If one of your beloved parents suddenly went missing, you might not be worried about what you are wearing. That’s where Allyson Fanger comes in. A five-time Emmy nominee, Fanger is a go-to costume designer for contemporary stories. She knows how to make clothes look good, but what’s most important is how she ties their colors and textures into the story and theme. With Peacock’s Apple Never Fall, Fanger creates character-driven costume stories as another fascinating Liane Moriarty mystery unfolds.
Some designers work off initial conversations with a director or creator, and some begin building costume stories from scripts. Fanger seems to love all of it by consuming the scripts, and, in this case, she dove into Moriarty’s book for more inspiration.
“I love, love, love developing characters within a family context because I like finding the connections between the different personalities within the family and using that to help tell the story,” Fanger says. “In a show like this where there’s so much intrigue, I could really help to tell that story of who’s connected where and what are they about to do. That’s why, for instance, I made Brooke’s character dress the way she does where she was sort of like a younger female, queer version of Stan in a lot of ways. She wears a lot of athletic wear and men like Stan always wear gear even when they’re dressed up.
It was a fast process, to be honest, and I listened to the book at Annette Bening’s suggestion. A lot of the story had been changed like moving the location from Australia to Florida even though we filmed in Australia. It was so well written, and everything starts with a script and with a well-written character. I know I’m reading a great script, when I can start coloring in a character in my mind.”
Brooke Delaney, portrayed by Essie Randles, is the youngest child, and some kids take direct inspiration from their parents–whether they realize it or not. She is reluctant to think poorly about her father (played by Sam Neill), and you can see some similarities in how she and Stan Delaney dress themselves. On the flip side of that, Jake Lacy’s Troy constantly butts heads with his father, and Fanger shows how they wear similar silhouettes but branding and money come into play. Troy Delaney would always go for a higher-priced option where Stan might sport something with a recognizable logo on it.
“I think Brooke would have old shirts of Stan’s that she wore as a part of her connection to her dad,” she says. “Those button down collar, old Oxford or Ralph Lauren shirts of her were straight out of Stan’s closet. Even Logan had a couple of those, so it was a family thing. I jokingly referred to them as the three-quarter zip family. Troy and Stan are so different, but in so many ways, they are the same. Stan was also into logos like Head and Fila and Wilson. I would joke that maybe, at one point, Stan was sponsored at some point. Troy, though, wouldn’t be caught dead in a logo except if it was Stanford. Everything else I had him in was very understated but a very elevated version of his dad’s looks. Stan could shop at Dick’s Sporting Goods or a big five, but Stan would not be caught dead in things like that. Both of these guys had so much ego, but they are different with how they dress.”
When Georgie Flood’s Savannah crashes onto the scene, Fanger had an opportunity to build a character from the ground up by snatching items from other characters’ closets. It’s truly a unique costuming scenario as we literally see Savannah “try on” different personalities as an almost “long lost” Delaney child. When we come to realize her true intentions, we can go back and notice how much Savannah is a character who projects with her clothing.
“That was a unique challenge,” Fanger admits. “I try to inform story and character visually, so having someone like Savannah, you can’t give the audience that information She had to be a blank slate where people could conjecture about who she was and what were intentions were. When she shows up, she is wearing what she would consider a costume to project innocence and vulnerability so Joy will take her in and take care of her. After that outfit, she doesn’t have any clothes–she didn’t bring anything. All her clothes were taken out of Amy’s closet, and there were moments like where she wears that inappropriate dress. I imagined that that was from Amy’s bat mitzvah or something, so the costuming was helping the weirdness of the situation because it had to be significant enough for Brooke to comment on it. I wanted everybody to think the situation was weird to raise concern over what was happening between their parents and this girl. That helped the story along.
When Savannah first meets Logan, she’s wearing Amy’s camp sweatshirt that we made. At the end, we were tellnig the story of who she really is, and we didn’t get to that until right before shooting it. We went through a lot of different versions, because we didn’t know who she was really. We didn’t want her wanting a family to be her defining look. She needed to have a bit of an edge, but Joy also had to trust her. Where we landed was different what we did the rest of the show.”
Alison Brie’s Amy is someone who isn’t afraid of color or pattern, but Fanger needed to hone in on who she is. Too many options can overwhelm a character’s personality, but this is where Fanger’s expertise really shines. We automatically wonder where Amy shops or how she never throws anything away. Brie gives us another layered, fantastic performance, and the costumes do a succinct job in letting us see who she really is.
“Someone like Amy is a unique challenge, because “free-spirited” and “bohemian” can go down the road of ‘she’s a hippie girl,'” Fanger says. “I hate that. Nobody is just one thing and nobody is a typical version of anything. When you see a character is about personal choice to feel real so people can relate to them. It would be easy to make her a bit of a hippie, but I wanted to make sure that she had vintage pieces and tie dye that she did herself. She’s artsy, too, and she bucks her athletic past but it’s still there. She might wear a gym short shape with a weird, vintage, Liberty print fabric. It’s also Florida, so that’s where a lot of the color comes from. The Indian block print couldn’t be the whole thing. I like jewelry, because details are everything. You can see them in Stan’s birthday party when Amy is lighting the candles, and there we these like Brutalist jewelry but for a younger generation like with prongs and colored domes. Things like that are very important with those kinds of characters.”
When I thought about what I would want to steal from Fanger’s Apples collection, a lot came to mind. Logan wears an unbuttoned purple shirt when he meets Savannah for the first time. I could see myself taking all of Joy’s large, light hats. Fanger has a few items that she wouldn’t mind taking.
“I liked some of Brooke’s tracksuits,” she says.” “Those were chic and cute. I like mixing high-low, but none of the characters in this show do that as much as me, I don’t think. I love Amy’s rings.”
Apples Never Fall is streaming now on Peacock.
