Tamara Dewell has helped shape the look of some of the most notable films and television series of the past 20 years. From her early work as an art director on Bryan Singer’s X-Men and Degrassi: The Next Generation to her current role as production designer on Star Trek: Discovery, Dewell has shown versatility in her field that is both rare and impressive.
Yes, I went back to both. Guillermo urged all of his department heads [myself, Dan Laustsen and Luis Sequeira, our costume designer] to look at it but not get too much into the actual film. We’re making something of our own creation. But it was good to watch the film and read the novel, which of course, has a lot more depth to it then what you get in the original movie. So I read the novel and watched the original and then kind of left them behind.
The funhouse had all this deeper meaning like sin and man and the journey Stan is taking [in the film]. He’s already trapped by his inherent evil and aggressiveness. His fear of the Geek, who he eventually becomes by the end, was part of the whole motif in the funhouse. We had the Seven Deadly Sins and the Devil and Purgatory. Originally, we had Heaven, but there wasn’t enough room for Heaven. So yeah, Heaven wasn’t so interesting.
It paid off. I was really impressed with just how well it’s constructed and how it reflected Lilly’s character. In the second half of the film, you seem to draw heavily on the Art Deco look that was popular at the time, both in Lilith’s office and in the Copacabana club where Stan performs his act, among other places. Did you look at other films, architecture, or art from the 1930s as a reference?
We were able to get in there and then we did a fair bit of building in that once [the characters] go inside. But the exterior was pretty much as is; we just added some VFX graphics to show the fictional name of the factory. There’s a scene where Stan goes down the long hall and into Ezra’s office, which was a build, a very particular build, and that’s where you really see the Art Deco influence with the marble and the bronze. Rockefeller Center and the Capitol [Records] Building in L.A.