Production designer Meredith Lippincott primarily designs environments for contemporary films. Her growing resume includes the indie sensation Never Rarely Sometimes Always, the Emmy-nominated Bad Education, and this year’s Sundance sensation Master. So, naturally, working in a contemporary milieu wasn’t the challenge when she approached Maria Schrader’s acclaimed She Said.
It was the sheer volume of locations she needed to replicate, totaling over 120 sets.
“One of the most interesting parts of the process was just the sheer volume of different sets we were completing, and they sort of spanned every kind of category: commercial, institutional, domestic, as well as many countries,” Lippincott explained. “That was a very interesting challenge in itself where our goal was to portray all these spaces extremely accurately and also have them be cohesive visually, have the same design concept, and be cinematic. That was a big through line through this whole process of how do we have that consistency, honor these women’s stories, and not lose the thread. That was something that I kept in my mind every day.”
When working within contemporary films, Lippincott finds these films to be primarily character driven. In She Said, Lippincott’s primary challenge was to create authentic environments that would reflect the real lives of the two key women at the center of the Harvey Weinstein investigation — Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan). And, yes, while the film is contemporary, it still required a great deal of research to replicate details specific to that era in which the film is set.
To help with that, Lippincott spent a great deal of time with the actual Twohey and Kantor. To create cinematic environments for the characters, she needed to understand their day-to-day lives around the time of the initial investigation as depicted in the film. She grilled them on their balance of work and parenting, on the differences between the two reporters as their children were at different ages, and down to the kinds of notebooks they would use. That level of specificity lends key authenticity to the finished product.
But, of course, the film could not be complete without a period accurate depiction of The New York Times. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the crew was allowed to film within the actual Times building as all of their staff were working remotely at the time. Some sets were designed outside of the building due to time constraints, but the majority of the scenes were filmed inside the actual building.
Of course, the investigation area that housed Twohey and Kantor didn’t prove cinematic enough for the actual shoot.
“We didn’t actually film the departments where they are in real life for a few different considerations: for the view, for lighting, and for the general composition and layout. We ended up recreating the investigation department in what is the New York Metro section. So it’s actually on a different floor and in a different sector quarter of the building,” Lippincott shared. “I found this to be the most interesting thing: each department in The New York Times has a really distinct personality. If you’re working in the Style section or something that’s more photo based, it’s much more colorful. The investigation department is kind of crazy. It’s very messy. It’s very layered. It’s filled with people who are doing super intense, long form work. Very serious. So you find that there’s a lot of personality in that you see people’s five leftover coffee cups on a cubicle because they don’t have time to deal with it. It was a very interesting exercise to recreate that.”
One particularly fascinating production design aspect of the film is the seemingly mundane presence of ordinary desktop computers. Lippincott and team found that half of the machines in the building were indeed period accurate, so they had to obtain approvals to relocate them into the filming space. Rentals provided what they couldn’t find within the building. One particularly proud moment for Lippincott and team is the fact that the monitors shown on-screen use actual computer monitor graphics to render necessary information. Many productions use VFX to control what the user sees on television screens, picture frames, or computer monitors. She Said used as much practical footage of working computer monitors as it could, lending subtle amounts of authenticity to the finished product.
Outside of The New York Times, one of the more impactful sets became the home of Laura Madden (Jennifer Ehle), one of Harvey Weinstein’s victims who worked with Twohey and Kantor. As Kantor persuades Madden to share her story, the audience becomes involved in her own personal life as we see her interact with her children at home in Wales. Due to budget and COVID-19 restrictions, Lippincott needed to recreate Madden’s home in New York. To do so, she needed to fully understand who this person was and where she was at this stage of her life.
“It’s about being very narrative. Where’s this woman in her life? What is her family situation? Where’s she gone since these incidents have taken place? I think the most important thing in all of the domestic interiors, especially with Laura’s for example, is are we accurately portraying this woman, but are we also giving her like a very full character study, a full picture of who this woman is, not a two dimensional kind of sketch of a person,” Lippincott said. “There was a real sensitivity towards not only accuracy but also just humanity. We did a lot of research in interiors that are in that area at that time, creating a very specific palette that represents how she is navigating through life. We use a lot of blue with her. We tried to have it be sort of calm but also very contemplative. That was a really fun set that Maria and I talked about a lot, actually, even though you see it just for a couple of scenes. It comes at an important time in the story, so you really want it to feel fleshed out and successful.”
She Said is now available on video on demand. Photos courtesy of Meredith Lippincott.
