Every detective has a distinctive look. Your favorite version of Sherlock Holmes might have a cape. Miss Marple never left without her hat. Even Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc has incredible style. Uzo Aduba’s Cordelia Cupp is confident in herself, and that is reflected in her clothes. When she takes on one of the most intricately woven murders mysteries in recent memory for Netflix’s The Residence, costume designer Lyn Paolo knew she had the rare opportunity to introduce us to an new iconic character.
Paolo has collaborated with series creator Paul Davis in several projects before, but this one was an entirely new animal. Throughout our conversation, she gives credit to him since this massive juggernaut is meticulously crafted while also being drop dead funny. Since The Residence is so detailed, Paolo had to orient herself in the story in a completely different way, and she soon discovered that certain colors were off limits from the jump.
“Paul Davies and I have worked together quite a bit, and he took a long time to write The Residence,” Paolo says. “You can see it. He was present every day on set, which I loved, and every intricate detail is dizzying since there’s so much content there. When I rewatched the series again, there were things that I didn’t even notice the first time. I am a huge murder mystery fan, and our scripts were so dense. For me, it was a jigsaw puzzle, because there were so many parameters that were, in a way, taken away. I couldn’t use red, green, or blue, because of those rooms in the White House, and we didn’t know where the scripts were going to go and who was going to be in what space. For me, that was such a fantastic challenge.”
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From head to toe, Cordelia Cupp is distinguished, even if she is not a character who has particular feelings about clothes. I love the leather shoulders on her jacket, and you can see her thick-soled shoes in several shots if you catch them at the right time. Her pants are wide but they flow, and the browns are cut up by the white and gold in the shirt she wears under hear vest. Figuring out the silhouette was one of the toughest jumping off points.
“Her shoes were Paul’s favorite,” she says. “Figuring out what she wears was so interesting to me. Does she wear a trench? Is it Sherlock Holmes-like? We went through the whole gamut. We looked at so many different versions of looks of what is an archetype of a detective, and we realized that there is always a gimmick with their costume. When I started talking to Paul and Betsy Beers from Shondaland about it, I thought about Basil Barthbone, the original British Sherlock Holmes from the 1930s movies. He wore a deerstalker and a cape, and he was always dress in British hunting tweeds. When I did all this research on hunting jackets, you can’t help but find all this information about the Royal Family, so that’s why we built a quintessential jacket for Uzo based on that silhouette. You have the padded shoulder for firing your gun and other things of that nature.
From there, I went with a Hepburn pant, and the shoes were by Max Mara. They were this shoe that was a one-off for them, and we found it as a limited edition on their website. We actually ended up asking them to remake them for us and have them shipped over from Italy. It felt like it tied in with that flashback to the ’30s decade. We also had to figure out how to allow Uzo to be very physical in it. Cordelia is throwing herself on the group and running down hallways, so the physicality add an extra layer of consideration.”
Since The Residence takes place at a lavish soiree, everyone is dressed to impress, but Paolo was wise to point out that the show has a lot more costuming than meets the eye.
“I don’t think people understand how many costumes we actually have on this season, because everyone thinks it takes place over one night,” she says. “We have to remember the amount of flashbacks and how quick they are. Even when Lily is kicking Christmas presents on the floor, she’s in that gown, but there are people all around her. Yes, they are vignettes, but we filmed them as big vignettes on set.”
The complete opposite of Detective Cupp comes in the form of delicate lace and bubblegum pinks worn by Molly Grigg’s Lilly Schumacher. When performing duties at the State Dinner, her off the shoulder dress stands out as she flits about. She is a character whose M.O. swirls around the idea of things being pretty or being organized in a certain way all the while wearing different shades of pink. In the final episode, her lacy, delicate dress is in direct contrast to the scene that unfolds around her.
“When we were fittng her early on, Paul fell in love with the idea of her being in hot pink as much as we could, because it’s sort of the antithesis of who you think she is,” Paolo says. “She is so sunny and bright, but she carries a hatred for this house despite having a perky demeanor. The horror of who she really is is under this facade. A lot of the people attending the State Dinner are in black and the background artists and other cast members were in metallics. Since we couldn’t use primary colors, there was a lot of gold, silver, and frosted pastels, so she was always to stand out. She really pops, especially when she is standing in a big group of people. In a way, we are pointing to her, but I don’t think the audience notices.”
Mr. A.B. Winter is a man of order and dignity, and Paolo was determined to show us that through his designs. Some might assume that it’s easy to pair items together for men, but Paolo was paying homage the character as well as the man originally cast in the role.
“It’s a sad tale,” she says, thoughtfully. “A.B. obviously stood for Andre Braugher, and we lost him. We took what we had started with him, and when Mr. Espositio came in, he was so kind and he understoof what the crew had been through. He’s a very precise character. Very driven, very organized, and I wanted to reflect that in his suiting. The tie and his pocket square would always match. I kept thinking of the word, “dapper” with him. Giancarlo bought most of his costumes.”
There is a lot of talk about tradition throughout The Residence, and that uniquely translates to the costuming between some of the characters. We hear about how one administration follows the other as an ideal of how the house operates, but Susan Kelechi Watson’s Jasmine Haney is set to follow in the footsteps of Mr. Winter. One of the subtlest details is how Paolo aligns Ms. Haney’s trajectory behind Mr. Winter’s with clothing.
“If you notice, everyone at the State Dinner that wasn’t in black was in metallic, and she was in a silver metallic,” Paolo says. “She hasn’t become A.B. yet, so she is saying that she is just like everybody else, but then as we flash back into history and we see her before and after A.B. is dead before she becomes head of the house. We echoed that with her suiting and we continued with the double-breasted thing for her, but we continued the color palette from A.B. to Jasmine. When he was in lavender with a purple tie, she would be in a purple suit. If he was in blue with blue, then she would wear a blue jacket.”
In a sea of character-driven costumes, it would be difficult to select something to steal for your own closet. How can you pass up a distinctive detective jacket?
“I would want one of Cordelia’s jackets,” she says immediately. “But I want it custom made for me. I might change the color to green with a tan pant and maybe a tweed jacket. I’d love to have a pair of her shoes custome made for me.”
The Residence is streaming now on Netflix.
