Mean Girls Musical: Regina's Bedroom, Closet, and Home

REGINA’s BEDROOM

Jess and me just as we were finishing the Regina bedroom set.

Of course reinterpreting the living space of such an iconic character like Regina George is daunting.

The name, Regina George, itself has become a byword for an archetype of female that has different shades of meaning depending on who you are talking to. Getting it right would mean a lot to a lot of people and there’s so many directions it could go.

• How would her mean-ness be expressed in her bedroom space?

• Is it just about her family being richer than other kids in her community?

• Is her character expressed in interior design status symbols?

• Do teens have bedroom interior design status symbols?

• What’s the perfect mix of girly and fierce but not cute to accurately present Regina’s style and personality?

• How on-trend and cutting edge would the bedroom of a 16 year old living in the suburbs of Illinois realistically be?

Just some questions we thought about and discussed AT LENGTH a ton.

Jessica Petruccelli the set decorator came up with brilliant concepts and ideas from the beginning of the project (e.g. lots of plastic for the queen bee of The Plastics!).

In the background on the left you can see Jessica’s intial vision and moodboard for Regina’s room behind her desk, and in the foreground on the black board you can see our working board of options and ideas in front of my desk.

INCEPTING THE MIND OF AN AMERICAN TEENAGE GIRL

It has been a long time since I was a teenage girl: about three decades.

When that much time has lapsed your sensibilities and design instincts have naturally evolved with your age. The visual representations of teenage girlhood that are most resonant to you are artifacts from another era, a nostalgic memory of a different epoch.

In other words, it only makes sense for you, a woman in your 40’s, to be literally out of touch with teenage girl aesthetic desires.

So how to close that gap and try to represent teenage girlhood in 2024 accurately?

After Jessica, the set decorator, and Kelly, the production designer, nailed down the design concepts and ideas in conversation with the directors, Jess and I had to flesh out what that meant in the concrete details.

So I did a bunch of research to make sure we got the details right.

So on top of tons of googling I:

1. read trend reports

2. got on the phone and interviewed actual teens

3. Spent a lot of time on teens giving bedroom tours on TikTok

4. Went to the local mall and interrogated the teens selling clothes to other teens.

Here’s a glimpse of some of the teens giving tours of their bedrooms TikTok screenshots I took as research and reference.

In the original version of Mean Girls released in 2004, there’s a few scenes in the mall. In 2024, the mall is no longer the essential site of teenage girlhood that it once was.

And while many malls are closing we were in New Jersey, the promised land of malls, and this mall was still going so I decided to go in person and shop at the mall like a teen.

A lot of times it is easier (though slightly more tedious) to shop in person rather than online. For me though, going in person had the added benefit that I could observe what teens were buying or looking at and talk to the teens or young people selling to teens.

I’m so grateful for the teens working at the clothing and shoe stores at the mall. I would ask them to think of the meanest and most popular girl at school (the Regina George in their life) and describe to me what she was wearing.

Because they would narrow down what were the best selling and hot items and I would start selecting. They would watch me chose and gently tell me “no, not those colors.” “not those styles” and I quickly learned whatever I thought was most appealing or looked cool was exactly the opposite of what teens actually liked.

It was jarring to realize that whatever you are inclined to, it is the actual inverse of what kids like.

If you want to feel old, I recommend this exercise to you!

swatching a lot of pink fabrics and wallpapers.

Custom Made Headboard the Swing Cushions

some key elements of Regina’s room we had custom made and here they are in their workshops in progress.

Regina’s room from the original 2004 movie

Regina’s Closet

Particularly daunting was filling Regina’s closet.

A hero female character’s closet as a reveal is always meant as something of a show of force. Think Carrie Bradshaw’s different closets, Cher’s closet in Clueless, and even Peik Lin’s (Awkwafina’s character) closet in Crazy Rich Asians.

When closets are featured like that on screen they almost take on the mythical stature of a Nancy Meyer kitchen. So yeah, the pressure was on.

As set decorators, we are used to thinking in terms of furniture and decor to express characters, context, and story and not clothes. Usually that’s the costume and wardrobe department.

