- 6 hours ago
Architectural Digest is welcomed by Margot Robbie and production designer Suzie Davies to tour the set of Thrushcross Grange, Catherine Earnshaw’s home in “Wuthering Heights”. From surrealist Regency interiors to immersive gardens built entirely on a soundstage, discover how Emerald Fennell’s dreamlike imagining of Emily Brontë’s gothic tale came to life.
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00:00Hello AD and welcome to the Wuthering Heights Movie Set Tour.
00:25We have a very grand staircase as any grand manor should have
00:29and ours is unique because we have red fur lining the underside of it which I've personally never
00:35seen ever and I think I'm going to do a big dramatic crying scene on this staircase.
00:41I'm going to take you through to the dining room where we can meet Susie our production designer.
00:53Hello Susie. Hey Margot. Welcome to the dining room. This is our gorgeous table
00:59and of course the dollhouse. So the doll's house is basically where we started off with the whole
01:03design of Toshkos Grange, the tongue twister. Yeah. So that is a perfect replica of the room that we're
01:10standing in right now even to the point that there is a little doll's house in there the way there is
01:16in this room. How extraordinary. And then there's a doll's house in there. There's a doll's house in
01:23that and another one in that and another one in that. So whenever we see Bubbles, Bubbles has her
01:28own chair and we wanted to feel that she was very welcome in this family. We've even got a miniature
01:32Bubbles. There is a miniature. She's having a little sleep at the moment on that chair. Tiny Bubbles and
01:37little tiny Bubbles chair. Yeah. I think that might be Bubbles real hair. Yeah.
01:40And I think my favorite thing about the room is how it looks like there's really beautiful
01:46condensation like the walls are sweating but in a very beautiful way. So we found these lovely
01:52plastic very contemporary baubles half spheres and we got a selection of different sizes and put them
01:58a very Regency style and then twisted them up. So we've used contemporary materials in a traditional
02:04way wherever possible and then we had the idea that the wall had started to sweat. The whole film
02:09has a feel of moisture throughout it. So this is like posh moisture and it drips down from the
02:15panels onto the floor on occasions. You're wet. I am not. So we've had a fantastic food economist who
02:23has helped design and come up with all the recipes and ideas along with Emerald as to what our character
02:30is going to eat. Can I give you your wedding present now? So I think this is our mushroom scene.
02:35Kind of autumnal set dressing. At Christmas time it's all different or every meal it's different.
02:40We did a big fish banquet with all the jellied seafood. Delicious. Yeah, it's all about the
02:46aesthetic. It's not about what we're eating practically. It's just gorgeous to look at.
02:52Jelly has been quite a theme though hasn't it? Yeah. We found we can suspend many things in jelly.
02:58So hands are a bit of a theme in Thrustcrust Grange and we've created our own ceiling roses and then
03:04we've got these beautiful chandeliers in each room where possible we're using real candles. They're
03:09double wick to give a little extra punch in the light and it's the same with all the fires.
03:14They're practical wherever possible. The special effects guys have put in a special
03:17flue system in each studio so we can have real fires which gives a lovely light.
03:22So you're in the entrance hall now? So we have a trompe l'oeil on the floor which is a painted
03:34representation of the garden of Thrustcrust Grange. We were going to have it on one of the walls and
03:38then when we decided on the different effects in each room it became like we're never going to see a
03:43trompe l'oeil but we realized that we had a spare floor so it's on the floor now and it's in a beautiful
03:48gold hand-painted. We had some amazing artists come in and paint it for us. So our staircase here
03:54leads up by the magic of film to a massive suite of rooms.
04:01Your bedroom. Here, look.
