The Chair Company cinematographer Ashley Connor discusses shooting the HBO comedy series like a ’70s thriller and how they filmed Ron’s epic fall in the pilot.

Cinematographer Ashley Connor believes she knows why The Chair Company has resonated so much with audiences.

“America is in a unique place right now,” says Connor. “And I think [Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin’s] comedy is speaking to that disconnection, that abstract feeling of disassociation we’re all feeling and the anger that’s involved there. And that’s what I love about their work.”

The Chair Company starts with a simple faux pas — Tim Robinson’s Ron falls out of his chair on stage during a work speaking engagement. Connor says there was a lot of discussion about how to film that tumble and what would be the funniest version.

“We were like, it has to be as wide as we can get it because you really want to be cheering for him at the end of the speech. Special effects built a chair that could collapse with magnets, and the first time we all saw it as a group, we just died laughing because it seemed like it collapsed in the funniest way possible. And I think to us, it was really about honoring that moment so that the audience could be surprised and not see it coming.”

Of course, that epic fail leads Ron to investigate why his chair collapsed, causing him to discover that the chair company, Tecca, is a shell organization covering up something. What? We’re not quite sure.

“When I read the pilot, I was just like, this should be like a ’70s thriller. We should be taking this incredibly seriously. And to me, the approach was to really be on Ron’s team. And that meant taking his journey seriously. He’s a man who loves his family, but he’s willing to risk everything in his life to go on this obsession.”

Connor and director Andrew DeYoung were aligned in their approach to reference the movies of William Friedkin, Sidney Lumet, and Michael Mann.

“HBO got some of the dailies back, and they were like, ‘Oh!’ They were really excited and thrilled by what we were giving them. There is a world where this show is more of a broad comedy, and that’s just not what anyone was interested in making.”

Unlike a lot of TV comedies, The Chair Company has new locations every episode, including abandoned warehouses with big red balls and coke bars.

“My approach to location work, lighting, and cinematography is, how do I give us the most amount of time and style with the simplest setups? Because I know how fast we have to move. I know what the locations require. I also know what the boys’ privilege in their process. To me, as a collaborator, that means giving them that space to succeed.”

Just as the costumes mirror Ron’s evolution, so do the locations.

“It felt so fun to watch Ron degrade as a person and constantly be surrounded in new environments, because this is a man who you understood had a pretty specific routine. And so we just wanted him to keep going down. It’s like he keeps digging the hole in every new episode, every new location.”

As Ron enters the seedy underbelly of Central Ohio, his perspective and experience become darker.

“He starts disassociating from his reality. He welcomes more chaos. And so there had to be this friction in the work, in the cinematography, and in the episodes that allowed for his unraveling to continue and feel like we were all on the same journey together.”

Connor says that some people just get “the boys'” comedic timing, and one of those performers is Jim Downey, who plays Ron’s nemesis, Douglas.

“Every time Jim was on set, he grand-slammed it out of the park. Had everyone dying. He understands their delivery. And again, it’s just a side character. They wouldn’t [film the fridge scene] because it would break from Ron’s perspective, but every single time Douglas talked about being under the fridge, I just couldn’t choose what [take] I had. We’re truly squealing behind the camera, laughing.”

A lot of Chair Company fans point to Episode 5 of the series as the best of Season 1 — with Ron meeting Ken Tucker (Alberto Isaac) — and Connor says it was certainly the craziest episode to film, with the most iconic ending.

“I remember reading the blow job and that [Mike Santini’s] watching porn. I looked at the boys and was like, ‘For real?’ And they’re like, ‘For real.’ And I was like, this episode just doesn’t stop.”

The Chair Company is streaming on HBO Max.