Palaces, Ranches, and Retro Kitchens: Production Designers for ‘The Great,’ ‘1923’ and ‘History of the World Part II’ Talk Crafting Period-Accurate Sets
variety.comJazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Production designers had their hands full the past year, recreating everything from an 18th century palace large enough for indoor badminton games to retro kitchens that looked like they were straight out of the 1970s.
To achieve their period-accurate sets, they consulted books, photos and guild archives. For the third season of “The Great,” production designer Francesca Di Mottola a built a “gigantic games room where anything could happen and served many different purposes,” horse breeding among them.
The production designer began scouting locations in the U.K., where the black comedy about Catherine the Great is filmed, but none quite fit what she was looking for, so she built the room on a soundstage.
The room, which first appeared in episode 3 of the Hulu series, had high ceilings and paneled walls with timber all around. It needed to be large enough for parties in addition to badminton games and horse breeding. “The palette was dark, and the timber has been seen before in the palace, in the long corridor, so that tied in with other spaces that the audience would know,”Di Mottola says.
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