morning of Feb 14, 2020 and which I was using as my desk to get some work done.

The actual intended use of the desk in the show. (I would like to note that all those awards in the background were custom engraved with the character’s name all sorts of fake honors I made up for her.)

Jess came to set, we were both relaxed in a way we hadn’t been in weeks. We even had time to go do some fun smalls shopping together for the finishing touches of Diana’s office at NYC’s most fun office supply store Goods for the Study.

We are all enjoying life cracking jokes with the set dressers dressing Diana’s set with us, and then we get The Call.

Sara the Production Designer calls us from the stage where they are dressing in the 1000 pounds of shredded paper that have been delivered from our Paper Shredding Guy. Sara says with slight panic, the shreds are not the right shape. It is Friday afternoon, and we are filming this first thing Monday morning.

The shreds the props department created for what Cassie stole from Janet Sokolov’s Office are straight shreds—the kind you get from a simple home office paper shredder. The kind of shreds we currently had 1000 pounds of were cross-cut shreds.

Knowing very little about the details of the paper shredding Jess and I honestly didn’t understand this distinction until Sara sent us a photo. OH. This distinction was something that was never specified to any of us and not one we even knew to ask. (I learned so much about the paper shredding industry that week).

I called my Paper Shredding Guy to see if he could help us. He said “That is the industry standard you know: cross-cut. Cross-cut shreds are what most effectively obscure and destroy sensitive documents because they are much harder to piece together.”

Yeah, exactly. If the shreds were actually cross cut, maybe it wouldn’t have been so easy for Cassie and Max to reconstruct the strip shreds they stole from Janet Sokolov’s office:

The strip shredded paper Max and Cassie were able to piece back together in Annie’s apartment on her shower door (I had to find this unique custom curve shower door but that’s a whole other post)—this is exactly why you don’t strip-shred—its too easy to piece back together—and the industry standard is cross-cut.

And like with so many vendors I’ve had this talk with before I pleaded with him: “I know this doesn’t make sense in real life or in how it actually works in your industry, but can you help us make a bunch of strip shreds to support the fake cinematic world we are creating? Could you also make 500 pounds more and deliver it by Monday morning at 5am?“ (we thought we could layer some of the crosscut under the strip shred for bulk—a little movie magic.)

Like I said before Paper Shredding Guy is a can-do guy and for the right price he said sure he could help us out.

But considering our thin time margin of working hours left, we were going to be cutting it very close (haha paper shredding pun!). We all agreed we needed a Plan B. Because relying on a third party to deliver something we needed to make the shot on Mon at 5am was a risky Plan A. Any number of things could go wrong and we needed a back-up.

So now Jeanelle, the other assistant set decorator joined our little Paper Shredding Crisis Task Force to try and figure out how we were going to come up with 1000 pounds of strip shreds before Monday morning. Did I mention it was late Friday afternoon by this point? The Friday of Valentines Day when many people have plans with their dearest loved ones and are not planning on working a minute later than absolutely necessary?

We revisited some previous plans and I called the places we had inquired about renting industrial paper shredders. Turns out any industrial size paper shredder only cuts cross-cut. Strip shreds are only for little amateur home paper shredders. AGHHHHHH.

I called a bunch of Staples around the city to find out how many strip-shred home paper shredders they had in stock now, and it turns out VERY FEW. Most of that is sold online now, and as anyone who has had experience with a dinky home paper shredder they are not that durable.

In order to make the quantity of shreds we needed, we needed a bunch of these dinky little shredders so that if one died from exhaustion (sorry paper shredder) we had another waiting in the wings. Also we needed enough so that we could have a small army of set dressers shredding all at once. I mean, 2 guys and 2 shredders was not going to cut it (HAH! another paper shredding pun!) Thankfully production agreed to let us pay a handful of set-dressers a 6th day rate to staff the Paper Shredding Crisis Task Force Paper Shredding Factory.

Online though, wasn’t going to be fast enough. We needed these shredders now. So that first thing Sat morning the Paper Shredding Army could get to work.

In the end Jeanelle found a guy who sold on Amazon but had a warehouse of 20+ strip shred home office paper shredders in New Jersey (NJ to save the day again) and could deliver them all in a van to Brooklyn that evening. Katie our set dec shopper was able to procure the obscene amount of paper we needed for the Paper Shredding Crisis Task Force Paper Shredding Factory.