But when an open closet becomes a set, filling it with the right clothes becomes set dressing and not costume and wardrobe!

We really worked so hard on this: on each and every detail (though I will say the beauty and makeup items were dictated by product placement powers greater than ours).

The teenage girl who actually lived in this house, went through the closet with us when were finished and was filled with longing and desire for most of the pieces (so that was gratifying).

set dressers Karl and Pat working on the photo cut outs we used for Regina’s bulletin boards.

ARTWORK FOR REGINAS HOME

Thinking about artwork for Regina’s mom, “not a regular mom, a cool mom” who is that special mix of zany, desperate, and brightly energetic, was fun.

In this one shot you see a lot of the artwork but the space we were filling was so much bigger (which you never see) and below is the sheet I used to help myself keep track of all the pieces.

Mean Girls Musical: Revenge Party Fantasy Hallway

Mean Girls was filmed in a recently closed school in New Jersey. Not only was the school the filming location but it was also where all our offices, shops, workshops, and warehouses were too.

I liked to joke that it was like being on a boat. On the lower ground floor you would hear saws cutting up sets, smell people painting scenery items, see racks and racks of clothes moving around. You climbed up the stairs and you would see dancers rehearsing in the hallways flanked by offices for each department of the movie.

The hallway outside of our office was the setting for the fantasy sequence in the musical number “Revenge Party” so it was entertaining to see the progress as the hallway transform everytime I left the office. Less entertaining, hearing them rehearse the song over and over and over and over and over and over.

BEFORE

AFTER

Production Designer Kelly McGehee contemplating all the options of the large paper flowers we had custom made for this hallway.

said paper flowers on the screen

When the set dressers took over the cafeteria to become a floral arrangement assembly line:

A team of scenic painters working on transforming the lockers.

CONFETTI TIME!

how the hallway looked after filming.

The same hallway, before it was transformed for Revenge Party, used for another musical number, Apex Predator but now from the point of view from inside our office.

Because of the way this scene was blocked, the actress Auli’i Cravalho who plays Janis had to run through our set decoration office to get back on camera in time for the shot.

Here’s a video of what that looked like from my desk:

Mean Girls Musical: Cady's Tent in Kenya

After a little garage prologue with Janis and Damien, the new Mean Girls movie opens in Kenya (as opposed to unspecified “Africa” like in the 2004 version). In the opening musical number Cady runs through her home: the tent she shares with her mom presumably on the plains of Kenya (or New Jersey).

A tent that looks like the kind of tents for safaris in Kenya, but not a glamping luxury tent, and fits the spacial needs of filming does not exist.

We had to have it custom made and shepherding the birth of this custom tent is something I worked on for almost the whole time up until shooting!

I wish I had some stills from this scene in the movie but alas they are not in any of the trailers.

I learned a ton about the safari and custom canvas tent industry and how there are actually a few companies in Kenya and South Africa that will custom make and ship to you!

International shipping is always a gamble with hard shooting timelines that are short, so fortunately in the end we found a vendor in America who was perfect.

When we were working out the needs and possibilities of the tent. That post-it was the planned choreography, and we made little origami tents to discuss the options.

We asked for huge skylights for ease of lighting and shooting, and after building our custom tent for the first time, we had some add on requests.

One of them was an add on divider in this very specific dimension. The idea was so unfunctional for most tent customers that the vendor had no idea what I meant until we drew this little scribble over the photo.

Cady’s mom is a research zoologist, so we had to imagine a field research tent that a professional scientist lives and works out of as well as shares with her daughter.

We tried to think very hard (and do lots of research!) about what those details would look like for her desk and I think Jess did an amazing job. I just contributed research and finishing details to this portion of the set.

Since this movie version of Mean Girls locates Cady and her mom specifically in Kenya, we were thinking of ways to reflect the specificity of Kenya in the items in the tent, and one of course is food. The other is textiles and we do have a quite a few specific Kenyan textiles in the tent but lets stay focused on the food.

