Netflix’ Ratched features some of the most stunning production design contending in the 2021 Emmy season. The Ryan series, a prequel exploring the origins of Nurse Ratched from 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, purposefully departs from the visuals of the Oscar-winning film. Eschewing the locale of the original film’s Oregan, Ratched finds the titular nurse (Sarah Paulson) stirring up trouble in the lobotomy-friendly Lucia State Hospital in Northern California.
Production designer Judy Becker initially came to Ryan Murphy and Evan Romansky’s production armed with a significant amount of historic research on mental hospitals of Ratched‘s late 1940s period. Most of the research pointed to depressing and stark conditions. But Murphy wanted none of that. Nor did he want a copy of Cuckoo’s Nest.
True to form, Murphy wanted to go in his own direction.
“He wanted it to be glamorous and different. He wanted the hospital to look like a very upscale luxury hotel. Immediately, that was the direction I knew we were going in, which was really fun,” Becker explained. “I love playing with opposites so that, when you’re doing something that’s really horrific, you put it in a beautiful glamorous setting, which Ryan does fairly often. I thought that was a great approach to the material.”
Becker’s ultimate designs provided Lucia State Hospital’s interior an appropriately glamorous look. The check-in desk resembles that of a 5-star hotel. Chandeliers hang gloriously from the main lobby, which adopts a classic black and white aesthetic. Hospital director Dr. Hanover’s (Jon Jon Briones) office looks as at home in Mad Men as it does here.
Color schemes proved critical for Becker’s work on the series. Aside from the black and white of the hospital’s lobby, the color green permeates much of the series. That signature color stems from Murphy’s love of the Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo in which green features prominently. It emerges primarily in the seaside motel in which Nurse Ratched lives, but it’s also seen in the hospital itself. Blue is also used in the series in Dr. Hanover’s office, conveying power and authority.
Weirdly, one of my favorite rooms in Lucia State Hospital remains the aqua therapy room. That room features a wavy glass brick wall and carries the signature green color in tile wrapping the remnants of the space. While patients are treated to horrifying scalding hot baths, the space looks amazing, carrying that juxtaposition of the terrible and the glamorous.
“We use real glass brick and designed that curve — I’d done some of that in Versace. So it was a material I’d worked with before with Ryan. We also found this amazing shower head. There aren’t a lot of things in the room, but they’re all pretty distinctive looking and a little frightening looking,” Becker laughed. “So it is a very cool set. I think every single person that walked onto that set was just like, ‘Oh my God, look at this.’ It’s both scary and beautiful. At the same time.”
Objects used for the terrifying medical treatments were designed for the series given their importance in the series. Becker and prop master Dwayne Grady performed extensive research to find appropriate, period-authentic tools, most specifically the lobotomy tools. The stainless tools also become a focus of terrifying beauty. Originally, the series and the clinical lobotomy sequences were, according to Becker, designed to be far more gory than they are in the finished product. That changed thanks to research that proved lobotomies actually weren’t all that graphic in practice.
Outside of Lucia State Hospital, Lenore Osgood’s (Sharon Stone) luxurious mansion proved another memorable location used for the series. Originally, Murphy and Becker wanted something adhering to the Moorish style. However, they weren’t able to find something in Los Angeles close enough to their vision for the project. After fruitless searches, Stone recommended her next door neighbor’s house, originally owned and designed by famous costume, jewelry, and interior design Tony Duquette.
The location, extremely convenient for Stone, proved irresistible.
“I think it was pretty much love at first sight. I even knew about his houses, but they didn’t seem to fit the scope of what we were looking for. Once we opened that door, and Ryan and I took a look at the house and saw how amazing it was,” Becker explained, “Because really, I can’t take credit for some of what you see in her house. Most of it is Tony Duquette 100 percent.”
That includes the all of the artifacts that filled the home. In fact, Becker and her production team had to remove artifacts to allow the actors space to move and for the camera.
And if you remember what happens in Osgood’s son’s room… Well, that room was recreated on a sound stage. After all, given the gore that happens within the beautiful room, you couldn’t very well ruin a Duquette-decorated space with blood.
Lots and lots of blood.
Ratched currently streams on Netflix.
