STRAWT media. There's a closet in
the in Oliver's front hall. There are
five doors. There's seven doors of
twelve doors or however many doors that work,
and as a tiny little closet door
here and like of course this is
where all the dogs costumes and leashes
and bags go. So there's like a
three Amigos dog costume, there's like
a wild and crazy guy dog costume and
there's an Arrow through the head costume
for a dog scale. So there's this
is there's a whole closet full of
Stephen Marty's old shows in dog for a
doggy dress up down dog dress up
room. That never would seen and should
giggled the bell and I'm like yeah, it's there. If you want to
open the door, you can open
it. Welcome to another very special bonus
episode of only murders in the pod, the show where we look behind the
scenes and mine for clues as we
meet the cast and creators at the Hulu
original series only murders in the building. I'm your host Elizabeth Keener, and
I'm your host Kevin Laughan, and
today on the show producer Maggie Bulls is
back. Hi, Maggie, yeah, she recently sat down with Kurt beach
and rich Murray. Hi, hi, how's it going good? Can you
hear me? Okay, I am
I here. Yes, I talked to
Kurt and rich. I really wanted
to know how much more I could get
to know the characters by looking at
the world that they live in, you
know, which is basically about by
the art department in the production to sign
apartment. You know, there's artist, there's painters, designers, carpenters,
all kinds of things and obviously a
production designer and a set there. My
name's Kirk Beach. I'm the production
designer of season one, of only murders
in the building, and I'm rich
for you to set a criture four seasons
one two, of only murders in
the building. For the record, I
wanted to do season two but I
was working on a movie and the dates
didn't line up and it just was
just sucks. But they're in good hands.
They yeah, and going well,
but it's not like I'm like I'm
a coming back one members of a
building those yeah, there's the way it's
all. I think. I love
for these people. It was fantastic.
So I, for one, wasn't
really a hundred percent sure what production design
includes. Home does I know?
I know, I should know what I
don't really know. So I asked
Kurt for his take on what. You
know, good production designed, really
good production design sits in the middle of
a cute little ven diagram where authenticity, story and visual content converge. That's
where you want to get. What
does that mean? Back to school,
I know. If sounds like it
sounds like kind of COMPLICI right. So
we figured we would draw over and
diagram and look at it. We would
have three circles authenticity, story and
visual content, and then right here,
this little center part. That's production
design. Oh well, all overlap to
this center of everything that is helped. Yes, that is the umble.
Like I think you can have authenticity
in a space film, if you're doing,
you know, science fiction. You
can have story, you know,
in a romantic comedy and even in
farce, and you can have visual content
in any in all of the above. And you know, comedies a little
bit more elusive. It's a little
harder to pull it off, but what
I'm always after is something completely authentic. It has to be believable where the
audience is going to tune out immediately. So we're just trying to create spaces
where the actors can do their best
work and spaces that make sense for the
characters and are rerealistic in the world
that the writers have created. And what
about how production design and set decoration
come together? How are they different and
how do they how do they work
together? Well, to me it's it
all comes about from the same a
task of serving the script and serving the
characters. In that the decoration is
one part of the design world, but
in a way it's it's the minutia
of the design world that often is either
noticed or unnoticed or, you know, it all depends on what the camera
wants to see. So we provide
a world of big, splashy pictured down
to the minutia of grains of sand
or salt or whatever, and we give
that all over to the camera,
the team and to the director, and
I think that's the way I like
to think of it as as being related,
all in one world. It's just
different branches of the different teams that
pull off that vision. For the
designer. Yeah, I like to say
that story is built from detail.
We sometimes will have a detail that we
really like and that becomes the basis
of an entire room or a set,
and then sometimes we'll have a set
and then we will add details to it.
But all of this comes about from
text and story and backstory and everything
we're doing we're trying to imbue with
a history and a backstory, and that's
why this project special and that's why
there's gold in them our hills, because
what John and the writers have created
is so rich with detail that we don't
have to look too far for it, and then when we want to add
to it, it's very easy to
find because the characters are so richly developed
and described. That's the true collaboration
between a show runner, creator and the
art compartments. Can I just comment
on how rich and deep rich is voices?
Okay, I just want to it's
yeah, it's amazing. Yet okay,
continue, definitely. Yeah, and
rich said that, even though they
have a new production designer for a
season to the rest of the team has
basically stayed the same, and so
they've developed a really cool, trusting relationship
with John Hoffman, the showrunner.
He's so comfortable with us in terms of
running with the story or running with
those ideas visually and then telling that story
visually for these characters that he is. He often just giggles with us.
Since I trust you go with it
and it's really kind of funny to have
that sort of collaborative freedom in a
way with the showrunner that you know,
oftentimes doesn't happen, and certainly not
this early in the relationship. It's been
a really great trip. Okay,
I would like to know how. I
know it's a collaboration, but how
do they make all of this happen?