So I visited small African food groceries, which in New Jersey primarily cater to immigrants from West Africa and nothing specifically from Kenya. Though when I saw British food products that are popular in the post-colonial British empire world, I picked up a few of those items.

And that’s how I found myself one early morning at the warehouse of a specialty African importer (photo below).

After doing lots of research (I was trolling through the Carrefour Kenya website), I figured the specifically Kenyan, made in Kenya, food item that was most visually clear and which made sense for someone to store in a tent were these Kenylon brand Njahi beans.

YAY!

oh wait, but how am I going to find them in America? The warehouse I visited were out of stock on this particular moment at the time!!!!!!!!!!

So after a lot of calling around and googling, I found an importer in Maryland who shipped them to me in time, they made them into the set, and you know what? THEY MADE THEM ON SCREEN!

In the first 5 min of the film, if you are paying close attention when Cady is singing and running through her tent you will see the Kenylon Njahi Beans on screen! If you are me (or maybe now you after reading this) you will yelp for joy and triumph for a can of just the right beans detail to locate Cady and her mom in Kenya in the background.

Mean Girls Musical Cast and Crew Screening

Paramount Pictures was nice enough to host the cast and crew to a screening at a movie theater in NYC on Wednesday (s, we wear pink!) Jan 10.

It was super fun to watch the movie for the first time on the big screen in a theater packed with enthusiastic viewers of cast and crew cheering throughout the movie.

Team Set Decoration led by Set Decorator Jessica Petruccelli in the center (in the pink shirt)

popcorn and soda too?! no other crew screening I’ve been to has offered this!

So fun for all of us to watch near each other and laugh together.

FEATURING Asian American artists WORK IN AWKWAFINA IS NORA FROM QUEENS SETS

Did you know most of the artwork featured in the sets of Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens is artwork by contemporary Asian American artists?

two pieces by Crys Yin in this multiverse what-if from episode 306.

I have some reservations about “identity politics”in its current 2023 iteration and my thinking on that complex term has definitely evolved a lot in the last few years. 

Shout out to the book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò.

I’m also impatient for American culture to move beyond simply the gestures of surface level “representation” without more depth and redistribution of actual power and material benefits…

BUT

• as someone who did grow up in an American media landscape (I started watching TV and movies in the 1980’s) pretty much devoid of any representation of Asian Americans (much less interesting, complex, and honest ones)

• and working in a profession that does not actually have that much diversity within it (96%* of set decorators are white women).

It IS actually meaningful to me in a significant way to work on a show like “Awkwafina is Nora from Queens” that depicts a working-class Chinese American family and a diversity of Asian Americans in a funny and layered way. 

*that was not a scientifically derived percentage but I’m sure the actual number is very close!

on the fridge in the background you can almost make out the postcard below

closeup of the postcard image designed by Lauren YS, sold by Angry Asian Womxn, which Margie, our set decoration buyer, bought at the very special bookstore Yu & Me Books in Manhattan Chinatown and reached out to Lauren to get permission to show the artwork in the set.

Awkwafina is Nora from Queens is one of the few TV shows airing (and of all time) featuring an all Asian American starring cast and telling the story of a specific Asian American family (in this case mostly Chinese-American).

The other shows that fit this definition that come to mind are: All American Girl (Margaret Cho’s show in the 90’s) and Fresh Off the Boat (which concluded a few years ago). 

the spoon painting (a perfect call back to Brenda’s gift to Wally of a spoon in Season 1), which we added to Wally’s study set in Season 3) is by Crys Yin.

And it isn’t just the cast, it was truly special in how not just the cast but the behind-the-camera crew was also full of Asian American creative talent too.

This was my first time working in a creative atmosphere where so many of my coworkers including the leadership at the top had so much cultural affinity to my own background.

Here is a cast and crew photo taken at the conclusion of the last shot during filming. A lot of creative behind-the-scenes talent is not captured here but it is something to give you a sense.

We were all working together to tell jokes that made fun of ideas and and situations borne from cultural similarities in many of our upbringings. 

Since it was such a special opportunity for me as a 4th generation Chinese American to work on a project like Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, my instinct was to fling open the barn doors and invite as many more people, for whom the opportunity to be involved might be meaningful, to also join. 

