{"id":15048,"date":"2025-10-24T15:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15048\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T15:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T15:25:10","slug":"how-blue-moon-recreated-a-legendary-nyc-restaurant-in-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15048\/","title":{"rendered":"How Blue Moon Recreated a Legendary NYC Restaurant in Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since 1927, Sardi\u2019s has been on Manhattan\u2019s West 44th Street, between Seventh and Eighth avenues. This month, however, the iconic Theater District restaurant is taking a brief trip to Ireland.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the new film Blue Moon\u2014a period drama from writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater about Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart on the opening night of his former creative partner\u2019s biggest success\u2014takes place almost entirely within Sardi\u2019s but filmed in Dublin.<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/p>\n

Blue Moon director Richard Linklater on set with Margaret Qualley and Ethan Hawke. Sabrina Lantos, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little bit nerve wracking,\u201d says production designer Susie Cullen, who recreated a 1943 version of the restaurant for the film, but has never actually visited herself. \u201cSome of the people involved were based in New York, so they were able to do little walkthroughs and take video of what it is now,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then there are pictured because there were a lot of stars photographed there; we were trying to look behind the stars and see what the architecture was like.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the challenges of Cullen\u2019s job was giving the set the feel of Sardi\u2019s without recreating it note for note. For the film\u2019s purposes, Hart (Ethan Hawke) needs to lurk around the edges of the restaurant, never quite making it to where his former collaborator Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) is celebrating the success of Oklahoma!\u2019s debut. (Instead, he lingers by the bar with a bartender played by Bobby Cannavale and canoodles with a young admirer played by Margaret Qualley.) \u201cFor our story, we needed to create layers so that Ethan as Hart could always be around the edges viewing what was going on,\u201d Cullen says. \u201cWe were building barriers but not visually blocking things, so that he was on the fringes of what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/p>\n

The real Sardi\u2019s is on NYC\u2019s West 44th Street; the set of Blue Moon recreated it in Dublin. Sabrina Lantos, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

That meant laying out the on-screen restaurant differently from the real thing. \u201cFrom the bar, you could see to the back hall and the main door, you could see the people travel up the stairs, and you could kind of see any comings and goings from the restaurant without being right there,\u201d Cullen says. \u201cThat\u2019s not what the geography of the place is as far as I could make out, but it was about creating lines of vision that cheated. Once we got the color right and the scale right and the caricatures in\u2014those big things that say Sardi\u2019s\u2014it was just about creating a space that worked for the story and the characters within the film.\u201d (The St. James theater, where Oklahoma! premiered, was recreated on a Dublin stage during a dark night for Riverdance.)<\/p>\n

And those caricatures! In real life, there are more than 1,200 hanging throughout the restaurant, depicting Broadway stars including Laurence Olivier, Sammy Davis Jr., Lucille Ball, and more, and new additions (by artist Richard Baratz) are hung at a rate of about 20 per year. The pictures are the restaurant\u2019s visual calling card, and they mark a sort of arrival for New York stage talent. Cullen, however, didn\u2019t have the chance to recreate them in the same way.<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/p>\n

The restaurant\u2019s iconic caricatures, seen here behind Hawke, are recreated to depict characters including some of the film\u2019s crew. Sabrina Lantos, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a small number of images that the production had clearance to use, but everything else we had to create from scratch,\u201d she says. Some of the drawings in the film are of crew members or producers, some were adaptations of originals that didn\u2019t depict the original stars, and one was even of Linklater himself. \u201cYou just needed to get a sense of the style and tone of the pictures,\u201d Cullen says. \u201cIt didn’t matter who they were, they just needed to look authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other key to getting things right, she says, was thinking about the theater. \u201cIt\u2019s in the color, actually; it\u2019s quite a red interior, which ties in with the red velvets you associate with the theater seats,\u201d Cullen says. \u201cIt was important for tying those things together, achieving texture and giving everything a little bit of luster. It wasn\u2019t about being fancy and impressive; it looks reasonably modest but like a really busy place. It\u2019s about the vibe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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