You do you give the actors,
you have the costumes, you have the
different departments. I want to know
how the costumes and the set kind of
interact together. How do they make
that happen? Yeah, yeah, so,
you know, we talked a little
bit about that, I feel like,
with with Dana last time and she
talked about, you know, the
way they interact. But what I
thought was really interesting talking to Kurt was
that he pointed out how important the
timing is in the decisions that they make,
you know, for what they're wearing
and where they live and what their
house looks like. So I thought
that was pretty cool. You mean the
timing of episodes or the timing of
before they start? Like is that that
what exactly the timing? Is he
going to tell us the timing of when
they make their choices? You know? So you know they they're dressing a
character, let's say for episode.
They're shooting episode three and they haven't chosen
their drapes yet in the place.
So what do they choose first? You
know what's more important? Who are
they matching too? And you know that
kind of studying has listen to him. Yeah, I mean we get to
a point where we have to start
selecting fabrics and wall coverings and paint colors,
and then rich, well, I'm
thinking about the walls in the and
the room. Rich is thinking about, you know, what the decor is
going to be, what that means
to the characters. And you know,
we get to a point where we're
like, oh my gosh, if we
do like up Plaid Sofa and she's
got him in a plaid shirt, it's
either going to look amazing or we're
going to look like idiots. So we
have to have that conversation about you
know, we lay out a board and
we're like this is what we're thinking
about. These the colors that we really
like for this character. Where are
you in your process? And we just
have to try and bounce off of
each other and make sure that we're not
conflicting too much, because it could
get ugly if we do. If we
do, if we miss. Yeah, Oh, I would love to know.
I mean, I think we'd all
like to know. What does it
Miss Look like? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, could it be like the
cat guy, but then he has
this super slick apartment because they didn't realize?
Oh, yeah, you would be
like or the dogs would have mesh
cat the cat stuff. Don't I
more? No, yeah, I don't
know. I was thinking maybe if, like, you had horizontal stripes on
like a Vertical Stripe Sofa, maybe
that would look bad. That would look
that. I would that would look
like a tic tick to kind of thing,
right. Yeah, it's a mix
as a nose. Throw them in
there. No, it was terrible, terrible. See, I missed.
That was a miss. That was
a miss. Okay, here we go.
Think about it in a in a
close up, right, like a
sofa is a pretty big thing when
you have a body and a big piece
of fabric. So you have to
think, you know, what is that
going to be in in a tighter
shot, and and how are those two
things going to relate and then what's
right behind it. You know, a
wall paper could be contrasting and could
really mass with that that dialog between these
fabrics and ideas and shapes and and
all this stuff. So yeah, we
had a lot of conversations about how
to make sure that we were both on
the room same pay age and then
we're complimenting each other and really expanding on
the character together. Yeah, I
think, and actually I was thinking of
an instance in which it works almost
in a collaboratively the opposite, where the
backwards way of that, especially because
of this show, we know who the
characters are up front in a way
like in the first few episodes we sort
of figured out who everybody was,
but we never saw bunnies of our you
know. So in that way we
knew who bunny was based on the works
that Dana had done all last season. So what we do bunnies apartment this
season. That's it's it's much more
informed by Dana's work already. She's already
done all the homework for bunny and
for us. It made it very easy
to know, Oh, yes,
this is bunny, this is not fun,
this is bunny whom this is not
and it was kind of great that
way, and so when we showed
her the boards of Football Paper Ferns,
I ever saw that such. So
I get this perfect don't a better.
Yeah, it's great, you know, because it all of her work had
already been done and so we were
just taking her league. It was great.
The details, right. I just
is so amazing to me when they
have everything thought out the next season
and probably the next season if it's still
going, and it's very specific.
It's very specific and it the way he
was talking about how that's the team
work, when there's layers and it's just
like it's the exterior of the of
the actor, like it's so it's kind
of everything else around. Think about
where we are right now and things that
surround us, you know, that's
part of who we are. Yeah,
when we're in our own space.
And No, I want to hear about
everyone's apartment. What does the production
designed to tell us about our main characters?
Oh, yeah, but I also, you know, we I want
to get inside Bunny's apartment. I
mean, they're answers about the mysterious circumstances
surrounding her death. Are we aware
of this? Remember Ken? Yeah,
I mean so they said that we
get to see inside of Bunny's apartment in
season two, which is, I
don't know, pretty exciting, nervous,
an excited. So yeah, we, I mean, unfortunately we don't know
a whole lot about bunny's apartment,
but we will get to learn about the
other characters, like you wanted cake. Yeah, so we'll go through each
of them one by one, but
first let's take a quick break. Welcome
back. Before the break we talked
about how the art department collaborates with the
other parts of the production team,
and now we're going to dive into our
main characters to see what secrets about
their lives were hidden inside their apartments at
the Arconia like a frozen cat leg. Yes, exactly, behind the couch,
yummy. Yeah, so the first
when I asked about was Charles.
We had an initial version of Charles. It was like straight out of the
nights that we had done and it
was like like a groovy Bachelory, very
architectural, digest New York City Bachelor's
apartment and it just felt a little bit
too dated and out of touch for
this man. So we looked at this
first version and then we change some
things and in changing it we actually addressed
a lot of the things about the
character that we did not know when we're
having this meeting about and once we
had thrown this idea on the wall and
Henry crumpled it up and threw it
away, and that is that. You
know, he's a smart investor.
