‘We Were the Lucky Ones’ production designer James Merifield: ‘I lost count when we got to the 230th set’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
When you watch the eight-part Hulu historical drama “We Were the Lucky Ones” that’s adapted Georgia Hunter’s bestselling 2017 novel – depicting the Holocaust from the perspective of a Polish Jewish family determined to survive and reunite after being separated during World War II – something is instantly apparent: it doesn’t look like any wartime project you’ve ever seen. Foe one thing, there’s no battle field footage. For another, it avoids that washed-out, sepia-toned or black-and-white look we’ve come to associate with the era. Instead, it boasts a bold color palette that leaps off the screen. It’s no accident, insists its production designer James Merifield. “It was a choice we made very early on,” Merifield maintains. “We didn’t want to do a sort of brown Holocaust series. Bear in mind that the ghettos, for instance, were once upon a time happy places full of color, full of life, full of optimism and hope. So what we wanted to do is maintain that, so that these characters really sit in that space.”
We spoke with Merifield as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV Production Designers Panel. Watch the exclusive video interview above.
The edict to make “We Were the Lucky Ones” contemporary rather than dated filters through the production, from the art direction to the props to the cinematography to the costumes to the direction to indeed the production design. How did that inspire Merifield in the spaces he created? “There was an extraordinary teamwork that provided us a fantastic counterbalance of each other, and that passion rubs off,” he says. “There was a very large spectrum of colors and textures that we were able to inhabit from the places where we shot this, primarily in Bucharest, Romania but also in Spain. And by the way, it was a very long haul over nine months.”
How long a haul are we talking about? Merifield points out, “I lost count when we got to the 230th set. Fortunately, it was supported by and led by the most extraordinary crews who were able to turn sets around so quickly, building them in the time frame we did against all odds. For instance, we built our Radom Ghetto through a freezing cold Romanian winter. One of our greatest challenges was the fact that the paint was freezing in the spray guns. These poor guys were trying to spray the set, but it was just frozen. So they had to boil kettles and use hot paint to get the job done. It was quite an ordeal but obviously an exciting challenge.”
Did Merifield really say he lost count at 230 sets?
“Yes,” he replies. “Probably 60 percent of that was on stages, primarily warehouses, or backlot. When I saw warehouses, I mean, big, freezing warehouses that we stacked with sets.” The stacking also included composite sets, as with the Radom set that later was revamped to become the town of Lvov in Poland. “We turned around, we painted, we dressed, we transformed,” Merifield notes. “We built a lot of those composite sets. When you went through a door, it became another place. You changed a window, you revolved a wall, it became something else. That saves you time and money, and it was an exciting way of digging deep into 230 sets.”
Merifield did a lot of his own research both in his own books and via the internet “which is deeply useful.” He and the production team saw their role as essential support to the actors, the writers and the director. “We’re telling the story of these extraordinary characters,” he stresses. “I always believe that you begin with character and end with character. My job is simply to support those characters and to provide rich or dank or dark or whatever backgrounds that are required to boost the scene and the storytelling.”
“We Were the Lucky Ones” is available to stream in its entirety on Hulu.
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