Here is a video of Jeanelle coming into the office at 7:04 pm (you can see the rest of the office is dark and everyone else has long gone home) with one of the paper shredders that had been delivered just to test that it would work.

The huge sigh of relief we all breathed.

In the end my Paper Shredding Guy DELIVERED. He showed up Monday 5am with the 500 pounds of strip-shredded paper as requested and together with the shreds from the Paper Shredding Crisis Task Force Paper Shredding Factory we were able to create the beautiful quantity required to make the shot in time for camera.

PHEW

The Quest + the Intense High Stakes Problem Solving are two things I actually love. So even though they are less about beautiful objects and the design aesthetic side of set decorating (which duh is the best part), they are processes I really enjoy and which keeps me loving set decorating.

Those Taxidermy Polar Bears

There was a quick little moment when Cassie is exploring the Sokolov Estate in Episode 3 “Funeralia” of The Flight Attendant and she comes across a huge taxidermy polar bear in one room. (above)

And then when Cassie and Max have successfully broken into Alex Sokolov’s apartment in Episode 5 “Other People’s Houses” we see a taxidermy polar bear cub in his apartment too—echo-ing the bigger one at his parents home. (below)

As the assistant decorator assigned responsibility for both of these sets (the Sokolov Estate and Alex’s Penthouse Apartment) it was, among other things, my job to find these these taxidermy polar bears.

One thing I learned early on was it was VERY difficult to find a real taxidermy polar bear in the United States for rental or even purchase because IT IS ILLEGAL to trade in taxidermy polar bears.

I found a guy in Canada who had some good looking taxidermy polar bears but then he told me, “I can’t rent it to you across the border in the US because it is illegal to trade in polar bear taxidermy.” Oh. (turns out the Canada-US-Polar Bear triangle is a whole thing)

Hunting Polar Bears has been illegal in the USA since 1973, with exceptions for the indigenous people of Alaska and I talked to one taxidermy specialist in California who told me that it is extremely difficult to find a real Polar Bear taxidermy after the 1940’s and the one they had available to rent was from 1936.

…the problem with that one is it looked like it was from the 1930’s…it was yellowing and a little bit mangy. It didn’t look like a taboo prized possession of some ultra rich people who dealt with dirty money.

In the end we went with one of our familiar taxidermy rental houses in the New York City area who had life size polar bear and polar cub models that weren’t actual taxidermy but very good substitutes that looked great on camera.

For a while, the polar cubs were in our office, though, because even though we had found the scripted polar bear taxidermy pieces, the cubs didn’t come with a stand so we had to build a custom stand for the cub.

View from my desk of Nick our Art PA helping tape out the surface area required to encompass the polar bear cub, with Katie our Set Dec Shopper in the background.

Nick a straight up legit dog whisperer bringing the same love and attention to our polar bear cub model.

Christine Foley (The Flight Attendant’s Awesome Art Director) talking with Katie Citti (one of The Flight Attendant’s Set Designers and Assistant Art Directors) about a design for the stand which Katie drew up for our construction team to build.

And VOILA! A (legal!) polar bear cub that looks like a legit taxidermy polar bear cub on a beautiful custom stand! (see below)

Hard to imagine how much work goes into these little details that appear on screen for a quick second right? I personally think that’s part of the total charm and fun of set decorating world—the crazy weird things you end up learning in your quest to find the right things either in the script or to flesh out a character’s imagined backstory.

You start out focusing on high-end penthouse masculine chic design furniture and then you end up learning all about the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. :)

If you do want to see more photos of the high-end penthouse masculine chic design Jess and I put together for Alex’s Penthouse set (polar bear cub) though, or the classic old money interiors we did for the Sokolov Estate (big polar bear) you can see more photos of the set here.

Organizing Those Vintage Playboy Magazines

When Cassie enter’s Alex’s closet she finds out some things she may or may not be entirely ready for…one surprise is that Alex is a guy who has the entire collection of Playboy magazines catalogued systematically.

yes, those are real vintage playboys we purchased.

This is me very early in the morning organizing these magazines on set before the crew arrives.

So definitely we could have asked for these to be arranged in chronological order before they arrived to set…but somehow they weren’t. And not everybody is up for the sort of insane attention to detail and diving into a mountain of disorganized magazines and cataloging them in order that this project would require…

Fortunately that morning it was exactly the kind of soothing quiet project I was game for. Getting paid to answer to the most OCD corners of your mind can be a pleasure. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m by no means the kind of person who has all my magazines catalogued in order at home.

when I still had one shelf left to go.

one things I learned in this painstaking process is there is a transition in binding for Playboys from stapled binding to the flat edge binding that happens today.

