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"Housebeautiful.com: Can you explain how your design process worked for this? Jennifer Lukehart: In a number of ways, this was not the way a regular show is done. The story existed already, and it was for Netflix. The main thing was that we didn&amp;#039;t own any of the actors. Normally, when someone&amp;#039;s on a TV show they go to work and shoot every day, but because everyone was so busy, this was done more in pieces. We had Jason for three weeks, and then he went to direct a movie. We had Will when he wasn&amp;#039;t doing Up All Night. Usually, you establish your main sets, and with each new script for a project you build out what&amp;#039;s new that week \u2014 maybe the actors go to a restaurant or to a movie theater. But the story structure for this project was different. I came on about two weeks before we started filming. My initial biggest challenge was trying to duplicate the penthouse and the model home. So you had to go and find similar sets and pieces from the earlier seasons? Yes. Nothing had been saved. The original sets were done in 2003, and they looked dated even then. For example, the penthouse sofa was very classic \u2014 the upholstery is a stripe with a damask pattern over it, very tone-on-tone. I thought it would be no problem to find the fabric. Then I went to every textile store, where they all said, &amp;quot;We sold a ton of that 10 years ago.&amp;quot; No one had it anymore! Finally I found a fabric with a similar background, and brought it to Astek, which usually does printing for wallpaper. We all thought that, theoretically, they should be able to print the brocade pattern onto the fabric, but they hadn&amp;#039;t done it before. I ended up getting enough done for just the back pillows. My upholsterer would have killed me if I had asked him to do the whole sofa with the time that he had. So the sign of success was having it look the same? Yes. At first I was so fixated on that idea that I was worried, because I only had three things that matched exactly. But once everything was all in there together, the overall feel of it was: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m in the Bluths&amp;#039; penthouse.&amp;quot; But I still didn&amp;#039;t know how the actors would feel, since they had shot on that original set for three years. Some of the furniture was sized differently, for example. I had all sorts of crazy thoughts in my head, telling me it was going to be a disaster. And then it wasn&amp;#039;t. All the actors sort of got emotional walking onto the set together for the first time, and that made me feel very good. What other films have you done? My first one was (500) Days of Summer, which was an incredibly lucky first movie for a set decorator. That was with my long-term production designer, Laura Fox. I started out as her production assistant, and she&amp;#039;s taught me how to decorate.  Where do you start when designing a character&amp;#039;s room?   If you&amp;#039;re lucky, you get to sit down with the director or writer and ask some questions. Often, this process happens with the production designer. I&amp;#039;ll sit down with the production designer and try to get a quick overview: How much money does this character have? Where and how did they get their furniture? Was it given to them, did they find it at thrift stores, or did they hire a designer? I generally like to start my designs with a big piece \u2014 for a living room, I start with a sofa; in a bedroom, I often start with the bed. I&amp;#039;ll pick that first big piece with the production designer, and then I&amp;#039;ll go off a little more on my own and fill out the room.  See more: Tour the Offices of Mad Men I like detailed sets. I like layering a bunch of things that it&amp;#039;s almost certain the viewers will never see, but might help the actors or give them a sense of something. I think almost all set decorators know that a great deal of what we do will never be seen by anyone.  What&amp;#039;s an example of that this season? You try to layer in jokes with this show. When they filmed the original three years of the show, they shot some little vignettes in the apartment of Lucille Austero, the character played by Liza Minnelli. But this time we built out her whole apartment and gave it an Art Deco vibe. On the table in her entry, there&amp;#039;s a brass statue of a seal with a ball on its nose. The piece worked with the decor, but then there&amp;#039;s this nice tie-in with the running &amp;quot;Lucille&amp;quot; versus &amp;quot;loose seal&amp;quot; joke on the show. Mitch Hurwitz saw the statue, and just said, &amp;quot;Thank you.&amp;quot; I just happened to see it in a prop house, I wasn&amp;#039;t even consciously looking for it.  Could you explain more about the style of Lucille Austero&amp;#039;s apartment? Production designer Dan Butts and I went very Liza Minnelli with it. Even in the first series, her apartment was very Deco, more Hollywood glam than the traditional look that the Bluths have. There had been a joke that never got fully fleshed out in the early seasons \u2014 that her late husband had been involved in some sort of marine-type work. So her original apartment had had all these nautical things, which was never really explained or made sense. Mitch said we didn&amp;#039;t have to feel tied to that, so in her kitchen I hung two tiny Art Deco prints of ocean liners, far more subtle than the earlier stuff. I wanted it to all tie together still; I didn&amp;#039;t want to throw out everything that had come before. In the trailer, we see Michael Cera&amp;#039;s dorm room. Can you tell us more about that? The dorm room was hard work. As a character, George Michael does not really give you a lot of tips about where to go with the decorating. There were a few story points I tried to bring out, so I put a map on his wall. There are a few little pins marking the places he&amp;#039;s been, but in my mind he isn&amp;#039;t really worldly, and he hasn&amp;#039;t traveled that much, so there&amp;#039;s a little cluster in Orange County and in L.A., and somewhere else, which you&amp;#039;ll see this season. We also see Lindsay and Tobias on screen together in the trailer. Where are they? Before the financial collapse, Lindsay and Tobias were somehow approved for a home loan for a very large house. They&amp;#039;re in their own big, unfurnished mansion because they&amp;#039;ve run out of money in true Bluth fashion and don&amp;#039;t have the funds to furnish it. So they&amp;#039;re just walking through, yelling back-and-forth as they go through these big, empty rooms. Plus: 101 Decorating Secrets from Interior Designers What additional types of inspiration did you turn to for some of the other sets?  