The flower image above the Therapist Gina Gershon is a piece by Felicia Liang.

I thought what if we extended this feeling of community and unique opportunity to the Asian American artist community by focusing on showcasing the artwork of Asian Americans in our sets?

…which is how the season 3 set decoration team ended up essentially running a mini Asian-American art gallery and small-batch producer Asian American specialty grocer in our offices in service of the sets.

Edmund and Nora in Edmund’s trailer with artwork from Jessica Wee and Felicia Liang behind Edmund’s head.

To be clear, I don’t think the characters of Nora in the show (stoner, slacker, often making bad decisions) or Edmund (self-centered, full of himself, delusional) necessarily care a ton about only buying and hanging Asian American art in their spaces.

It was a choice I made for them. Additionally it wasn’t enough for an artist to simply be Asian American, their artwork had to match the style, feeling, and tones of each character’s set. 

So we got to work creating a little database of Asian American artists and examples of their work. At a certain point it almost felt like Ashley and I (with a big assist from Kevin Cabello our Art Dept coordinator who is all about Asian American community building) were curating a mini Asian American artist gallery with all the research and cataloging we were doing. 

Once we gathered all our research we started reaching out to artists asking them if they would be interested in working with us and printing examples of their work so we could look over all the artwork, discuss with Laura our production designer, and decide which pieces of art might work with which sets in our season. 

NORA’S BEDROOM

we did a bit of a refresh for Nora’s bedroom this season adding new set dressing as well as new artwork that we could imagine Nora vibing with.

artwork from Gabriella Widjaja, Dan-ah Kim, and Kenzo Repola in this board

artwork by Shahrzad Ghadjar from Spookesvilla and Kenzo Repola on the walls behind Nora

You can see Gabriella Widjaja, Shahrzad Ghadjar from Spookesvilla, and Kenzo Repola’s artwork in the set here.

Artwork by Dan-ah Kim and Gabriella Widjaja on the wall to the left of the window

EDMUND’S TRAILER

In episode 303, we see Edmund’s trailer on the set of “Love and Order” and in addition to the crazy self-centered collages we adorned all over his trailer that had photos of himself, hot guys he is lusting over, and tails; we added artwork.

Artwork from Kenzo Repola, Felicia Liang, and Jessica Wee in this board for Edmund’s Trailer.

You can see artwork from Kenzo Repola and Jessica Wee in these shots.

a little selfie with the “Hi-I’m-Edmund-and-I’m—obsessed-with-myself-and-hooking-up-with-hot-men-on-set-collage” (which is sort of his character’s theme in episode 303)

artwork from Jessica Wee and Kenzo Repola in this shot

NORA FROM QUEENS BODEGA

As extensively detailed in this blog post about transforming the bodega twice for episode 307, we wanted to add in artwork the plays with the idea of food and culture in the space once Nora takes over.

Felicia Liang and Crys Yin’s artwork up by the register

Kenzo Repola’s artwork up by the cash register near the plant Wally and Brenda give Nora

We didn’t have a ton of money to offer for a rental fee but we did pay everyone something (this is a very small low budget comedy show!) but we were hoping it would be something fun for artists to participate in. 

Seeing the reaction of artists we worked with seeing their work on screen, and their own community in congratulating and being excited for them has been really gratifying. 

Featuring almost exclusively artwork by Asian American artists in Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens is one of my proudest accomplishments from the season. 

Felicia Liang’s artwork on the fridge wall

You can read more behind-the-scenes putting together the sets and everything related to Awkwafina is Nora from Queens Season 3 here.

Awkwafina is Nora from Queens: A Bodega SET with TWO LOOKS

Nora working in a bodega, the iconic New York City corner convenience store and deli, is one of the main new sets in Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. 

Working on movies and TV in NYC means I have worked on numerous bodega sets. The ones of note that come to mind are:

• The bodega set in “In the Heights” which was a bodega build from scratch on a sound stage as well as the real exterior in the actual Washington Heights neighborhood

• The bodega in Russian Doll where surreal things happen as Nadia and Alan travel back and forth through time

• Bodegas in Broad City and High Maintenance. 