I would like to note that the closet at the location was totally empty when we started, so one of our tasks when decorating this set (which was already a pretty massive project) was to find all the items to totally fill in this closet with designer clothes (on a non-designer clothes budget) and all the small things you might find in your closet with the sort of details that would make it look realistic.

here’s a little bonus, that isn’t this closet, but something else I worked on that same afternoon after I sorted this closet: The Medicine Cabinet close-up.

this is what we see Cassie and Max see when they open the cabinet

the reverse shot of Cassie and Max staring into the interior of the medicine cabinet.

If you are ever wondering how they do that, this is what it looked like when we were setting it up:

Roxy and Richard, two great set dressers I was working with that afternoon.

This is what my files for “Alex’s Penthouse Apt” looked like when we finished the set.

A Tribute to the Wallpaper on "The Queens Gambit"

Three different great wallpapers in one shot!

Like many people, I have enjoyed the “The Queen’s Gambit” on Netflix this Fall—not realizing how invested I would be in chess competitions!

An even better surprise, however, was what a sumptuous feast of wallpaper (and costumes and hair) the show would be.

The wallpaper was truly something special though. (Wallpaper is the responsibility of the set decorator to find for sets.)

I mean how many shows can boast of wallpaper being a key visual signifier of a character’s arc and development? Plus how many shows lavish this much wallpaper upon you? (the answer to that is: “Babylon Berlin,” which is designed by the same production designer Uli Hanisch and decorated by the same set decorator Sabine Schaaf someday I’ll compile all my wallpaper love for Babylon Berlin.)

For now though, buckle in, I’m going recap all, yes ALL, the fabulous wallpaper from “The Queen’s Gambit.”

Spoilers abound.

our first glimpse of any wallpaper in the whole show, in the headmistress’s office in the orphanage.

Pretty subtle tonal pattern, fitting for an institution like an orphanage, yet still a surprising and nice layer of texture on the walls where usually we expect something a little more drab.

Episode 1, was often hard to get through as it is quite dark and bleak. And just like the rest of the series, the wallpaper fun really starts picking up starting at Episode 2.

Beth’s first glimpse of her new home, the wallpaper is making a big hello.

a very pretty 1940’s style floral print in the living room that would look very on trend today in 2020.

great shot of the living room wallpaper framing the stairway wallpaper

upstairs hallway wallpaper with glimpses of the master bathroom and in Beth’s room wallpapers…

great framing of Beth’s wallpaper and hallway paper, PLUS look at those two different carpets! Looks like the hallway carpet is a floral design like the wallpaper and love Beth’s textured pattern carpet + rug.

I have a theory that the plaid wallpaper is a nod to the chessboard grid to show this is Beth’s, our burgeoning chess genius, space. The plaid stands out in the mostly floral dominated wallpaper home.

just needed to highlight this fabulous couch fabric which complements the wallpaper (and matches the drapes). You can’t always see the floral print in all the shots of the couch (depends on the lighting) but this shot really shows it off. Her mom is in a hilarious body configuration of hurry in this still too.

This shot is the first time we see a glimpse (see the far left) of ANOTHER wallpaper in the entry way.

If you are keeping track at home, yes that brings our current total of Beth’s home wallpapers to SIX different designs. (…and counting)

👀 is that some fun wallpaper in what is supposed to be a depressing discount basement at the local department store?

in this shot, you get just a glimpse, but see that the pink wall complements it perfectly

ooo fun, the fun 60’s mod wallpaper layered with a mod printed fabric that’s the dressing room curtain.

the mod shape cut out for the dressing room door is * chef’s kiss .* In a scene where we are definitely supposed to be paying attention to the clothes Beth is trying on, I love that the designer and decorator still chose to have lots of fun with wallpaper and textiles to tell the story of this department store.

And we are back in at Beth’s home, another room (the kitchen) AND ANOTHER WALLPAPER!

Dining Room, and another wallpaper!!!

Beth’s mom bedroom! Look at that wallpaper and the matching curtains and lampshade!!!! And the bedspread that looks like it is the same print but the inverse colorway. omg!

A better look into her mom’s bathroom which we just got a tiny glimpse of before from the hallway.

this shot is such a great display of set decoration.