So he made his money and saved wisely,
spent wisely. He's a shrewd art
collector. There's some really nice pieces
of art and his apartment. Nothing
extravagant, nothing that he can retire with,
but some pieces that are worth quite
a bit. Wait, did you
guys notice that he was a wise
investor of art, like capital a Ar?
You've see stuff. I remember his
music and he had all a bunch
of wreckers and you know all that. But I didn't really notice. Did
you guys notice? I can't see. I know it's the art specifically.
I always liked his apartment the best. Is kind of clean and modern but
so compautiful, but I can't say
I really noticed the art. Yeah,
yeah, I definitely didn't notice either, or not that I know very much
about our you know, it wouldn't
necessarily be the first thing I would notice,
but if you think about it,
you know Charles definitely isn't very concerned
with my me right in the show, not like Oliver is, at least.
And you know, his house is
very put together. It's always clean
and it has sort of a class. He sends to it like he spent
some money on the things in there, and when I was doing research for
this interview I learned a lot about
the art on his walls and we'll talk
about that more in a minute with
curtain rich. But one thing that Kurt
said is that we definitely know that
Charles has good taste in furniture. Who
this comes from discussion, an early
discussion with with Steve. So some of
the beasts are very specific specific manufacturers
that he thought would be good for the
character. And then overall there's a
playfulness to the apartment in the colors,
in the materials and all over it
is is just a is a lightness.
There's a lightness to it and a
playfulness and we all agreed that that was
really important and we had a couple
of key images that we really liked that
we were working off of and trying
to to get a certain vibe from.
So are there any things inside of
Charles's apartment that you remember? I mean
KK you said it was your favorite, but is there anything like any furniture,
art or specific I do remember there
was a sign in the kitchen and
it was it's a nice hot vegetable
way that way. I think I I
talked about them. Did talk about
it? Because we thought it was a
clue, like we thought everything was
a click. But yes, and we
thought, and I love the it
is playfulness, like I think it feels
like maybe a little bit of Steve
Martin Per Sauna in there in the sense
of his playfulness, and he's really
his yeah, his thought of beauty I
made really is. I loved his
apartment, I really did. I just
didn't pay attention to the artwork except
for the Nice hot bitched and that's a
good reminder to eat your vegetables.
Yes, and remember Brady Bunch. Do
you remember the Brady Bunch Hook?
They had it. What was it?
It was a pork chop and apple
sauce, wasn't they had a little chosen
shock. That was not high art. No, but this is. Well,
actually it is and well, we'll
talk about that in a minute.
But there was some other kind of
cool stuff that Kurt pointed out too.
There's is a collection of for album
covers on his wall in the kitchen that
are from some s era percussion records, and these record covers are designed by
Joseph Albert's, the artist who did
homage to the square, like the square
and the square blocks that everyone's familiar
with. Are you guys familiar with Joseph
Albers and Oh wash to the square? I was not familiar with it.
Yeah, did you look it up? I mean like, yes, I
looked it up. You've fantastic.
Seen them in the museum. Apparently he
did hundreds of thees, like it's
a study on yeah, and it because
about the colors and I just love
it. It almost has like a s
or a s kind of look to
it. Yeah, definitely, yeah,
yeah, Palm Springs kind of vibe. UHHAH, for sure. Yeah.
So I looked it up and when
I saw it I was like, Oh,
yeah, that's that's right. See, we're learning things. MMMM.
So that's just like a little you
know, it's a Nice Pere Nice pieces.
They're thoughtfully chosen for him and they
come out of the knowledge of art
and music. We have a list
of like Easter eggy stuff that we've thrown
in there. That's you know,
that's that's fun to think about. With
him. A couple of things,
like a character based that we looked at
wanted to sort of play with a
bit a that first. He was like
very meticulous and very much about things
being in order and place, and it's
funny because they sort of picked up
on that as the season went on.
So everything about his space has its
own place for it, and this is
this is really useful because there's so
much contrast between the two characters and you
know, basically everything that rich to
was talking about now is the opposite explers.
So it's, you know, it's
it's an Oscar and Felix situation exactly.
And it was funny because, like, one of the things that we
talked about first and one of the
things that really launched the look and feel
of his apartment for us was the
striped fabric on the Sofa in the living
room and pretty much everything like,
because those toy is a rather arbitrary in
that design world, you know,
and I mean they they feel the emotionally.
No design choices arbitrary or of course
not. But what you know,
because there is not one arbitrary choice
in any of the apartment. This has
been a lovely eggs you're breaking up. We're not. No. What I
meant was like the the arbitrary,
in that there could have been any number
of choices made to sort of be
the launching point for Charles's character, that
this is such a rigid, sort
of exciting, colorful and something very sophisticated
for him. was what I thought
was, oh, this is great in
this says this character. You Kurt
already mentioned. The name is the you
know, the pieces of furniture,
of that stuff, like everything in there
is essentially a not a catalog.
It's a custom piece or it was a
showroom peace. That we tried to
pull him and that was important to him,
because everything has significance for Charles.
And then, in that same way,
all of the art in his apartment
and the curtain, Steve were very
great about like leading this to make
sure that all of the art meant something
in his place. So, like
we have the main portrait of the woman
walking away in the living room.
Obviously you know it's very much a part
of WHO this character is. There's
a big piece of art in the Hallway.
