Meet the Experts costume design panel: ‘Black Cake,’ ‘The Continental,’ ‘Fargo,’ ‘Lessons in Chemistry,’ ‘Queen Charlotte’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
The five acclaimed costume designers on our Gold Derby Meet the Experts costume design panel have at least one thing in common: all worked on period shows, ranging from the Georgian era of “Queen Charlotte” to the Upper Midwest in 2019 on “Fargo.” But whether it is period costumes or contemporary fits, Hayley Nebauer (“Black Cake”), Sarah Arthur (“The Continental: From the World of John Wick”), Carol Case (“Fargo”), Mirren Gordon-Crozier (“Lessons in Chemistry”), and Lyn Paolo (“Queen Charlotte”) find a way to excel. Click each person’s name to watch an individual solo chat.
“I enjoy both period and contemporary,” Paolo says in our exclusive roundtable interview above. “But for me, the real thing is you’re creating a world. You read the script. One hopes you fall in love with it. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to work with some amazing writers. And when you open that script, and you immerse yourself in it. To me, it doesn’t matter if it’s a period piece or it’s ‘Shameless’ and they’re basically in rags. It’s that exhilaration from ‘How am I going to create this world? And how am I going to help these actors suddenly feel like this other person?’ And I think that, for me, is where the joy comes in.”
“I prefer period a little bit more just because it’s sort of a challenge,” Gordon-Crozier says. “You get to learn and research and sort of educate yourself as well.”
Arthur agrees. “I love doing all the research, especially the early periods where you have to read a lot where there’s not much visual references available,” she says. “But with contemporary, I would think, especially if it’s a high-end contemporary drama, that’s what I love doing – trying to guess what’s coming. So that when it is you may have sort of pitched yourself into a new fashion era. So that’s why love both equally. They’ve both got fantastic aspects, but it is all about the characters as well.”
Case too cites the characters as her guiding light. “How do we make these people tell their story and help support that storytelling? That’s the biggest thing for me,” she says.
Nebauer, who has done both period and contemporary costumes – including on “Black Cake” itself – says her favorite part is the “escapism” of stepping onto a set and finding a new world.
“I get to help to build that world. And I suppose the projects that I get less excited about are ones where I feel like, ‘Oh, I know this,’” she says. “If I read the script and it’s not new and fresh and exciting, and I don’t want to learn about it and help step into that world on set and see and learn something different and experience something new – projects that don’t give me that don’t excite me as much. But when I read off the page that this is something new, I’ve never done this, it’s a different world to create. That’s what I love doing.”
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