‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ production designer Jessica Kender evoked ‘the ghosts of the past’ in ’70s music drama [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Obviously I think all of design starts in research,” says Jessica Kender, the production designer for the limited series “Daisy Jones and the Six” who earned an Emmy nomination for Best Production Design for a Narrative Period or Fantasy Program (One Hour or More). We talked to Kender as part of our “Meet the Experts” Emmy-nominated production designers panel. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Based on the novel of the same name by Taylor Jenkins Reid, “Daisy Jones and the Six” tells the fictional story of the title band, and their tumultuous rise and fall through the 1970s rock scene. In recreating that rock scene, “there was a big discussion about where to spend the money: should we build or should we shoot on location?” It ended up “much more location-based than any other show” Kender has worked on.
Those locations required a lot of additional work, but “even if we’re essentially building a set within a set, the bones and the ghosts of the past that were there are gonna give not only the actors, but the crew this quality that you really can’t put your finger on, but it’s there.” When you’re at a location where Fleetwood Mac recorded or where other great music was composed, “that comes across in a way that you can’t quantify.”
Kender is specifically nominated for the 10th and final episode of the series, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” which shows how and why the band suddenly broke up. It was a “pretty easy” decision to enter that episode for consideration because “it has our concert. We literally built a concert stage in four days down in New Orleans” to stand in for Soldier Field in Chicago.
And the episode also “has this massive amount of flashbacks that shows all the work we did for the whole series, which meant both of my decorators, [Lisa Clark and Andi Brittan], could get recognition as well … And let’s be honest, it’s a finale. If you’re having people watching for the first time, you wanna show something that wows them.”
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