Bodegas are fun sets because they are such an everyday slice of in contemporary NYC and we each have our own relationship to our neighborhood bodega.

Additionally, bodegas usually contain lots of fun little details that are showcasing the layers of years, life, and personal touches of the people who work there, and it is all about volume and diversity of product. 

I did read a really good article a few years ago, however, about how as New York City rapidly gentrifies everywhere even in the most outer borough areas, young people (I’m going to include everyone under the age of 45 here) have created something of a cult of of a bodega fetish:

excerpt from this NYTimes Magazine article written by Willy Staley from Feb 2, 2020.

I think the writer is right. And oddly he cites the bodegas in High Maintenance and Russian Doll as evidence in his argument. 😨 does this mean through my work I have played a tiny tiny miniscule part in the bodega fetish trend???!!!

…anyways back to Nora from Queens. 

Not only is the bodega in Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens featured in almost every episode, it has two looks in the show: 

1. Papa Moon Deli before when Nora was working for Mr. Moon

2. Nora from Queens after she buys the bodega and makes it her own. 

The real Awkwafina (real life Nora Lum) did actually previously work in a vegan deli in Brooklyn, an experience she talks about often in media interviews, when she was trying to make it as a rapper.

Since we knew exactly which deli that was, the Brooklyn Standard in Greenpoint, we went there to take photos as our first reference photo. 

this is a weird angle, but on the right hand side you can see the wall where we printed large photos of the Brooklyn Standard and different delis around NYC we were inspired by to study as well as the wallpapers we picked.

Once production had settled on the real bodega we were going to film in as the site of our two bodegas, Laura, the production designer, and I got to work discussing how we would modify the existing bodega to tell the story of the two bodegas in our show. 

PAPA MOON DELI

Nora with Mr. Moon

Even though the script had no mention of the first bodega Nora working in being a vegan bodega like the one real life Nora worked in, we thought it might be fun to make a nod to that in our set by stocking vegan products and other products that are actually stocked at the Brooklyn Standard. 

After staring a photos of the Brooklyn Standard and other bodegas we thought were good references we chose what elements of each we wanted to integrate into our set:

• we added wallpaper to some surfaces to create a graphic, dimensional color element

• took out whole sections of the product display

• created new stations

• added a lot more product. 

For instance here we added a coffee enhancement station, completely filled that refrigerator with drinks (it was empty because it is broken), added dozens of more products to that shelf to the right of the drink refrigerator, and you can see snippets of the wallpaper we added in the background:

on the right hand wall, we basically emptied all the existing product the deli had there, and added products we brought in that had a low profile at the request of the cinematographer to allow more natural light in to more effectively light the scenes in the bodega.

Knowing we wanted a greater product selection, more variety in types of food, we got working on the product placement front, which for a set of this scale is quite an endeavor. 

For this set, Kiran was the real hero of product placement hustling hustling (with the help of Will and Kevin) with over 150 vendors. 150!!!! Our spreadsheet was insane. 

The office also started to look a little crazy once all the product placement started to trickle in. The photo above does not even begin to capture the situation.

Even though we made a lot of changes to the bodega, the feeling is almost imperceptible since in general when you walk into a bodega your eyes and mind just go: “lots of products, lots of things” and the fine variations of “lots of products, lots of things” are maybe not clocked.

here is one very specific shot where you can see how adding wallpaper, bringing in larger variety of more colorful products, and addition of a few more elements is in a way subtle but also changes the feeling.

Ashley during one of our first times in the bodega

Though it does feel a little different: a little more vibrant, a little more alive, and a little younger.