The see from the kitchen that looks
like nothing but like window mullions.
So it's like looking out windows and
peeping into other people's lives through these windows.
There's like a starts being a hutch, sort of like car that feels
very much like a police car from
the s in the family room and with
thought. That was sort of like
a wrap gift or something from one of
his past seasons on Rosums. And
then there the ED Roche, which there's
a there's an addroche that says nice
hot rastables. Yeah, in the kitchen,
in the kitchen, in the kitchen. We made up a whole story
for that. So there it is, the Nice hot vegetables Edryche. It's
actually a famous artist and fame's famous
painting. Do you guys, or I'm
curious, what you think Charles's backstory
would be for having a painting like that?
Well, we know it's not a
clue. It definitely not a clue.
I don't what's a good backstory Nice? Well, now he's, Oh,
you know, he's doing his he's
cooking himself and he's putting a lot
of vegetables in his omelet. But
I feel like now he's cooking for himself.
Like I said, he's not really
nobody's cooking with him for him.
Right. Well, see, well, what I was thinking, since we
know it's not a clue, maybe
it had something to do with Lucy,
Charles's girlfriend's daughter, and maybe that
was something they would cook together and that's
a sign they found it. That's
fleet Martyn. It is on a Sunday
legeables in the maybe it's side to
that. I think we're right. Yeah,
yeah, well, I mean it's
definitely not, not an art piece.
You would find it a fleet market. I think it's an expensive art
piece. But yeah, I've said
I think that you guys will like like
the story that the art department came
up with. Why? Why Charles has
it? So it's very expensive like
now. But we meet up a story
that while he was shooting Brazos,
in whatever year he was in La at
some point working on the show,
he went to a party, he met
Ed Rouche, went to the studio, they became pals. He bought a
piece and it's in his kitchen now. It's now worth, you know,
several hundred thousand dollars, but back
then it wasn't uh Huh. But he's
smart and he's shrewd and you know, he got the piece for a Lark
from someone he had met in La
Party. That's a better story. Devil
is better than the ALMAS story.
A G I like that they bring brothers
back into roses. You know,
I was going to say, what did
you do with his residual chicks?
Yeah, not the ones today that are
penny, but I'm talking about the
ones back then that were a few Hundi's.
Apparently bought some art. He did
buy smart and he shrewd and he
did good investment for him. You
know, there are only so many spots
in the apartment to put art,
so each one is an opportunity to tell
something else about the character and we
take full advantage of it every single time.
Something else about Steve's and maybe this
is a little sort of tidbit on
Easter eggs and the first episode.
I think there's a flashback this year of
Charles Hayden and his father in the
s out in the street across the street
from the Arconia, and there's a
it's a wintry thing and there's a vegetable
of fruit seller vender on the street
and we handpainted a science saying nice cold
vegetables for that street vendor. And
it's, you know, it's deep background
all the way down the block.
You never know if you're ever going to
see it. But funny because we
painted it with like the same oranges and
Greens and, you know, in
the same but it was all and it
but feels part of that fruit vendor
in that everything else there was wrange and
green and Brown as well. Is
that the sound of Kurt laughing in the
background? Are we getting rooked again? SIS, not real. No,
no, Kurt is laughing because he
actually thought that was hilarious and it was
the first time you heard about it, since he's not on season two.
So he thought that was very funny. Buddy did go on to add this.
I like to say that scenery is
not funny. It shouldn't be funny,
but there can be humor in the
work and and you can hide some
things that that are funny, but
you want to be careful that it does
and take the audience out of the
reality of what the characters ating. So
it has to be done with a
very light dotch. I could even see
working that into his backstory. Maybe
that's why he was drawn to that image
in the studio when he met him
the first time. We're in that.
See, you just you just made
that. I just draw just made that
up with exactly. That's exactly where
Fu's eventually, it feeds itself, you
know, in the decisions become very
easy to make because they make sense,
because you get to know the characters
well enough, and and then you're creating
all these stories around them. It
sounds like every piece has a story and
it was very specific and we're learning
all of these things that we never would
have put together. That's what we're
just talking about a little while. Yeah,
it's just so amazing. I think
we were so fixed, fixated on
trying to find clue. But instead
of that, just enjoy the you know
what we're to do this season?
We are going to look at things in
a different light, but we're going
to still look for the clues, but
we're going to see them in a
different way in the details and in the
beauty of each character. We should
write this down. Oh, you're writing
it down. I don't write anything
down. Sounds like a new year's resolution.
It does, see, but I
also wonder what all that's working there
that we just don't know yet.
Yes, this is so exciting. Yeah,
well, and you know who knows. Maybe that is, you know,
relevant to the way that Charles Acts. You know, I don't know.
I don't know either, but I
act like I know, but I
can that's too the so that's it
for Charles. Let's take another quick break
and then when we get back we'll
go into all of her's, maximal's apartment
and find out what that tells us
about his paths. Welcome back. So
we just spent some time learning about
Charles and how his past is reflected in
his living space, and now I
think let's talk about the one and only
Oliver Patinum Oh pe. There's nothing
really in Oliver's we yeah, it's very
minimalist. First, yeah, first, you know, there's not much,
just a house and the housekeeper.