04:04In this Regency house we decided each interior of the panel will be a different texture or fabric so
04:10we've got the quartz crystal in the blue room, red velvet in the hallways, silver walls with the
04:16droplets in the dining room. We've got the skin room which is Cathy's bedroom. We have a gainaged room
04:21which is when fabric is wrapped over each panel and stretched. A pleated purple room for Isabella
04:27and then we have Cathy's dressing room which is silk with jewels and it looks like a big pair of pants
04:35dressed from the ceiling. Like everyone else who stepped onto these sets I was just astounded by how
04:41beautiful they are and magical and how completely transported I felt and I just went straight back
04:49to Jacob and said you're going to have to work harder because for Cathy to choose Heathcliff over all
04:54this I mean he's got to be quite a guy. These sets are probably the craziest film sets I've ever seen
05:01in my whole life. You walk in here and I'm like that's I want to live here I want to see it on screen and
05:05live it again and again and again it's the best. I think yeah I think having the inside outside helps
05:10doesn't it? Yes it's a completely composite set so very rarely do you get to do the outside and the
05:16inside on the same sound stage. It's so true normally you're on location then you open the door cut to
05:21three weeks later you're in studio and you open the door and you're in that house but here we just walk
05:25in and out all together and I think there's also being in a sound studio whilst being outside is also
05:30funny and surreal and also a specific device I think in Emerald's storytelling as well like the
05:37stillness of Thrushcross Grange. My character's bedroom, Cathy's bedroom, the skin room which is
05:43going to sound really weird but it's her skin on the walls, the floor, everything is designed to look
05:50like Cathy's skin. It's beautifully described in the script so when you read that sort of description
05:56as a designer you're like bring it come on let's get this and on a previous film that I'd worked
06:01with Emerald I knew that she was really into tactile materials and we had some latex in the office and
06:09we had a skin tone latex and I was like this there's something in this and then we took photocopies of
06:15Margot's arm and I just laid it over the top and realized there was an opaqueness to the latex so we
06:20developed the photocopy on and printed that onto some stretchy fabric padded the fabric and then
06:26lay the latex over the top and before you know it is this perfect representation of visuals we're
06:31doing lots of senses I sort of want to have smelly vision smell-o-vision scratch and sniff textures
06:37moisture that all the senses are going to get wound up in this film and this skin room definitely does that
06:43Welcome to the blue room it's blue it's our drawing room so this is our crystal walls
07:00with an ombre silk underneath so Bubbles whose character name in the movie is Pamela and is
07:06to quote the script the smallest dog you've ever seen has a little chair wherever we sit Bubbles has
07:11a chair as well or a swing every window opens smoothly like a sash window it's supposed to do
07:17we have some scenes where we're going to have the billowing uh voils so every window along the front of
07:24the house has this aspect to it as well we're just not really restricted by the sets in the way that you
07:29normally are the fact that you can walk to a window and open it on a set actually doesn't ever really
07:34happen and obviously we've got the backdrops here of Yorkshire I mean those are actual pictures of
07:39yeah yeah wars and obviously just blown up humongous with lighting it can kind of shift to look like
07:46different times a day so it's a high-res image that we then manipulated of the actual location we're going
07:51to be filming in and we stitched it together to get the sort of 360 vibe and then created pockets of
07:57weather in certain areas so we can highlight or low light those elements
08:11we are in the gardens of Thrushcross Grange my favorite set of all times these gardens we're
08:17standing on real grass when you walk in the smell of roses hits you because there are real flowers
08:23everywhere these trees are probably one of my favorite things about it because on the other
08:28side of the Thrushcross Grange wall there's one tree growing over the fence these trees are growing
08:32towards each other like lovers who are kept apart very descriptive script that emerald writes was very
08:39clear that it needed to be a composite set and that was also one of her first things that she said to
08:43me we're building the world on a sound stage that whole old school traditional form of filmmaking but
08:50let's do it in a contemporary manner so we got the biggest sound stages we could at this studio
08:54and to make it composite we had to come up with a balance between how much we can build in the house
09:00and how much we can create in the garden hence why we've got terraces which give us ideas of gardens
09:05going on and we have hidden sort of avenues and vistas on the sides of the house just to give the