NORA FROM QUEENS DELI

featuring the jacked muscle arm money cat from Chop Suey Club, fun lighters from Spookesvilla

In the series finale, Nora has decided to take over the bodega from Mr. Moon and make it her own. Which is oddly also basically the storyline and character arc for Usnavi in “In the Heights” (hahaha) 

In the process of making the bodega Nora’s own bodega we made a bunch of upgrades/ changes to reflect her new ownership:

• Since Nora is a big stoner, there’s a whole bong section and weed accessory section of the bodega now (which is also how a lot of bodegas in NYC feel nowadays actually too)

• We wanted to make the whole place more colorful and vibrant to match Nora’s personality so we added:

• New and more wallpaper to liven up more surfaces

• New carpets including a custom rainbow runner and a really funny bodega menu carpet we found online. 

• Some custom neon lights (which sadly you never see on screen!)

• A lot more new and hip products. 

• A whole new menu signage system

• Some fun little pieces of decoration like the muscle cat. 

• A community zine section which we stocked with actual small zines and small indie Asian American publications like Banana Magazine. 

• a lot of easter eggs recalling sets from the last three seasons that are very niche IYKYK

artwork by Felicia Liang and Crys Yin, the very cool product line from Black Bean Grocery to the right of the Sandwich Special sign.

• Added more artwork including one specially commissioned to match the precise vibe the real Nora told us she was envisioning for this new bodega. 

original artwork from the artist Geobany Geo “BOWZ” who is based in Queens, NYC.

• Taking a cue from our favorite NYC sandwich spot, Court Street Grocers, we created new sandwiches (our Art Dept had a lot of fun getting creative with sandwich names and compositions with Kevin really cranking out the creative juices), had branded sandwich wrapping paper made, and designed a whole line of merch! 

we had so much fun coming up with different sandwiches, naming them, and our wonderful graphics artist Dan-ah Kim made great signs for each.

you can see the custom designed merch we made for Nora’s new bodega in this shot.

The Lin family eating sandwiches from Nora’s Bodega wrapped in the custom branded sandwich paper!

Much like how we took the show to be a chance to gather some Asian American artists and give their artwork a chance to be featured on the show, we took the new Nora Bodega as a chance for small Asian American food companies to showcase their food product on the shelf and on screen.

you can sort of see the drinks by two Asian American companies: Moshi and Sanzo in the fridge behind Wally.

fridge stocked with drinks from Asian American companies: Halmi, Sanzo, Moshi, Lunar, and Nectar. As well as fabulous drinks from other indie drink companies

in this photo you can see products from Asian American companies from L to R: Moon Jam, Momofuku, Red Boat Hot Sauce, Fly by Jing, and artwork from Felicia Liang on the wall of the fridge.

in this photo from L to R: some local zines, artwork from Kenzo Repola and Crys Yin, and products from Asian American companies: Fly by Jing, Omsom,

In the process, sort of created a dream Asian American neighborhood bodega. I’m not sure that is exactly aligned with Nora the fictional character, but to me it felt aligned with the overall values of the show “Awkwafina is Nora from Queens.”

You can read more behind-the-scenes putting together the sets and everything related to Awkwafina is Nora from Queens Season 3 here.

Awkwafina is Nora from Queens Wedding and a 20-hour work day saga

We shot the wedding scene on our last day of filming of the season which was a super fun way to end out the shooting schedule, but it also was a 20-hour day for the set decoration and set dressing crew.  

Yes, 20 hours. 

20 hours?! (haha that is not why the grandmas and Edmund are shocked in this shot)

How and why?

Basically because of the weather, and the nature of the location where we were filming (Queens Museum and Flushing Meadow Park) plus the limitations of our own small crew (we were already stretched so thin with the 10 new sets in episode 306) we had to prep, shoot, and wrap the two wedding sets on the same day. 

Normally you would have a few days or at least a day prior to set up and dress a set before the shooting crew comes to film in a set. 

MICHAEL FREAKING BOLTON!

you might recognize the macrame valance from Brenda’s apartment which we thought was fun to tie into the wedding.

Prepping a set on the same day the crew is coming to film means we have to start VERY early in the morning to be finished before the crew arrives, and wrapping the same day as filming means after everyone goes home and finishes shooting we start cleaning and packing everything away. 

our day doesn’t finish until till the whole party is over to start cleaning and packing up…

Fortunately we are unionized labor so we do get overtime (and a 20-hour day is serious overtime) and some set dressers from that day still talk to me about the sweet paycheck they got from that day (so there’s that).