He does not have a housekeeper yet rum,
which was the decision we made,
right, you know. You Know
Charles, Sayden has a housekeeper and
yes, they're twice a week care.
He's there twice a week. Oliver
doesn't have a housekeeper. We are flashing
back to Oliver in the nine S, where he does have a housekeeper in
the second season, which is kind
of funny because it's completely throwing our minds.
Exactly in the wrong way. For
Oliver Right, honestly got clean uplivers.
Who is this guy when he looks
like turtles? But all her everything
there was like right, Curtian was
all about the theatricality of it. It
was his careers. Why? Yeah, that, I mean that was actually
the word that we used in choosing
everything. For Oliver's it wasn't theatrical.
It didn't stay. It was gone
immediately. He's got a stage and in
his in his living room. Right, he's got a stage in the side
of draft. So that was one
of the things we did in the design.
was proposed that there would be a
stage and there a place for,
you know, late night salons with
actors and directors and other artists to come
and hang out at the house.
And you can just imagine these, you
know, booze and fused parties that
and there's grand piano and inevitably someone's going
to wind up on the stage singing
some show tunes and and that's going to
go on pretty late at night.
He's not going to make a lot of
friends on that floor, which is
probably another problem that's been feeling with their
building. It's probably why bunny had
it in for him so the stage was
important. That was the first thing
that came up with and then everything else
sort of came out from there in
the ground plan and then we just decorated
the well, we, I say
we, but it's rich in his career,
just decorated the crap out of it
and every time I walked in there
it was there was more and more
and more and and I started looking at
the books and like where did all
these books come from? And Rich is
like other mine we talking about?
He's like, Oh no, their mine
run from my storage and it's all
my theater books from theater school. I
was like no, I got out
of graduate school around the same time and
he still had all of these models
from sets that he built in Grad School.
So he shipped those in. Oh
Wow, and we put those models
into the a study area. So
it was a very easy sort of collaborative
I'm like, Oh God, I
don't many models left. I threw them
all out when I was kid,
but I but I haven't and kept mine
and sitting in storage and I'm so
happy that they're gone for my life and
now they're part of television history,
another part of television history, like Oh,
you know, I lost my Riverside
Shakespeare. Oh well, you know,
never going to read that again.
This is so funny because, given,
and I was just talking about,
I had probably, I finally cleared
out a closet night, about a
hundred and fifty plays from Samuel said French,
which is us all right. As
to a hundred fifty plays, whether
they were it was amazing and I
literally just gave him. I tried to
get them back to Samuel French and
then a school or anything, and nobody
and I gave them to goodwill,
but I really tried to stall. It's
so funny that we're time about.
I purged and it feels good. Yeah,
it's only there had been a show
with like a play right that you
could stock, because stocked and given, I think it would be easier to
do some spring cleaning if you are
giving your stuff to a TV show where
you can kind of visit it again, because you could just put on Hulu
and see all your stuff and you
don't have to pay for a storage unit.
Yeah, send years later. Yeah, I think also, if you
have, you know, really cool
stuff that would lend itself really well to
somebody really theatrical, like like Oliver. I don't know. Do you guys
remember? When I talk to Jess
Rosenthal, the producer during season one,
he told us about Oliver's dining room
that looked like an Italian opera house.
Yeah, that really paints a picture. You get it, get, you
get it, and then you know
and all the world of stage. You
put a little stage. It's literally
I think you can see the stage from
his table. Yeah, so you
can do anything with any of that stuff.
So it, yeah, like painted
a picture for yeah, so,
because just brought it up by Astrich
and Kurt about it and they had another
really cool backstory for that one.
This was once again another story that we
invented ourselves and took to John and
it became a backstory that, you know,
just had life. So the story
of the wallpaper is that we imagine
that Oliver's father might have been an
opera director and that Oliver was the black
sheep of the family going into theater. Oh No, so he went into
musical theater and Broadway and that was
looked down upon, but he still loved
the opera. So let me pull
up, let me pull up this dining
room to refresh your memory. Oliver's
dining room. Yes, I made it's
pretty beautiful. I mean there's a
lot of them. It's very ornate,
it's very or I think that he
is. Gosh, it looks like when
you are going on a tour of
like an opera us in Europe. And
this is Exi. This is exactly
what you would imagine. That's his homage
to his daddy and this is his
dining room and this is yeah, and
it's also you remember where he pitches
splash the musical? Yes, yes,
the ill faded everything, just flashy, just the ill face, very theatrical.
Yes, definitely. And they actually
painted each of those scenes like one
by one. Curt says, they
had the art department make the wallpaper from
scenes of the opera so that when
he was pitching, like we saw him
pitch watch the musical, it was
like he was on a stage performing.
And it was actual met opera painters
who painted the drapery in the center of
the of the room too, because
apparently the opera was not happening because it's
covid. It was covid there wasn't
have anything happening. So they they basically
created their own wallpaper. Yeah,
the whole I mean they did that a
lot in a lot of the place, but that specifically I thought was p
details, KK details, and none
of them were clues. I mean yeah,
not yet, not maybe, not
for the murder. And then rich
found a little what was the little
thing at the end of the room that
you was tenzero pounds of marble?
