‘Welcome to Chippendales’ below-the-line crafts artisans could be dancing to 2023 Emmys
“Welcome to Chippendales” is many things – a true-crime, rags-to-riches cautionary tale set against a tide of American cultural change, for starters – but the eight-part Hulu limited series is above all a love letter to the prop masters, art directors and costume designers who supply our favorite big- and small-screen stories with their immersive power. While the hit ordered on Nick De Noia (Murray Bartlett) by Chippendales founder Steve Banerjee (Kumail Nanjiani) is intriguing enough, the show’s procedural-like approach to the business of stagecraft is what makes it absolutely engrossing.
We meet Indian immigrant Steve Banerjee in 1979 Los Angeles at the gas station where he works, illuminated by an all-too perfectly garish yellow sign. Kelly Allen (House Beautiful) writes that the show’s sets and colors blend “an intensified version of reality with dreamt-up atmospheres.” Steve’s spartan lifestyle belies dreams of smoking jackets and velvet couches. After rejecting a promotion, he pours his savings into a backgammon club that, through trial and error, is quickly repurposed into an adult-entertainment venue. Business skyrockets, but Steve learns there’s more to successfully engineering spectacle than stage lights and smart accounting.
What the burgeoning entrepreneur’s bottom-line intuition lacks in artistic vision is balanced by De Noia, Emmy-winning producer of “Unicorn Tales” and Steve’s eventual adversary. Nick’s choreography (Bartlett took cues from watching the show’s actual choreographer work) lends the “strip joint on Overland” much-needed gravitas but also has shortcomings which are in turn compensated for by the ingenious seamstressing of Juliette Lewis’ character, a self-proclaimed sewing-machine magician and “vision facilitator.”
Production designer and four-time ADG nominee Richard Bloom (“Bullet Train”), who was excited by the willingness of producers Robert Siegel (“Pam & Tommy”) and Jenni Konner (“Girls”) to take artistic license, used the multi-level club’s interior to metaphorize Steve’s runaway ambition and the competing interests at play: “At first, it’s a fairly lifeless setting with a couple of lights, vertical wood paneling, and a wall covered in palm lincrusta that was painted gold. As time passes, the club becomes more and more alive through shimmer – gold vertical blinds in the office, swirling disco balls, a vivid neon sign and a repetition of mirrors. The color palette expands from two colors to include magenta and various shades of turquoise.” The delicate interplay between the set design and lighting scheme, as Bloom explained to Gold Derby this past winter, called all hands to be on deck for the dance numbers. More recently, DP Paula Huidobro (“CODA,” Emmy nominee for “Barry”) also emphasized the degree to which these sequences, having been done in long takes that fluidly navigate crowded spaces, necessitated communication between the crew.
“Welcome to Chippendales” quite directly invites celebration of its BTL talent, which, in addition to Bloom and Huidobro, includes costume designer Peggy Schnitzer (“The Matrix Reloaded”) and choreographer Michelle Johnston (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”), making it as fitting a contender in those categories as “The Fabelmans” was in Best Director this past Oscar season.
One of the show’s most memorable scenes is De Noia’s first conversation with Lewis’ character. Her request for a job is followed by a demonstration of tearaway pants, the invention of which, for entertainment’s sake, is credited to this largely fictional personality. “There is a system to tearaway pants…[They’re] so technical,” Schnitzer, who solicited the advice of “Magic Mike” costume designer Christopher Peterson, commented to Women’s Wear Daily. “It’s part fantasy, part reality,” she said in a separate interview, alluding not only to the show’s appeal but the reason for the success of the actual Chippendales.
Schnitzer was tasked with transitioning viewers from the “gleaming fabrics” of the ‘70s and ‘80s to the “Calvin Klein minimalism” of the ‘90s. “There was a lot of leather, a lot of black pants.” This shift in aesthetic backdrop is highlighted by the appearance of none other than Klein (Jason Bernardo) himself at the Chippendales location De Noia opens in New York. Touches like these distinguish the limited series from your standard period piece, as the stylistic turn we experience isn’t being used merely as a tool to tell a multi-decade story. Rather, it encourages conceptual admiration for what Schnitzer is accomplishing.
The spotlight shone on choreographers, accountants, and costume and set designers makes “Welcome to Chippendales” pure bait for craftspeople. The second episode’s title, “Four Geniuses,” summarizes the show’s argument that creative brilliance is produced via collaboration between experts with different but equally important sets of skills. The interviews given this Emmy season by Bloom, Schnitzer, Johnston and Huidobro, all of which underscore the level of integration this project required, successfully defend that thesis.
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