…but trust me working a 20 hour day is brutal even if you are having fun and love your coworkers (which were both true for me too).  

Let’s relive that timeline 🙃

3:47 AM: First my sad alarm clock set for 3:47am that morning.

5:02 AM: When I first got to set it was, as you might imagine, still dark.

The first scene that was filming for the day was the outdoor wedding ceremony. So the set dressers and I:

5:27 AM met the truck with our all our set dressing in the dark in front of the iconic “Unisphere” designed for the 1964 New York World’s Fair now located in Queens Flushing Meadow Park.

Someone needs to carry all those chairs, columns to display flowers and all the wedding ceremony elements into place and it always a team of set dressers.

5:38AM Setting up the chairs and columns

LASER IS OUT!!!!! huge for precision in all settings but especially helpful when set dressing in the dark

6:21 am flower delivery dressed in and Miko, the fabulous floral designer, somehow looked so fresh and polished for a 6:00am delivery. 

6:41 am: things are coming together

6:45 am: Sun is coming up, and we are all feeling a little silly so Sean, one of the set dressers, proposes a photoshoot with one of the balloons. 

exactly the same, non?

7:05 am back to work:

7:58 am ok we did it

I’m so happy you can see the “double happiness” on the back bar in this shot—an essential element to any Chinese wedding is the “double happiness” symbol.

8:00 am The crew arrives, its the last day of filming and everyone is in a jubilant mood and wants to start taking fun photos.

Our Production Coordinator and UPM hamming it up.

Ok we are happy with that now we have to start on the second set: the big wedding reception. 

Normally setting up a wedding reception set is in itself a full day’s work.

9:27 am: …and we are starting that process now after already doing a good 4 hours of work outside. 

We realize we don’t have some of the right tablecloths and we need the truck to go to New Jersey to pick up the right ones from our vendor.

These last minute runs are always inevitable but always a little more stressful when you are doing a prep and shoot on the same day cause your window of opportunity is so small. 

10:58 am, it is almost lunch time (6 hours from when we started working)

To match the boho vibe of Brenda’s wardrobe and home, Laura designed a fun colorful wedding with boho touches for Brenda. 

All the planning documents and plan plus an A+ vendor list (color coded in the weddings color palette no less) for day of reference from Casey who helped us shop for this set. Plus a glimpse of our wedding mood board inside the doorway behind Kiran’s desk.

2:32 pm Ashley, assistant set decorator, realizes she might have a second career as a cake decorator as she adorns our fake wedding cake. 

you see another “double happiness” on the wedding cake, but I don’t think you ever actually see the wedding cake on screen in the episode.

This day is also very cold and windy and the crew is eager to finish up outside and bring everyone inside. So they are wondering if they can come in earlier than originally planned. 

Agh ok we are trying to work a little bit faster. (I have no photos of this time period as we are tired and trying to go faster).

5:30 PM ish crew starts flowing into the reception space.

Here is Nora holding Laura’s, the production designer, baby. As you can see by her jacket, it was a cold day. Adam, the 1st AD, sitting on the steps—its quite an epic day for him as well and Zenfeek the gaffer on the right.

8:19 PM The shooting crew is filming the wedding reception and now we are all going to rest because then we aren’t really needed until filming wraps. We go out to get dinner and then basically most of us go to our cars and sleep. 

9:43 pm setting up and filming the last shot which is Edmund (Bowen Yang) singing Mambo No. 5 😂

9:52 pm Filming wraps, but since this is the season finale there are some speeches, tears, and just the feeling of a huge collective sigh of relief slash stunned whoa this is it feeling. 

Awkwafina is Nora from Queens season 3 cast and crew group photo at picture wrap

We present Nora with a special piece of commissioned art we asked the artist Geobany Rodrigeuz to make for Nora Bodega (you see it barely in the frame here).

The crew is saying their goodbyes and while people linger longer than on a normal filming day they are also tired and start leaving, lots of the crew wants to take home flower arrangements (and yeah its cool take them, those power flowers have been through a lot and have also almost worked a 15 hour day in cold windy weather) 

10:53 pm and now we need to start cleaning. 