Was So funny about the whole series as
you don't see it, I don't
think, at all in the entire first
season. And it is just the
most gloriously European car marble mantelpiece that is
like ten feet wide, tenzero pounds, and was just stupid and it and
I looked at him like of course
this is the answer. Yeah, it's
the answer, until you bring it
on the set and we have to reinforce
the stage underneath. Try storing it
over a summer and reinstalling it. So
okay, so they had to put
tenzero pounds of marble away for the summer
and take it back out again for
season two. I mean it's not like
a public storage kind of thing where
it's not like no, it's gonna put
it in. They literally I don't
know what if they use a crane,
I don't really know what tenzero pounds
feels like get that you haul just throw
a top over it. But for
the vest. Yeah, yes, is
amazing how this is now the second
I'm sure there's many, many more,
but the second one they were talking
that. They were talking about with the
Doggie, all the doggy closet thing
that wasn't seen in the season two.
All the thought processes that we're going
to hopefully see in the second larking still
lurking now. Well, apparently you
get to see the marble of it in
season two and rich also says now
by thinking about making like a vacuum form
or plastic sculpted version of it to
make it easier to move on the crew.
Finally they listened to me. But
it's not just in the dining room
that that opera theme is present.
It's actually kind of throughout the entire apartment.
There's a chair that I founded an
auction that was from the original Metropolitan
Opera House from s and that sits
right next to the piano in the living
room. There's a scrap of architectural
salvage that hangs above his bar that was
from the original Opera House and then
just every thing we did was about the
show. Oh, in there I'm
including even like the sheet music on the
piano, is often the Duke Ellington
version of solitude. Yeah, so it's
all about the character. I mean
it's really sort of staff Oliver is responsible
for so much comedic relief it's easy
to forget about his loneliness and solitude.
And he's probably eating lean cuisines for
one. Yeah, but do you remember?
I mean listen, it's all about
like, you know, like a
clown's laughing on the inside, you
know the kind of stuff. It's all.
I mean, there really is.
Comedy comes from tragedy through a lot
of times, and that's the truth
of it, though. That's why it's
really hard to do comedy at time. Really is dying's easy, comedies hard.
Yeah, they's a big time.
Yeah, I think it's cool kind
of that, you know, all
of his triumphs and his failures are on
display and his apartment with all the
show posters and that that sort of thing.
And Kurt says that they had a
lot of fun coming up with the
titles and the posters for those.
This is a parlor game between rich and
John Coming up with names for these
ridiculous plays that went up on the walls
the list was little and it kept
going back and forth between the two of
them and eventually group whittling it down. What were some of your favorites?
Rich? You remember new work.
Newark, I think, was the favorite.
That's why we did that one really
big Newark, nework with I think
I actually remember seeing that one.
I definitely remember that one too. Yeah,
I remember that one. And then
you know, because there's somebody new
work, new work. Yeah,
it was the other but obviously the main
one. Splash, the music,
Blat, are SPLAT was it's flat.
It was splash, but they,
the critics, called it splash, like
Wa wait, wait a minute,
where was I? Yeah, yes,
I saw that. They they put
a couple of them onto the only murders
instagram that I can show you.
They've got this one. Splash, the
music all splash, and that's a
big one too. So good. This
one. Everyone can whistle in the
rain. That seems like a knockoff of
something I remember. Yeah, I
don't know what that is, but I
remember the visual of that. There's
new work, new work. Yes,
remember that one. And then this
one. I didn't even see that.
That's a dolls house and you know
it's a woman in a very small house.
Yeah, I actually don't get the
reference on that one. Do you
guys get the reference? The A
dolls house? Yeah, just a big
person in a little house. I
don't know Itsen. Yeah. Well,
yeah, there. I mean,
Oh, I see, I see.
So he did Ibsen, but he
made this really sight. Yeah, all
high. Yes, yes, exactly, got Yah, that makes sense.
Yeah, the woman is a very
small doll house. Literally, they missed
the point. I got scart.
I did read that play. So he's
place and full of all those little
inside jokes and like the rest of the
art and the all in his face
is all stuff he's told from a set,
stuff that is wife liked and he
still you know, when they were
still married, and he just stole
from a set, you know, and
it none of its any significance really. It's all the other little stuff around
the house that Urs. You know. He also one of the little things
that we have there in all of
hers is that he sort of scattered and
he sort of impulsive. So like
on every table or every little legend the
house there's like three or four or
five empty teacups because he drops, he
drops his team to go answer the
door, you know, and he drops
his team to go, you know, but I just thought of something.
He runs to the camp, you
know, and so there's all those little
bits of things where it's just a
mass in his house, but if you
look at it even closer, it's
really just a dirty tea bag sitting in
the different teacups and that and that. I walked onto the this set is,
you know, in the hours before
we are going to shoot it,
and I'm walking around like what is
up with all the tea cups, to
like what's going on with the teacups, and he's like, well, here's
the story with the teacups. I'm
was like makes all this party walked in
it, like my God, I
can't believe this. You know, when
you have that sort of freedom to
collaborate and play like this, it's just
magic. What's the most fun ever, you know. I mean, and
we're doing it this season too.