These new additions brings our current total of Beth’s home wallpapers to NINE different designs. NINE! I love that Ms. Alma Wheatley (Beth’s mom) is a maximalist after my own heart. More is more baby!

The first hotel room they stay in together when they go to Cincinnati, opening a whole new world to both of them, and oh look a wallpaper! It is a subtle and rather staid tonal small geometric pattern perfectly at home in this room.

while technically not a wallpaper, this looks like a fabric pleated wall covering, still felt important to include.

Beth escaping the home of her classmates and wait, is that? yes, it is some wallpaper in that vestibule!

I noted with interest that the home of her wealthy classmate does not have much wallpaper (except that vestibule) in stark contrast to her own home. Painted room colors, but not wallpaper. Is that a statement of the family’s differing classes? Or a statement of characters: dull and boring classmates vs. Mrs. Wheatley’s unexpressed musical talents and artistic aspirations?

LOOK AT THAT MID-CENTURY MODERN STAIR RAIL PATTERN!!!!!! (not a wallpaper I know)

Hello Vegas! You know they were having fun when doing this set. I mean look at those super fun stylized dice above the headboard and how the diamond shapes are then echoed in the vibrant mid-century wallpaper.

Leaning into Vegas’ loudness, look at this super fun and flamboyant pink hallway wallpaper we only see for a second framed by the room’s green one.

There are so many good details, like how the chair upholstery fabric is the same pattern as the bedspread and curtain but just a different colorway.

the painted diamond pattern on the closet doors to mimic the shapes of the wallpaper!

Not a wallpaper from what I can tell, but really great reflective wall texture to bounce the low light.

The opening of Episode 4 is a visual feast of a totally different vibe as we see Beth in a new milieu.

our baby is growing up, and partying with kids her own age who aren’t chess nerds.

This is the room when she wakes up in it, and the wallpaper almost disappears in the daylight whereas it was so perfectly illuminated in the candle scene prior.

we get treated to a bunch of wallpaper patterns that showcase what else was also going on in the 60’s (and then leading into the 70’s) design wise that is a totally departure from the geometric shapes of mid-century modern optimism of the west coast in Vegas.

This wallpaper (above) really is a whole groovy free-love youth culture MOOD so far from Beth’s chess world.

another bold wallpaper that Beth wakes up into.

The chess tournament in Mexico is so much about the amazing colorful Art Deco stained glass windows of the hotel location which they paired with some bold and colorful floor coverings. Since that is not wallpaper (hah) I didn’t screenshot it.

The lushness of the rich and deep colors and overlapping geometric designs contrasted with the tropical plant shapes. It is so sexy and alluring. Seductive even.

our first glimpse of the Mexico hotel room’s deep colored textured wallpaper. And the brightly patterned floor and the fun bead curtain all together is a full party.

With more light we get a much better sense of the great geometric shaped pattern of the wallpaper which I’m guessing is suppose to be a nod to Aztec geometrical motifs.

This bathtub shot is to die for. I know there’s not wallpaper here either so technically I shouldn’t be typing about it in this post, but look at that super creative vertical bathroom tile pattern! (in NYC set decorators are in charge of tile.)

back in Beth’s home in a room we haven’t seen yet: the downstair’s bathroom

Even though is a room (above) we haven’t seen yet until now, it is a wallpaper we have seen already. Remember? The entryway wallpaper we got a brief glimpse of at the edge of the shot way up in Episode 2? Since we’ve seen this pattern before, wallpaper count for Beth’s home is still NINE.

This is not an exciting wallcovering moment, but it is a moment when my husband I both said, there’s no way this building is New York City (as scripted) the stairway is way too deep. Looks much more European…say like Berlin where most of the limited series was shot?

Hahah! A set that is supposed to be dingy, spartan, somewhat makeshift bachelor den somehow still has two wallpapers. When I saw this I laughed to myself, cause I was like the designer and decorator on this show love wallpaper so much they just can’t help themselves. Which hey i’m all for!

To further my earlier speculation of the plaid in Beth’s bedroom meant to echo the grid on the chessboard I noted with great interest (and self-serving affirmation of my thesis) that the wallpaper in Benny’s bedroom (Beth’s only American chess equal) is also a plaid. …!!! you see!