Laura, Craig the official leadman and I decided to use this opportunity of being in a party set to also host a little bit of a thank you party for the set dressers at this moment and thanks to the help of Kiran ordered pizza and chinese dumplings for the occasion. 

We snack together, but actually everyone just wants to go home so everyone is pretty focused on cleaning up the set as efficiently as we can, separating rentals from purchases, and loading up the truck. 

I’m making a “2” and “0” with my hands to commemorate our 20 hours together.

12:35 AM (next day) Ok we did it! One final group photo to remember this epic day together and honestly nobody else I would rather depend on and work together with for such a long workday. 

I remember feeling so tired but also my heart feeling so full.

You can read more behind-the-scenes putting together the sets and everything related to Awkwafina is Nora from Queens Season 3 here.

Memeing on a Strategy Crime Board for Awkwafina is Nora from Queens

this is from the dailies, sadly this scene was not in the final cut of the series finale!

From the beginning we knew from the scripts we would get a chance to make a fun crime board in the finale of the Season 3 of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. 

…but then last night watching the finale together with the cast and crew, I realized “THE CRIME BOARD WAS CUT!!!!!!!” 😭

Since this is the one blog post I had already prepared for the finale episode (I have a few more brewing, stay tuned!) I’m just going to publish it anyways.

This was the first version of the script (“pre-production draft”)

last version of the script (green revisions). hmmm maybe we had a clue with Nora’s lines denigrating the whole idea of a board that this scene might get cut…

Honestly the finale was great even with this scene cut and eitherway I’m going to walk you through all the FUN WE HAD making it.

When we started the show I asked Kiran what type of small personal project as a venue for his own jokes (Kiran’s a standup comedian and comedy writer!) he would like this season. I gave him a couple of options and he chose this crime board, so it was something we chatted about all season long. 

Of course when one thinks of crime boards there are a few key enduring images such as the detectives trying to figure out each ring in The Wire, the DEA in Breaking Bad, or Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) on Homeland.

One persistent pop culture image of a crime board stands out, however, because it is so heavily memed, the one from Always Sunny in Philadelphia. 

an obvious reference image for us

Hilariously I found an academic paper intellectualizing the depiction of crime boards on screen:

The crime board is, in this sense, what Ronald Thomas has called a ‘device of truth’, a representational technology that lends authority to a mode of detection long established in crime fiction. This is a mode in which ‘unique interpretive powers’ render crimes visible ‘only to the eyes of the detective’, powers that remain inseparable from the development of forensic technology.[4] The typical crime board not only gathers together and arranges facts yielded by such technologies, it is also a technology of truth in itself, serving a meta-investigative function by visually rendering a theory of causality, association, and guilt.

Ok…

Anyways, when we chatted with episode 307 director Jordan Kim about his vision for this board he also referred to the Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme, so we knew we were on the right track with our references. 

We took the premise of the board: an engagement plan for Wally to propose to Brenda at the Queens Museum to Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston music and really fleshed out each element as far as we could go with visual artifacts:

• Maps of NYC

• Maps of Queens, particularly the area around the Queens Museum

• Floor plans of the Queens Museum

• Photos of the Queens Museum particularly the map room

• Photos of each character including photos that looked like long lens surveillance photos of Brenda (which we found on Getty stock images!!!!), well we asked graphics to add cross hatch graphics to look like detective show photo graphics. 

• Images of each singer

• receipts, purchases, and rental quotes of items Wally would need

• The much needed red string that each of these crime boards seem to have. 

• To-Do lists for each character (loved Kiran’s jokes here)

Kiran made a playlist on Spotify of the songs mentioned in the script plus other songs that made sense in the context of the story and script, we turned it on and worked on putting together the crime board. 

You can listen to it too here, it has, of course Taylor’s Version of “Love Story:”

Once the crime board was done we had to bring it to set and here is the journey the board took with the set dressers from our office to set through Kaufman Astoria studios with a stop-off at the crew breakfast truck hahhaha.