09:10impression that the house garden and the house carries on behind us as well the script required me to
09:16create a little element of the moorland when Cathy tries to climb in and have a peek at what's going
09:20on and that helps with deciding how we build the shape and the whole of this set is all about even
09:25numbers so everything's very symmetrical and regular here whereas over in the heights it's all
09:30nothing's the same everything's slightly wonky was here we're really strict with our lines from a
09:35producer point of view you're like oh we should shoot on location it would be cheaper than building
09:40these insane sets but you just want the most amazing beautiful thing you also just i think as
09:45a producer just want to have everyone really dream big and then you figure out okay how do we actually
09:51practically do it last week it was snowing here it was completely you know thrush cross grange was
09:57covered in snow movie snow of course which is tiny little pieces of paper but it was the most beautiful
10:02magical thing you've ever seen my first day here it was springtime summer version and it's christmas time
10:07we do all the snow dressing and everyone's redressing it back now but there's meant to be a
10:12juxtaposition like susie mentioned between thrush cross and our wuthering heights set the
10:17conditions over at wuthering heights it's a lot more blustery harsh wind and rain in your face and
10:23here there's almost like a sound stage stillness to it it's just impossibly beautiful no matter what
10:29the season is at thrush cross grange the swing is actually based on an amazing famous painting by
10:36fagonard of a young woman having a the joyous time of swinging in a exact replication of what
10:42we've done here and so it was really fun to play with that that was sort of like the beginning of
10:47the inspiration for the rest of the garden really this corner we did a great scene allison and i on
10:51on the swing there he is the most handsome man i ever saw
10:59it's just the most magical little corner of all the sets i love it the script was fantastic it gave me good
11:05pointers but also the fact that i knew it was going to be represented as a doll's house so i almost
11:10designed agency doll's house and then the full-scale version rather than the other way around so we've
11:15got these massive windows that complete opposite to what's at the heights so these tall narrow portrait
11:22style windows as opposed to the landscape that we have like the heights honestly we'd been shooting
11:27on the wuthering heights set for weeks and i came over here and i was like i don't want to go back
11:31which is very good for my character actually when you see the wuthering heights set too you can
11:35appreciate it almost like lives and breathes and and the landscape encroaches in on the set in a way
11:41that's just fascinating and artistic and cool but it's quite harsh it's a lot of brutalist sort of
11:46elements and it's a lot darker and of course when you come to these sets everything's so bright and
11:52it's just meant to be a great juxtaposition emil's very keen to have this boundary around us to push out
11:57any reality so anything that's living is caged or you know in something so we've got the goldfish
12:03we've i think we've got a bird's cage everything's caged and even the garden feels cation apart from
12:08that tree that's making a dash for it we just had live goldfish and it was unbelievable it was so cool
12:14yeah like susie said everything is caged and it's symbolic for kathy's life here as well and
12:19the fish and the jelly i mean everything's kind of suspended in a beautiful way but it is
12:24caged but of course we don't have the goldfish here right now we had special conditions because
12:29yeah by the way certain temperature and yeah the deep the real diva yeah the goldfish i have to say
12:35i almost never do contemporary films because i want to be in a different world and when you're doing a
12:44period film you just feel like you're transported to a different place and we're not obviously this
12:49isn't a period correct film in that we stuck to all the rules using contemporary materials like resin
12:56but like a period correct silhouette is kind of extends to the costumes where we're using materials
13:04that aren't period correct but the silhouettes are and you know it's fun but it's also actually more
13:10difficult to pull off because the options become uh just kind of infinite you have to start giving
13:17yourself rules otherwise then the world really is as big as your imagination and you've got so
13:22many imaginations at play it's like it's easier i think to do a period correct film where it's just
13:26like this is how it was zips didn't exist that material didn't exist couldn't be put together like
13:32that and you just do it how it was but in the wuthering heights that we're creating the the options are
13:38kind of limitless thanks for visiting us today at thrushcross grange and we hope you enjoy seeing
14:00these sets on the big screen when the movie comes out bye
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