{"id":765595,"date":"2026-06-27T22:22:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/765595\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T22:22:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:22:24","slug":"making-the-invite-apartment-production-design-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/765595\/","title":{"rendered":"Making ‘The Invite’ Apartment \u2014 Production Design Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unless you\u2019re mired in the billionaire sociopathy of a \u201cSuccession<\/a>,\u201d all living spaces say something about the people who live in them. But for production designer Jade Healy, creating the interiors for director-star Olivia Wilde<\/a>\u2018s latest film<\/a>, \u201cThe Invite<\/a>,\u201d required a massive high-dive into character psychology. \u201cI became a version of Angela [Wilde], designing and decorating this apartment,\u201d Healy told IndieWire about the pre-war San Francisco apartment that serves as the primary setting for Wilde\u2019s charming sex comedy.<\/p>\n

Built entirely on a set and inspired by a scouting trip to San Francisco, as well as many hours exploring vintage apartment listings on Zillow, Healy\u2019s task was to make the apartment shared by Angela, an artist who gave up her career to be a stay-at-home mom, and her one-time punk musician husband Joe (Seth Rogen), now a burned out music teacher, reveal aspects of the characters\u2019 inner and outer turmoil. Healy\u2019s sets don\u2019t just feel expansive or exude a kind of fraying millennial comfort; they are a direct look into the current (crumbling) state of Angela and Joe\u2019s marriage. <\/p>\n

\"'Cielo'\"<\/a> \"NOTORIOUS,<\/a> <\/p>\n

It\u2019s in no small part because Angela has poured so much of her frustrated creative energy into the apartment. We meet the couple on a hectic Friday night, just as they\u2019ve opened up their home, after months of renovations, to the seductive couple upstairs, P\u00edna (Pen\u00e9lope Cruz), a therapist, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a firefighter, for an impromptu dinner party. Angela\u2019s grip on her vast (for San Francisco) vintage kingdom is tight, perhaps to the detriment of her relationship, and maybe even herself. Healy wanted to visually portray that tension.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really fun to think, \u2018Who is she? What did it look like before? What is she constantly redoing in her house? Pillows, curtains?’\u201d Healy pondered. Most of the items in the home would have been curated with care by Angela, and on a single-income budget. This led Healy to look for inspiration in places like Instagram, where ordinary women share their own maximalist interior design projects, rather than traditional interior design magazines. \u201cI was really more interested in people who design with a personal touch,\u201d Healy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Invite<\/a>\u2018 Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

These carefully curated household items, like a vintage toilet, were found on Facebook Marketplace. \u201cIt was important when we were decorating,\u201d Healy said, \u201cthat the stuff was all affordable.\u201d Facebook Marketplace, Healy felt, would be where Angela would spend her time scouring for the right lamp or the perfect couch cushion. \u201cShe\u2019s going to flea markets, she\u2019s making curtains,\u201d Healy said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

That character logic is important to the production designer because Healy isn\u2019t just designing to evoke an emotion in the viewer, but also in the actor playing the role. \u201cThe actor will see the whole room,\u201d Healy said. \u201cIt needs to feel like the story we\u2019re telling, so the actor can get lost in the space. It\u2019s the last piece of information you\u2019re giving the actors about their character when they show up on set.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while most of the apartment has been blessed by the magic of Angela\u2019s personal touch, two rooms remain in limbo. First, there\u2019s Joe\u2019s study, where all his music \u2014 and failed ambitions \u2014 are jammed in a tiny, cramped space. And then there is their bedroom, where Healy said, \u201cNo magic is happening.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Invite\u2019 Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

The only minimalist room in the apartment, with paint samples languishing on one wall, Healy envisioned the bedroom as a space where Angela hasn\u2019t spent much time because her and Joe\u2019s sex life is null. \u201cI just wanted that feeling when you go into the bedroom that she\u2019s worked on every other aspect of the apartment, but the bedroom is just kind of bleh,\u201d Healy said. This became the one room in the apartment with negative space, because, as Healy put it, \u201cA wall with nothing on it says something.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with her intense attention to detail with the set decoration, Healy also worked closely with Wilde on the set\u2019s floor plan. \u201cWe talked about how we wanted to make sure the film never felt stuck in this apartment,\u201d Healy said, \u201cWe wanted it to feel like we\u2019re actually in so many different places.\u201d This included jettisoning the original idea of an open floor plan for the kitchen and living room. This change from the script gave an even greater sense of separation between Angela and Joe when they began filming.<\/p>\n

As she worked on each room, Healy imagined how the director of photography, Adam Newport-Berra, <\/a>would use the space. \u201cI really wanted frames within frames,\u201d Healy said, \u201cbecause I knew that allowed him to separate the characters and move from one room to the other, dividing Joe and Angela by doorways, dividing them by rooms, even dividing them through the reflections in mirrors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Invite\u2019 Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Healy was amazed watching Newport-Berra, who recently won an Emmy for his work on the streaming series \u201cThe Studio<\/a>,\u201d on set as he found new angles through which to film the emotional divide between the couple. \u201cI think I\u2019m pretty savvy,\u201d Healy said, \u201cI had thought of all the angles, but I would still think \u2018What is this shot?\u2019 He\u2019s so talented. He\u2019s so intuitive about how shots reveal character.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Invite\u201d was shot in 23 days in chronological order, and Healy told IndieWire that Wilde fought hard to shoot the film on 35mm, adding that, \u201cI don\u2019t think that the relationship between set design and shooting on film is discussed enough.\u201d When you\u2019re shooting on film, she says you are \u201ctrying to make everything feel real,\u201d and that film stock gives the set a lived-in quality that is not often achieved when shooting digitally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although she\u2019s worked on dozens of films, Healy has only worked with a handful of female directors. Healy said working with Wilde<\/a> was a treat, adding that, \u201cShe was so confident. She\u2019d go from Angela and then put on her directing hat. She knew exactly what she wanted; she knew exactly what she was doing.\u201d\u00a0Collaborating with Wilde was a \u201creally great mirroring of the minds,\u201d Healy said. <\/p>\n

Healy\u2019s hope with any director is that once she\u2019s delivered her lookbook and her model, they can \u201cspend their time and energy shot listing and rehearsing with the actors, and not stressing about the sets. That\u2019s always what I want to deliver,\u201d Healy said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Invite\u201d opens in limited theaters on June 26 and wide on July 10. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unless you\u2019re mired in the billionaire sociopathy of a \u201cSuccession,\u201d all living spaces say something about the people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75,1554,70020,179105,32473],"class_list":["post-765595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-olivia-wilde","tag-the-invite","tag-top-of-the-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}