Who Kurty sound sadly, I see the
tears, but we're, you know, we're doing this. It's the same
thing this season as well. We're
having a blast and like when you think
of Bunnies, what a bunny's doing
everything. That's you know, that's where
we're going with Bunny's apartment. Who
Was Bunny? Who is this character?
And that's the enough enough. Oh
No, come on, what do you
bunnys do? What a bunnies do? Well, jumping and sex. Yes,
sex. Yeah, I couldn't tell
I couldn't tell it. He said
that if he was giving away a
clue and he was trying to shut him
where and he was trying to shush
him, or if he was like clutching
his pearls and going like, you
know, sex thing. Yeah, I
don't know. Think it was a
oh, yeah, I don't know.
I choose to believe there's a clue
in there, but he didn't give it
to us. So I don't know. But are you guys ready to learn
about Mabel and what her apartment tells
us about her? Now? Definitely.
I'm very curious about Maple's apartment.
What do you think? You know about
maple based on where she lives?
You mean blame, I think. Well,
it's well, first of all,
it's her aunt's aparts. Are Ont
apartment's very industrial, let's put it
that way. She made a choice.
He made a choice to not do
a thing. So I don't know,
it's so, but being renovated Righto. They but it's a bit you know,
she seems to me like she covers
her loneliness to and I see it
in there. If she does,
she doesn't want anything done to it.
You know, maybe she acts like
she's got it all together, but then
maybe she feels like she doesn't deserve
to fix it up. I don't know.
It's I think she's got some depth
to her and a very slow renovator.
Yeah, here's what here's what Kurt
said about it. I mean the
most basic way to think of Mabel's
is that it is what she is,
which is work in progress, simply, and this renovation project that was stopped
at some point. You know,
she hasn't done anything since she's walked in
and we just wanted it to be
beautiful in a ruinous kind of way,
and I think it is. And
we just we found this piece of reference
with this wall that had been removed
down to the studs and it's great.
It gives instant depth from every angle
and it really worked out nicely. So
there are some details in her place
that you have to look a little bit
harder for. That Joe a little
bit of history and that apartment that,
if there's an s layer, s
s layer to it. There's the mural
work that she's doing, which is
really important. There's a lot of like
trash and stuff from the renovation project
that people kept cleaning up. Drove me
in the same it's all dressing and
everyone's like, oh my, guess we
need to move this stuff. We
got to get this sail belongs right there.
I put it there, kept the
movie that same place. Why do
people and why are you putting trash
in the dumpster? For cleaning trash on
the dumpster? You think it's a
dumpster. It's not. It's set decoration
for that was a challenge and then
we finally shot it. I was like,
what is that roll of paper doing
there? And someone had this same
thing. The opposite thing happened where
people were putting down construction things to do
projects in there, getting in the
days leading up, but then no one
cleaned it up because I was being
such specific about not cleaning up in there.
So there's some things in there that
don't really belong there, but they
became a fact once it had been
shot. You know, careful what you
w but that's funny that people were
actually leaving extra stuff. They're like who
left tenzero pounds of marble on Naples
couch. What's happening here? I mean
you definitely notice if there is tenzero
pounds of marble and maple's apartments, because
you know there's just not a lot
of stuff in there. You know she
hasn't lived there nearly as long as
Oliver and Charles and you know, as
you said, it's not even really
her apartment. It belongs to her aunt.
And I think, think, you
know, when I think about Mabel's
apartment, I think the most prominent
piece of furniture I think of is that
Really Old Sofa, if you know. Right, HMM, the Sofa was
just a and that was one of
the first pieces of research that John Sent
Us was the Sofa for Maples.
He just wanted a really cool, classy,
vintage old thing that to anyone else
looks like it just came out of
a dumpster, out of an alley, and to us was the most important
or most expensive piece of furniture we
bought last season, which is we are
right. Yeah, that's happy.
So maybe, yes, is like thousand
dollars. So it's real, it's
real. It's an excellent condition. It's
forty five years old. It's glorious. Yeah, it never lived in a
fraternity house, which is good.
Wait, how many thousand dollars for the
couch? Yeah, we couldn't make
it out in his audio when we were
listening back, so we emailed him
and asked him and he said Fourteen Thousand
Dollars for that Sofa. That's all
my furniture. Does Mabel even have a
job? Like, have we established
how she makes money? It was it?
Is it her couch or was it
her yeah, I mean, is
everything else in storage? These are
all really good question, I think,
based on what? First of all, does she have a job? I
have no idea. I would love
to know, but based on what rich
said, I think it's safe to
say that the sofa bow long to her
aunt. That makes sense. Look
back at it down and I'm like,
Oh yeah, you know, I
see the world where that Sofa and those
chandeliers and those curtains live, and
then her aunt, I don't think,
is as run a bit recently and
it's sort of run down, although she
has the money in the wherewith all
do to Reto it. That's why Maples,
that's why she's there. So it's
so it's a perfect sort of like
blank slate for Mabel, and yet
all of this rich texture and interesting intricative
detail all at once. It's a
very good expression of the original world of
the Arconia architecture. To where Steve's
has been heavily renovated, Marty's has been
done in a gentleman's lounge style,
this one is probably the closest to the
original layout and style of the architecture
of the Arconia. I say it like
it's a real place. I might
as well be at this point. It
exists now on Google maps. Have
you seen that? You can search for
the Arconia on Google maps and it
comes up. I did not know that.
