To put it quite simply, the production design of Only Murders in the Building is unparalleled. Every season, we are trying to figure out who the murderer is, but we always tag along into a victim’s past. A person’s living space tells you a lot about how they lived their life, and season four capitalizes on our emotions as we inch closer and closer to discovering who killed our beloved Sazz Pataki. Patrick Howe expands on the Arconia even further–how does he keep doing it?–and honors the history of Sazz’s storied career.
When Charles, Oliver, and Mabel enter Sazz’s Los Angeles bungalow, it feels like she is there. It’s unmistakable. The large couch looks like the fabric was made out of one of Charles’ suit jackets. There are dramatic, nostalgic lamps that illuminate the space. I love the tile underneath the fireplace. The pictures of her favorite memories adorn the walls behind her desk, and there is even a stunt woman’s workout book among her belongings. The illuminated x-ray box is an inspired touch.
“I grew up in Los Angeles, and it’s actually not very often that there’s a written reason to present one of those ’30s bungalow apartments that were so influential in the Spanish style,” Howe says. “Since Sazz is our newest victim, we would need more flashbacks to spend more time there, so we had to capitalize on the time that we had,” Howe begins. “What was important was to make the connection to her career and play with the similarities with which she presents herself in relationship with Charles, and we tried to make as many parallels as possible. With several of the upholstery fabrics, we went in the direction of suiting fabric, so it felt like the clothes that they both wear. In one corner, there’s a wonderful, subtle camel tone pinstriped wallpaper that has a mohair texture. It’s a wallpaper version of a suiting fabric as well.
When making choices about things like the lamp silhouettes, those work so much better when you know how the scene is going to be lit so it carried more impact. The more interesting the silhouette, the more it behooves you to make that choice since it might end up in shadow. In all the other seasons, the audience knows her and you know what’s important to her in terms of her career. We wanted to honor that. The script told us that the x-rays would be on the wall, so then it all becomes a matter of how we decided to present that idea. The script said something like there was a caption of “my first big break,” so we went all the way with it and installed a lighted x-ray box. It could’ve been a print of an x-ray, but we wanted it to be more fun.”
When we move over to the other tower of the Arconia to interrogate some suspects, the lighting even feels different even if the bones of the building feel familiar. When they reach Rudy’s living space, we are hit in the face with red, green, gold, and white since he’s known, originally, as Christmas Guy. There is a fake fireplace in addition to the real fireplace, and it appears that the Christmas section fo Target has been shoved into one apartment. There is something delightfully artificial and plasty about what Rudy includes to serve his holiday hungry fans watching at home.
“Believe it or not, there was a little bit of restraint required,” he says with a laugh. “We had fun creating little vignette motifs in different areas of the apartment, and we went in so large and full and then each vignette blended into the next one adjoining it. Suddenly, the whole room is connected in solid, nonstop Christmas decor. When you look into one corner or another in the kitchen, you see different aspects, and it was about trying to blend. This was not a case of a Martha Stewart kind of look, so it’s not all one style. We imagined that he had to continue adding after that one viral exercise video. You might have tuned into one video and he would have had one thing, and the next time you watched him, there would be more. Little by little, his apartment is entirely taken over, and you wouldn’t see it all at once if you subscribe to his channel.
Mila Khalevich, our decorator, and her assistant, Carly Whitaker, had a lot of fun obsessing over different details, and I kind of tortured them with my own nostalgia. I would tell them that there were some really important things to have in there like I would describe, in detail, a large brandy snifter. You need to get a white bottle bristle to use as eyebrows. After that you get red velvet and make a cap, so it sits on top of the brandy snifter. I was describing some of the decor my mother had done as a DIY decorator before it was referred to as DIY. Very happy housewife decorations.”
In another effort to show the difference between the towers, we enter Inez and Alfonso’s quarters, and you will notice a boldness right away. The wallpapers have big patterns before flowing into another room with a different, big wallpaper. I love the mounted candle holderss, the small kitchen island, and the hood above the stove.
“This was more about making decor choices that you felt were just about the characters and that it reflected their taste,” Howe says. “With the little backstory we had or were able to create on that family, it’s about making choices that felt more Western Europe. We decided that Inez and Alfonso would have furniture that might have been hand-me-downs from family. A lot of the artwork is grounded in more like middle-class Europe, and we wanted to show generations of collectibles in that way. The scenes were written where the relationships of family were very imporatnat, and, what I know from my Latin-based friends, you see a difference in how they are connected to their siblings and grandparents. They are more generationally tied to each other than how I grew
up. I wanted to reflect that in the furnishing and how their relatives may have given them something.”
When the trio flees the city and takes refuge at Doreen’s suburbian house, one aspect sticks out…quite hilariously. Melissa McCarthy’s character makes FAO Schwartz’s doll section look like a yard sale, but their presence is taking over the house. When Charles and Doreen go to have a delicate moment together, you can’t help but chuckle at the porcelain visages popping into frame. Howe also talks about how one of his personal experiences inspired the bar and rumpus room where Doreen makes a move on Oliver.
“We built that on a stage, and there wasn’t a location interior at all,” he says. “One of the jokes was that they see the dolls initially in the living at first and then they go into the bedroom and they are there. Every time you go into a new room, there’s just more and more and more. The wood paneling stuff, where Melissa McCarthy accosts Martin Short, is really based on my romantic ideas of a rumpus room that was a little more vintage and of the ’60s. I remember, as a kid, being at a friend’s house and it was a separate building somewhere in their pool house. Today it would be a mancave or something. I remember watching Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte and being scared to death in this warm, cozy den where you’d have sundaes and sleepovers. Those dolls freaked the crew out a lot. You could walk by these sets at night, and sometimes there would be just work lights on and you’d see the leg of an adult-sized doll poking out. It was terrible.”
Only Murders in the Building is streaming now on Hulu.
