🎧 'Chaotic' & Colorful: How TV's Top Production Designers Set the Stage
Emmy nominees Gillian Costa ('RuPaul's Drag Race') and Glenda Rovello ('Frasier') in conversation with four-time Oscar nom Jeannine Oppewall
Welcome to the latest episode of Art & Crafts, The Ankler’s podcast series dedicated to bringing audiences behind the scenes to examine the careers and contributions of the talented artisans who create and craft the movies and TV series that we love. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
“I kind of thrive in chaotic environments,” says Gillian Costa, the Emmy-nominated production designer on RuPaul’s Drag Race. MTV’s reality competition juggernaut is a fast-paced production that demands a lot of “seat-of-your-pants thinking,” she adds.
And boy, are those pants fabulous. “Drag Race really opened me up to the boundaries of color,” Costa says with a laugh. Except for one color. “They don’t like us using green.”
Frasier production designer Glenda Rovello, on the other hand, loves green. “My eldest son, his middle name is Green,” she says. One notable element of the sitcom’s set — wallpaper with a Rorschach blot-like pattern, a nod to Frasier’s psychiatric profession — “has a greenish cast to it,” she notes. And live greenery features prominently on the set of the multi-camera reboot (from Paramount+ and CBS Studios), along with other natural elements and textures: white oak in the kitchen of Frasier’s Boston apartment, a custom-made walnut door. “Real looks real, so many of the material choices are real,” says Rovello, who’s also Emmy-nominated this year. “Whenever I can, I use natural woods.”
The fabulist and the realist share the tricks of their trade with moderator Jeannine Oppewall — a four-time Oscar nominee for art direction on films including L.A. Confidential and The Good Shepherd — on the second episode of Art & Crafts Live. It’s one of four special podcasts The Ankler recorded August 1 during our Emmy Nominees event at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse. (ICYMI, the first episode, featuring three Emmy-nominated cinematographers, is here.)
While Costa, Rovello and Oppewall work in disparate arenas with unique demands, they share similar instincts about how to set the stage for great storytelling. “We all have the same execution. We all probably employ the same techniques,” says Costa. “It’s just how we get there is a little different.”
Learn where they find their inspiration (and their wallpaper), and look out next week for The Ankler’s conversations with Emmy-nominated costume designers and sound pros.
Transcript here.
