Today, AD is welcomed by Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham to tour the ‘Mid-Century Modern’ set. As big fans of mid-century architecture, series creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan knew Palm Springs would be the setting for their show; the vision was an old Hollywood oasis, which proved a joy to create for production designer Greg Grande and set decorator Peter Gurski, filling it with hidden treasures from vintage markets, and even an easter egg from Mutchnick and Kohan’s iconic show ‘Will & Grace’.
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00:00You ready?
00:01Yeah.
00:02Everybody dance now?
00:03Yes.
00:04Five, six, seven, eight.
00:05Well, hi there.
00:06Oh, what a pleasure.
00:08I'm Nathan Lane.
00:09I'm Nathan Lee Graham.
00:10And I'm Matt Bomer.
00:11And welcome to our beautiful home in Palm Springs.
00:15We're the cast of Mid-Century Modern.
00:18Come on in.
00:27This is where we kibitz.
00:28This is where we hang out.
00:29This is where a lot of the situation of whatever the episode is going to be usually gets established.
00:34The situation of the comedy?
00:35Yes.
00:36In this room right here.
00:37Lots of drama in this room.
00:38Lots of exposition.
00:40I play a character named Bunny Schneiderman, who is a very wealthy and successful manufacturer of women's bras.
00:47This is the palatial home he has built and where he's been living with his mother and invites his two closest friends, Jerry and Arthur, to live with him.
00:58We never see each other.
00:59We FaceTime every night.
01:01I use a filter.
01:02It's barely even me.
01:04You love a classic sunken living room in Palm Springs.
01:07Wow, you really like the sunken living room.
01:08I do.
01:09It's a sunken living room.
01:10Now that is truly classic.
01:11The mid-century movement architecture in Palm Springs was big with a lot of architects. The house we copied was a Wexler house. Happened to be the Dinah Shore estate back in the late 50s, early 60s. It's a sunken living room. It resembles the character and a place where they can gather and hang out and enjoy their happy hour drinks.
01:32One of the things I noticed when I go to Palm Springs, there's a little bit of quirkiness to the decor in a lot of ways, and I feel like they picked up on that in a very classy way.
01:40Peter Gursky, our set decorator, does a phenomenal job of just mixing up, like, these look like little Kenzo style serving napkins.
01:48And a horse full of bourbon.
01:50Yes.
01:51That you could drink right out of its ass.
01:53Classic.
01:54And the flowers on the set are always real and practical.
01:58Like us.
01:59I hope you all took your Allegra.
02:00He's looking for love, and I think these two friends of his bring that as he's inviting them into their home. And so we need a gathering. So they gather around the bar, they gather in the living room. And I think that's been important to the show, to be able to show the love between these three guys.
02:20You know?
02:21We used to have a penis sculpture, but the network made us kill it. What are you gonna do? These are the sacrifices you have to make in comedy.
02:28All we have left is the big gay knob.
02:32This is Peter Gursky.
02:33And this is Greg Grande, our production designer.
02:36The decorator.
02:37We thought we'd show you a little bit of our little hidden treasures. Some of the cool little elements that you find at a vintage store in Palm Springs.
02:45These are actually CB2 sconces. So we've been also trying to mix the current and the mid-century and keep it all sort of in the same styles.
02:54And when we talk about architecture, right? The simplicity, but then the organicness of the lighting and some of what we used. Obviously the architecture is simple, but what Peter brings is some of the fun to the game.
03:07We do have a little Easter egg upstage in our dining room. A little sculpture up here that was also on Will and Grace, Max and David's first show, that was done by Max's mother-in-law.
03:18Susan Hyman.
03:20You're too poor for New York. You hate Atlanta.
03:23I like Atlanta.
03:24You hate it. Why don't you know this?
03:27You'll both move in with me.
03:29Palm Springs, somewhere along the line, became a haven for gay men retirees.
03:35We knew we wanted to do a show about this subject. Guys who were really, really good friends their entire lives, who decided, you know, in the absence of children and families, let's be each other's chosen family.
03:47They're modern, but they're an old kind of modern, you know? The aesthetic seemed to match the theme.
03:54We always knew that Palm Springs would be it because we're fans of this architecture. In the script, it was referred to as a white on white on white dinosaur extravaganza.
04:04I was very clear that I wanted this place to be old Hollywood, you know, chic terrazzo floors, this Billy Haynes, low furniture. This is the direction that we ended up going in.
04:17Obviously, Linda Lavin has a nice little tribute to her.