We used photos to build the offices of the production company Imagine Entertainment, cofounded by Ron Howard \u2014 there&amp;#039;s a whole long storyline with that. After the premiere screening, I had a friend who had been to meetings at the real Imagine Entertainment, and she though that we&amp;#039;d actually shot on location. When you&amp;#039;re dealing with real people, you want things to feel real. But then you bump it up for comedy and sort of heighten everything.  Did you have any surprises or happy accidents during the design process? All the time! You&amp;#039;ll have something in your head, such as an image of the perfect sofa, and then when you go to look for it you find that it&amp;#039;s already been rented or is used on another show. It&amp;#039;s initially devastating, but then you realize that there are a million great solutions, really, to any problem, and certainly to any decorating problem. Once you can let go of being upset that you didn&amp;#039;t get what in your mind was perfect, there are always lots of good solutions.  When you watch other shows or movies, do you recognize items? I recognize furniture and accessories all the time. But each set decorator puts his or her own spin on it. When you put pieces together differently, they take on a new life, and you don&amp;#039;t even realize you&amp;#039;re seeing the same things over and over. Was there a particular set for this project that you&amp;#039;re most proud of? We had one location called the Ealing Club, a private members-only club kind of like the Soho House. We actually shot that in three or four different locations, and I tried to make it all cohesive. There&amp;#039;s one big scene in the club&amp;#039;s lobby that sets the look of the place. How is decorating a set like decorating for yourself? Any insider tips that readers can also use at home? One time, we were shooting in a home for a flashback scene, so the decor needed to be far more 1970s or &amp;#039;80s. The homeowners, who had just redecorated, were laughing that the house had looked like that up until a few years ago. But they still had a few pieces that I wanted to use, ones that they hadn&amp;#039;t replaced yet. A good set feels the way I like people&amp;#039;s homes to feel, which is that the decor came together over time, and everything doesn&amp;#039;t look catalog-ready. There is a sense of history and layers, and a little real-life clutter. People feel that everything needs to be perfect, but to me that ends up being boring. You want it to feel personal.  Any tips for how set decorating can be used in your own home? Lighting is a big one. On most sets, there&amp;#039;s a lot of lighting. There are floor lamps, table lamps, sconces, and overheads, so that you can play around with it all and light the set properly. The most light fixtures you can have on a single set is seven to nine \u2014 it begins to look like a crazy lighting store after that. It&amp;#039;s the same for the home, as it&amp;#039;s nice to have lots of options for creating a controllable mood, where it&amp;#039;s not just lights on or lights off. And I like to use lampshades that are beige or darker. If you have a basic white lampshade in a room, it glows too much, and your eye is very drawn to it.  Another tip is using texture. A solid, flat panel doesn&amp;#039;t register depth on camera, and I especially have to remember that when I&amp;#039;m putting up window treatments. In real life too, if you have a room where there&amp;#039;s not a lot of color or drama, you can create visual interest by layering in different textures. Read more: 7 Tips for Decorating With Texture Where do you get your inspiration? Any place I go, whether it&amp;#039;s out for coffee, to a restaurant, or even if I just stop at a random gas station. If I&amp;#039;m at a weird tourist attraction, I&amp;#039;ll peer inside the ticket booths. It&amp;#039;s really just looking everywhere and trying to notice the things that people do out of utility that can be really odd and beautiful in their own way. For my job, when you&amp;#039;re trying to bring a character to life, these small but realistic details help. Does this season live up to the show&amp;#039;s past seasons? I was already a huge fan, and I think people are going to enjoy this season. It&amp;#039;s going to be a little different, but it&amp;#039;s really going to pay off on multiple viewings. I think that when you first start watching, there will be a lot of things that are completely confusing because they won&amp;#039;t make a lot of sense until later on, but if you go back and re-watch the episodes again, all the puzzle pieces will come together. On my days off, I used to sit and read my scripts and laugh out loud, and that was without the cast bringing it all to life! And the cast members are all awesome. I laughed every time I was on set watching them film. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/celebrity-homes/interviews/a1116/jennifer-lukehart-arrested-development-set-decorator-interview/>