A Wrap on "The Flight Attendant"

(This is not even all the scripts or all my set files—just the ones that were stashed in a file cabinet 🗄 before March 12!)

The end of a job that stretched out over four seasons because of a pandemic. There’s always that surge of relief at the end of a job but also a twinge of sadness that all of a sudden it is over and the people you were used to seeing and texting all day long and the routes you drove on autopilot are done.

One of my proudest achievements on this job, however, is that I managed to find all the things we needed, within budget and on our crazy timelines WITHOUT once going to HomeDepot or ULINE from August-October (when we started back up after the COVID imposed break). This is something I’m truly proud of.

This past summer (2020) when many of us decided we would be more intentional about how we spent our money: investigate who it supports, doesn’t support, or harms, it felt imperative to cut out spending money at HomeDepot or ULINE. Especially when we are working with substantial budgets shopping frequently at home improvement and hardware stores (like HomeDepot) and wholesale bulk suppliers (like ULINE.)

Because of set decorating work, I can map all the HomeDepots in the NYC and vicinity for you off the top of my head and know the layouts of all the one main ones in New York City by memory.

Our art department coordinator on “Russian Doll,” Mia, did educate me on all the ways ULINE works against many feminist causes, and encouraged me to rethink supporting them back in 2018. …it was so hard to disavow them though, cause ULINE is so convenient. They reliably will ship you something by next day if you get the order in by 6:00pm, they have an amazing selection and good prices, and great customer service…

And same with HomeDepot, they have good parking lots, PARKING LOTS! all around New York City (which is huge when you are driving around a minivan and need to get a lot of things), a much better website and app than Lowe’s, locations everywhere, and unbeatable hours.

…but after this summer I decided despite it all, I really wanted to stick to my commitments of more intentional alignment with companies and try my best when working to not support either HomeDepot or Uline. Thankfully Jessica, the decorator for The Flight Attendant, was totally on the same page about this and supported and encouraged me to try.

I knew it would be harder and more inconvenient and I would have to rethink old default patterns of buying things. But we managed to do it for the last three episodes of The Flight Attendant. We had one set in (you’ll see once it airs and I’m able to post a behind the scenes about the set) which would have definitely been 10x easier with ULINE, but I found a competitor that got the job done! And as for avoiding HomeDepot, New York City actually has a bunch of old school hardware and building supply companies all around and I rediscovered the wonders of Metropolitan Lumber (a place I first starting using back when I was working on The Affair in 2016), which I came to learn has pretty much everything you need!

I never used either place once, which gives me encouragement that it is possible for all work moving forward.

The Flight Attendant airs on HBOMax on Nov 26!