04:21That was painted by her husband, Steve Bakunas. We added that early on when Linda was still with us.
04:28And now it's kind of a special little moment for her.
04:32There's some singing done back here.
04:34Yes, the late Linda Lavin sang a song back here. There was an episode that deals with her character's death.
04:43And then we find the last song that she was playing, the Vera Lynn number, We'll Meet Again, and we sing a little bit of that.
04:50I dreamed a dream one day, and now that dream is here beside me.
05:01So the backdrop was picked on the pilot. Glenda picked that.
05:05Because pilots happen so quick, it's always a difficult process to make it perfect for a show like this that eventually got picked up.
05:12You talk to your DP and you talk to the gaffer and you say, look, you know, let's try to make this as believable as we can.
05:18What can we do? There's a pool back there. We want it to look morning, evening, dusk.
05:23There's furniture in the patio. There's greens in the patio.
05:26So before you look at the backdrop, your eye automatically is deceived because you see some of the furniture elements, some of the lighting that kind of create that imagery from the camera aisle, if you will, looking out into these large picture windows.
05:43After you.
05:49This is where I usually sit and have my coffee and, you know, witty repartee.
05:56The set decoration, it's always amazing. We always have-
05:59The fruits are always real and fresh.
06:01Vegetables, pastry.
06:03The shenanigans that go over with the drawers being pulled out and all of them.
06:06We have little bits sometimes. There was a time where you were looking through a ton of Tupperware down here,
06:11and they would feed it through a tube on the other side of the wall while he was digging through that.
06:15The great thing about the kitchen is that it has a nod to actually my grandmother had that Frigidaire Flair oven in there.
06:24The old O'Keefe and Merritt Flair built in.
06:28We actually found that another set decorator we know, Amy Feldman, had just bought a house and was remodeling and had this real beauty of a stove
06:36that's so typical of the mid-century design where it has the pull-out burners.
06:41This beautiful Sub-Zero refrigerator.
06:44But it's actually plugged in and working because props needs to keep food fresh for the actors to actually, you know, consume during the scene.
06:52And then Greg and I like to have a very organic set, so we love having a real alive set.
06:59So we do a lot of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables.
07:03I mean, in my mind, I make up stories every week about what they're making.
07:08And some of the collectibles.
07:10I actually went out to Palm Springs and found a great little shop called Reside.
07:14They also have this great artist where she took vintage plates and wrote irreverent sayings.
07:20But one of them says, eat shit, so I have to hide it back there.
07:24We like to mix it up.
07:26So this is from the new CB2 collection.
07:28Some of it's vintage from the prop house.
07:30You don't work for CB2, do you?
07:32No, no, but I...
07:34Could you send a check? I don't know.
07:38This is a den.
07:40I love this room because it is cozy.
07:42You feel like you're in some sort of cocoon.
07:44It's lovely in here.
07:45And everything informs your physicality.
07:47I mean, the way I'm sitting right now is the way that I would sit.
07:50I'm in this wonderful club chair that swivels.
07:53And I got some nuts here.
07:54I mean, you know, it's...
07:56It's pretty damn fabulous.
07:57It's pretty damn fabulous.
07:59You immediately can just go into your character being supported by the environment in which you live.
08:04It can do so much work for you if it's done well.
08:07You can understand so much about a character and who they are by the place in which they live.
08:12If you have a really great production designer like we do,
08:14I feel like you have a really established sense of who these men are and what their lives are like.
08:20And this is Linda's little desk and office area.
08:23A lot has gone down in this room.
08:25A lot has gone down emotionally.
08:27And there are little flourishes too in the decor that speak not only to kind of this sort of whimsical nature of a lot of the decor in Palm Springs that I've experienced,
08:35but tonally I think they also lend themselves to comedy.
08:38Like even that lampshade there.
08:40There are little aspects of colors and prints that sort of feed a comedic tone.
08:45This Gordian knot is symbolic of the writing process over the course of the week.
08:50What we have to untangle from day one of an episode to when we do it in front of 500 strangers.
08:55Exactly.
08:56And these are our cards when we play gay poker.
08:59You don't have to wear your readers when you play with those.
09:01It takes days, days to get through a game.
09:04A straight, I win.
09:06Not at this table. In this house, a straight is the worst hand you can get.
09:10This is a fun room that kind of creates the moments at the end of the show that give it a little more intimacy.
09:18These two pieces here were found at the vintage store in Palm Springs reside.
09:22Some of the artwork that you see on the wall, again, local artists that Peter found.
