The first time that I saw the house in Hulu’s Mid-Century Modern, I was gobsmacked. It felt like gay, architectural heaven–the place you can see yourself spending eternity. Not only is this house gorgeously furnished, it looks like it goes on forever. With clever nods to beloved sitcoms gone by, production designer Greg J. Grande creates a palace fit for a queen. Well, four queens.
There are several references to the living space in the first few episodes of this first season. After all, Nathan Lee Graham’s Arthur and Matt Bomer’s Jerry have to be as in love with this space as everyone watching at home. It’s aspirational, and I am obsessed with the heave, blue front door with its large golden knob. Nathan Lane’s Bunny cheekily says, ‘It’s not home, but it’s much,’ and I was curious how Grande designs for that line alone.
“I read the script, and I am very close to Palm Springs,” Grande says. “I know the mid-century world quite well based on having spent a bit of time out there. The beauty of a show like this is you get Max Mutchnick and David Kohan who truly believe that their sets are part of the characters. Max was very dialed into this set, and he was specific on making sure that he explained that it was the Dinah Shore Estate. It’s such a beautiful place, and you can rent rooms there. The beauty for him was the sunken living room idea. It’s almost like a stage playing space off the front doors into the foyer and you drop into this living room.”
I commented on how we don’t see the entire house in this first season. There are wings that go up and out of sight. There is depth to what we see on camera. Imagine what else we might discover in subsequent seasons.
“The vastness of what happens upstage, outside, and upstage camera left into what the piano room has become…we opened that up much more and created a little bit more interest after the pilot was shot,” Grande says. “We want the viewer to see the hallways and wonder, ‘There’s more? I want to go down there.'”
In episode one, we are introduced to the late Linda Lavin when Arthur travels from the kitchen into the butler’s pantry. The kitchen’s gold and light blue coloring extends to private spaces, but in subsequent episodes, that pantry disappears. Grande explains about how there can be moving parts even after filming a pilot. It is transformed into a sitting area with a low, soft-looking couch and dark wood accents. If you watch some of your favorite sitcoms, the design of a living space might slightly change as the show gets on its feet.
“After the pilot, the pantry doesn’t serve the purpose well for another playing area in the series,” he admits. “It worked for the gag in the pilot when Arthur walks in on Sybil, but, with a series, you need the space so that you have places to come and go. We eliminated that and turned it into what we believed was another part of the house off of the kitchen, and we can still believe that the pantry’s somewhere in the house, if need be.”
The bar in the living room is an absolute centerpiece. If you enjoy a cocktail after a long day, you know that it’s even more relaxing when you have buddies and friends to dish with. The tufted bar even went through a transformation, and it’s luxurious in its texture. I love the slick lighting that hangs overhead and either side is flanked with slender lamps.
“The bar was a big deal,” Grande says. “They had two renditions of it, and when it came in episode one, I got the opportunity to create this beautiful piece. It’s somewhere where you gather every afternoon or when people come over. It had to be special and almost as important as the sofa. It’s also in almost every shot of the house, and then we changed some of the walls in the openings of the window and turned them into what felt a little bit more true to the architecture. Although we stayed true to the layout, I think we just elaborated and made it work better in series. You have to think about going beyond the episode that you’re working on. [With the lamps] that’s Peter Gursky–he finds the impossible. We spent some time down in Palm Springs thrifting and going to estate sales, and two of the club chairs in the new den came from a shop there, too.”
When you enter the outside quarters, the house’s fabulousness extends even further. Instead of a simple hot tub, Grande created something ambitious in the large grotto outside where the boys take to soak their troubles away. Seriously, where is this property? Much like the butler’s pantry, the production designer explains how there was some tweaking involved.
“Originally, because we did have the budget, the thought was to buy a proper hot tub or jacuzzi,” he says. “With something like that, though, you have to lay down the seats and the elements that make it very difficult for shooting a sitcom show, so we created a space on a platform so we could recess the entire tub in there. Unfortunately, when they got into the tub, they were up to their chests, and after we shot that episode, the goal was not to get them at least up to their shoulders.
What I ended up doing is having an entire shell built and dropped in there that kind of forced them to get underwater when they got in and then the heating elements were integrated knowing that we were going to come back time and time and time again to this swing set. It’s one of those things where the set got better, but they all seemed very happy when it turned on.”
Our already beloved quartet became a trio with the passing of the legendary Lavin. That house will not be the same without her. We enter Sybil’s room in the last few episodes, and the space feels like her. There’s something about the belongings on the countertops and the artwork on the walls. Even the small chandelier feels like Sybil would’ve picked it. Or made her son replace the old one with this. It is a beautiful tribute.
“Sadly, what happened with that episode was that we lost her over Christmas break,” he says. That set was, and it was going to be shot on when we got back. It was near and dear to not just us but to the art department and the entire crew, because Linda was such an amazing woman. It’s an homage to her life and the stories and the travels that she was on and what she collected. I was a decorator prior to designing, so my role as a decorator was to layer the set and fill it with as much detail as I could. Peter also accomplished that in Sybil’s room, no matter where you looked, every piece had some story to tell about who this woman was. On every countertop or bedside table and dresser. Everything had something to say.”
Mid-Century Modern is streaming now on Hulu.