We should go look it up right
now, shall yes, it's right
next door to a CBS pharmacy and
actually, if you look at the street
for you, that's definitely Oh,
that's definitely it, because at the courtyard
and the art. Yeah, look
at that. So this is the exterior
of the Arconia. You know,
they said they shot some of the lobby
scenes there and also you know the
the episode where the hardy boys break into
one of the apartments. Right,
apparently that apartment is in the real is
real building and then I think they
probably did the apartments on a stage where
they could just the rest of the
yeah, well, access all the time
doing the exteriors in the heartibores thing. It's great. Yeah, so,
I mean I think it's really cool
to learn, you know, all kinds
of how all this information is hidden
inside of the production design for Charles and
Oliver and Mabel. So obviously that
begs the question. You know, what
about Jan Oh? She's just oh, the sexy bassoonist. That one had
to be done pretty much down the
middle in order to keep it as a
as a secret. So initially her
foy a is kind of hiding what's within.
So we tried to make that look
kind of safe and pretty and nothing
like the horror that she is.
We had to try to trick the audience
with that one. But this is
this tericle because we when we get to
the end, when Oliver and Mabel
break into her apartment and into her bathroom
and they find her kit full of
poisons. We found a wall paper that
was called nightshade and it's all poisonous
plants and it's all like Alice in Wonderland,
and that was her bathroom wall paper. It was this like poison potion
plant growing vye craziness, and then
it also had like alarm clocks and Andy
Kaines and stuff in it was totally
whacked out. Alice in wonderment poison world,
and we're like this is, of
course, her path. I want
to go back and watch that episode
now because I want to get a better
look at this. But don't you
think that would be fun to have that
wallpaper in your bathroom? Yeah,
see if people start commenting on it,
I wcause then you have a whole
story. Yeah, I don't know if
I would, if I would recognize
poisonous plants on a wall paper, you
know, and if I did,
that would say something kind of heard about
it. Probably would. So I
did try to get some information about season
two out of them. Good try, Maggie. God, how did this
go? Do you want to hear
what rich said? Yes, okay,
last thing is, I know,
Kurt, you're not on season two,
but rich, maybe you can tell
us anything you can tell us about about
season two. I guess we've learned
that we're going to see bunny's apartment.
That's pretty exciting. Yeah, Bunny's
dead, Um, so we get to
see her space and of course,
like Tim Kno's last season, it plays
in this featured pretty heavily and that
was such a joy to do because,
like you'd think, you know who
bunny is and until you sit down and
try to pick her wallpapers again,
she's also the sort of meticulous detail focus
bill. She always holds the grudge
and she always remembers every little note.
So we had to work all of
that into bunnies this season. So,
you know, big takeaway here is
I think that bunny is a lot more
complex than we ever may have realized
string season one. Okay, Maggie,
that's reaching, but yes, I
mean it. Yes, absolutely, but
are you trying to see buy's apartment? Wow, how do you picture her
apartment? I see a couch that
has those plastic covers on it. Oh
yeah, I see a Glass Crystal
Candy dish with hard candies that are still
like stuck together. You are reminding
me of the seven ties. So you're
really you really see bunny as an
old lady, like a classical. That's
how I picture her apartment. So
did you? Guys? Do you feel
like you learned anything new about Charles
or Oliver Mabele based on, you know
what, curtain rich told us.
Really, if I look at them now,
I really can see the frenetic of
the one and the calm of the
other, the way this actor was
more, you know, serene and in
when hit in his television and he
was all out there with his State.
It just really shows the differences of
the two. And at Oliver's he had
so much stuff, like the teacups
and the dog closet and everything else,
that it's there's so much stuff that
you almost don't notice the loneliness and it
getting back to it again, it's
almost like he's surrounding himself with things so
he's not so alone, right,
he's around like his friends. Yeah,
he finds comfort in that, finds
coover. And you look at that table.
That was a big table, right. So he used to have big
dinner parties and now he's just taping
cuisine for one, for one. Yeah,
that's true. I also feel like
we still really don't know very much
about me bowl, except you know
that she's a work in progress, and
I wonder, like does that make
her suspicious? Yes, yeah, well,
we don't know what she does.
What does she do for? Where
she goes? She was left money. Even that wait her an still still
around right, but given her by, maybe she has some sort of you
know, she is. Yeah,
you don't, yeah, and I don't
know. I still she's I mean, I'm still going to call her blame.
So let's start on there. Thanks
for listening to this very special bonus
episode of only murders in the pod. Keep sending your thoughts and theories to
us. That only murders at Straw
hut Mediacom. As we continue waiting for
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The show only murders in the pod
is a production of Straw hut media, hosted by me, Elizabeth Keener and
Kevin Lawn me, produced by Ryan
Tillotson, Maggie Bowls and William Sterling.
Associate producer is Stephen Markley. Original
Music by Kyle Merritt. Only murders in
the building original score music by Sadartha
Cozla, and big, big thanks to
Jon Hoffman, Ari Abashet and the
entire Hulu team.