{"id":147436,"date":"2025-11-22T02:29:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T02:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/147436\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T02:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T02:29:13","slug":"hedda-shot-at-flintham-hall-production-design-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/147436\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Hedda’ Shot at Flintham Hall\u00a0\u2014 Production Design Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

You have to pick up a lot of skills and expertise as a production designer, given the wild and varied worlds you might be asked to craft, but for \u201cHedda,<\/a>\u201d the new adaptation of \u201cHedda<\/a> Gabler\u201d by writer and director Nia DaCosta<\/a>, it helped production designer Cara Brower that she collects vintage color charts and paint chips.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Browser told IndieWire that it\u2019s a little bit wild how pre-Pantone catalogs from the \u201840s and \u201850s do not match up with the standardized colors today and Brower wanted Hedda\u2019s (Tessa Thompson<\/a>) world to feel very singular and wild, a throwback to the post-war period setting, but sharply, relentlessly modern in its taste \u2014 the same way that Hedda herself is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Eddie<\/a> \"WICKED:<\/a> <\/p>\n

The manor house into which Hedda and her husband George (Tom Bateman) have recently moved and are throwing a grand party to buoy his hopes of getting tenure had a number of requirements in DaCosta\u2019s script \u2014 a grand staircase for Hedda to swan down, one space for jazzy dancing and another for a chandelier to fall, levels and layers for Hedda to survey her realm or conspire with her frenemy Judge Brack (Nicholas Pinnock) or scheme to foil the hopes of her former lover Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), roof access for some ominous target shooting, and, oh, also, no big deal, a hedge maze and a lake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brower\u2019s monster, 200-plus location scouting trip around the UK eventually led her and the filmmaking team to Flintham Hall, in Nottinghamshire, which had just about everything the script needed \u2014 they did end up filming the hedge maze sequences at a neighboring estate \u2014\u00a0and was miraculously willing to leave the house dressed over the hiatus the production took during the SAG strike, including a completely 1940s-ified kitchen.<\/p>\n

\"StillsThe sets of \u2018Hedda\u2019 Courtesy of Cara Brower<\/p>\n

The sets were worth the wait, moody and alluring and brimming with scandalous modern art and sour colors chosen to make the English Heritage building regulators faint. Brower delights in talking about how researching real society raconteurs of the \u201850s, like Lee Radziwill and Oonagh Guinness, gave her the confidence to go big and bold with Hedda\u2019s complete reorganization of the castle she\u2019s gotten her husband to buy her. But Brower also credits collaboration with the other department heads on the film<\/a> to craft a world that feels so unified and so ruled by Hedda\u2019s gravitational pull.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It helped that most of them also had a singing planet under their belt by the time they got to \u201cHedda.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that everything feels really in tandem on this film, because it\u2019s harder to achieve than you would think. We\u2019re always busy and in our own little world, and so you really have to make time to go and speak to the other departments, see what they\u2019re doing, discuss ideas,\u201d Brower said. \u201cIt really helped that we had all worked on \u2018The Marvels\u2019 together for years. So we all had a dialogue going already.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"StillsThe sets of \u2018Hedda\u2019 Courtesy of Cara Brower<\/p>\n

For instance, inspired by a stage direction in DaCosta\u2019s script, Brower and costume designer Lindsay Pugh wanted to ensure that Hedda herself and her environments felt a little bit like looking at a rotten fruit. \u201cYou get all those gorgeous colors, but they\u2019re turned. We had plummy burgundies and dirty purples and lavenders and sort of acidic greens. And then Lindsay and I really embraced that color story. I love that she made that dress that sort of putrid green. It\u2019s so unexpected,\u201d Brower said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both Brower and Pugh also took inspiration from the kinds of Art Deco sculptures Hedda would want in the house in place of flowers to create harsh, strong lines on both the clothing and the environment. \u201cArt Deco shapes are always so sultry and graphic. I\u2019m so glad we found all these ideas and put them together [because] sometimes, as a production designer, especially in contemporary movies, you\u2019re really working to get accuracy and authenticity. But I feel like I got to put so much of what I love in, to reflect the character obviously, but everything that we did, I personally loved as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brower said that it was also really fun to be able to get away from stage sets and have to be creative within the limitations of a location. One prime example is the imperial, carpeted (!) bathroom we see Hedda in at the beginning of the film, getting ready for the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheThe set and design plan for Hedda\u2019s bathroom. Courtesy of Cara Brower<\/p>\n

\u201cThose [upstairs] rooms were all just guest bedrooms that had been renovated. They were very modern and white and [DaCosta] said, \u2018Oh I love this window. I wish we could have this in the film, but we can\u2019t use this room.\u2019 So I decided, well, let\u2019s just build a set around this beautiful window,\u201d Brower said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brower\u2019s team brought in the tub, new walls, and the all-important carpet. \u201cI had this image of this David Hicks bathroom \u2014 which is actually from the \u201860s but it was so iconic and he was the interior designer that really brought the bathtub as a main focal point into the bathroom, and with the carpet, which is so strange, but we did that and it really brings us in,\u201d Brower said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What it brings us into is a beautiful blend of period flare and character psychology, which was always the goal for Brower. \u201cIt\u2019s very shocking for George\u2019s guests to come into a house like this that\u2019s been decorated the way Hedda does. But that\u2019s absolutely who she is,\u201d Brower said. \u201cWhen you step into this world, she seems like somebody very stifled, but an interest in fashion and art tells me that this is a creative person who wants to express themself. She\u2019s probably looking to express herself in her surroundings, too.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHedda\u201d is now streaming on Prime Video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You have to pick up a lot of skills and expertise as a production designer, given the wild…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,593,98684,111,139,65563,69,83983,90832],"class_list":["post-147436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-hedda","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nia-dacosta","tag-nz","tag-tessa-thompson","tag-top-of-the-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}