Wallpaper in Beth’s fancy Parisian hotel suite

a beautiful elegant wallpaper in the hotel lobby as Beth’s frenemy gives her that destructive phone call.

ok I know there’s no wallpaper here in this shot of Beth’s Paris hotel suite, but THE WINDOW TREATMENTS! (they get more play in the opening shot of the series) Again, in NYC unlike other regions, the set decorators are in charge of window treatments too. Oh I could do a whole post on the window treatments in “Emma.” which Anya Taylor-Joy (actress who plays Beth) also stars in.

and now, the moment we have all been waiting for…* drum roll please *

THE HOME DECOR MAKEOVER SEQUENCE!

Beth is newly empowered, she bought her home outright, she’s successful and rich and what better way to assert her newfound identity and independence than by redecorating her parent’s home!

There’s nothing more fun and satisfying as a viewer than to watch a character’s story develop as manifested through a makeover sequence. Instead of all the hard, slow, and boring work we as normal humans have to undergo for a transformation of self, whenever we get treated to a montage makeover in movies or TV, the transformation is sped up into a series of quickly changing sequences that rapidly show the outer reflections of the inner work. (supposedly)

sitting forlorn and lonely in the furniture showroom. Don’t worry Beth, nothing a good new wallpaper can’t fix!

Usually it is a parade of costume changes and grooming with a new haircut, but “The Queen’s Gambit” gave us a home renovation which Beth is undertaking alone to become the grown adult woman with an identity she is creating for herself, which is just as satisfying.

our first glimpse at the new wallpaper in her home! It looks pretty similar to the geometric shapes that were there before, but it is a totally different colorway, and one of the examples featured in the home decor display Beth visits.

oooo living room wallpaper is totally redone! also in a light pink. her trophies now on prominent display. The fact that they are on the piano…showing that she is living out her passion and calling without fear unlike her mom and her piano playing?

dining room wallpaper redone! and hip modern abstract art as opposed to her mom’s old frilly landscape paintings.

you might notice that these three new wallpaper’s that Beth chose are exactly the three on display at the home decor store (see below).

Which maybe is a statement of how she wanted a change but didn’t want to put that much of an original personality spin on it preferring to just buy a display out in its entirety. Does also sound like the thing a working woman with lots of cash but preoccupied with other things (such as world chess domination) would do.

Here are some other shots of the newly made over home. Still a riot of pattern and color similar to the way her mom Ms. Wheatley decorated her home prior, just with a new more updated spin, lighter in feel, and more like a young modern woman.

look at that super fun mod kidney bean side table!

yup she bought the couch and standing lamp from the showroom. And a MCM bookcase that would look right at home in a Brooklyn apartment in 2017.

Interestingly, in the last episode (Episode 7) we see the rooms that Beth doesn’t makeover: the kitchen, her mom’s bedroom, and her mom’s master bathroom.

It seems to make sense that she would want to hold onto some parts of the home that remind her of her mom and ground her in those years with her. (that’s how I’m reading it).

It also could be by the time she got to the kitchen she realized how expensive it is to totally redo a kitchen and decided she couldn’t be bothered for the meantime (haha relate.)

ok everyone, we made it to the final wallpapers of the season: this fabulous geometric one in Beth’s Russian hotel room.

oooooooooooOOOOO look at those matching bedside table lamps!

What I love about these two images above, is how the geometric wallcoverings in that long hallway ( I suspect they had a lot of big paintings to cover and fabric was the easiest clearable solution) are echoed in the geometric pattern of the bedspread, and in sync with the color palette and geometric angles of the wallpaper, and her final windowpane coat!

All this geometric angular black and white remind you of anything?…SAY A CHESSBOARD????

oh wait, the last and final wallpaper is actually the plaid one in the background of Jolene’s office. hmm with my plaid= chessboard theory I wonder why this is then associated with Jolene? (can’t quite figure it out)

WALLPAPER COUNT: 28 total!

So for all my rhapsodizing of the FABULOUS and wonderous wallpaper and general design and decoration of “The Queen’s Gambit,” I have to say my number one disappointment in the series is how they treated the character of Jolene.

As I watched Jolene’s reappearance in the final episode I was like “Noooooo please don’t tell me they are…” ….sigh, they really are using Jolene as a stereotypical flattened out Black best friend archetype whose only real purpose is to care for our (white) protagonist and help her overcome her demons. Sigh.

Well fabulous wallpapers or not, we all know Hollywood has a LONG way to go in doing non-White characters justice on screen, which is precisely why I wanted to get into set decoration: to merge my love for decorative arts and design with the desire to help authentically and thoughtfully create sets for underrepresented characters on screen.