09:28There's a couple of Easter eggs, one over here.
09:30This was sort of Linda Lavin's, her character's desk.
09:34But in her real life, on her desk, she always had a little cup full of reader glasses.
09:40So we kind of recreated that here sort of as an homage to her.
09:44And then over here, Bunny owns a lingerie company.
09:48So we created lingerie awards.
09:52We love to tell a backstory.
09:59Behind me is our home base set.
10:01That's usually the living room, kitchen, their house.
10:05Swing sets are sets that come and go each week, each episode.
10:09So in this particular episode, we have Sybil's bedroom.
10:12Every episode has two or three swing sets in it, usually.
10:15And that's our process, to get those built, make it look believable.
10:19You know, you got to put windows in there.
10:21You got to put wallpaper up, paint it, light switches, sconces, dress it, flooring, carpet.
10:27We've had a few at the country club.
10:29Last week was a pickleball court.
10:31Oh, sorry.
10:33Let's take it from the top.
10:41Welcome to the grotto.
10:42In the grotto.
10:43There you go.
10:44In the grotto.
10:45Now listen, whilst we're in the hot tub.
10:48Yeah.
10:49Is that to simulate that we're actually, you know, in our birthday suits?
10:52Yeah.
10:53We're bottomless.
10:54Yes.
10:55The temperature in there does vary.
10:56Sometimes it's a little chillier than others.
10:58A couple nights ago, we got it just right, though.
10:59No, it's perfect.
11:00It felt really good.
11:01But I mean, it's so technically wonderful.
11:03I mean, they build these things, and I mean, there's a hot tub here.
11:06They keep the water level right here, because they don't want to see nips.
11:09Nips aren't funny.
11:10Nips are funny.
11:11I mean, I think my nips are funny.
11:12Nips are definitely funny.
11:13So the process of the jacuzzi started with looking and doing some research for getting,
11:19just buying a real hot tub and building it within.
11:22But the complicated things about hot tubs is they all have these lounge seats and, you
11:28know, that's not comfortable for the actors once we're in filming mode.
11:31So we ended up building it, but that's the process that happens in a multi-camera show.
11:36I had to kind of encompass this into a corner of the backyard, which is why we use the rockscape
11:41and the plant life and some of what would make it look as believable as possible.
11:45So we talk a little bit about greens.
11:47Obviously, the succulents are important because they last in the temperatures out there.
11:51Lighting is really important.
11:53I just recall seeing on a lot of the houses some really elaborate mid-century lighting fixture
11:59that was very sculptural, but I couldn't find anything.
12:02So we found this singular one right here.
12:05Combine five of them together.
12:07You've got this great glow and this sculptural piece and something that's one of a kind.
12:11And now he sells it on CB2.
12:14It's called the Peter Gursky Collection.
12:16Yeah.
12:17If you look around, it's not just about a light here or there.
12:20It's layering and how he layers this lighting and how he textures the walls.
12:24A lot of people don't understand is that I can design a great box, if you will, and some color with it.
12:30Peter can bring in the furniture and the elements.
12:33But if it's not lit right and you don't get texture and you don't get depth, the beauty of this show is everybody's kind of on their game.
12:42It becomes a family that everyone can rely on each other and trust each other.
12:47It's nice in this atmosphere to have the opportunity to be able to do that.
12:51The common spaces feel lived in.
12:53The kitchen feels like a kitchen where you would spend a lot of time.
12:56The den is cozy.
12:57But it's specific, this set.
12:59There's no part of it that's generic.
13:01The art that's on the wall.
13:03Herb Ritz's photograph of Fred with Tires is an iconic photograph taken by a gay photographer.
13:08A very important piece of art.
13:10But at the same time, the B on that wall is absolutely a nod to Mary Tyler Moore and the M that was on the wall in her apartment.
13:18And it's funny, there will be little gay kids that will notice things about this show that I've already enjoyed.
13:25You know, watching Linda Lavin, you know, float in and out of this room in a poochy nightgown and blouse is just fantastic.
13:33You know, it's fun.
13:35You know, it's aspirational in a way.
13:37We can show you where we enter from oftentimes or we're just waiting in the wings while the audience is filing and we're usually right back here.
13:44And we wait back here nervously and we all hold each other's hands and say, why?
13:49Why are we doing this?
13:50Why have we chosen this as a profession?
13:52Why do we do this?
13:53I've been doing this for 50 years and this is one of the happiest experiences I've ever had.
13:58And it makes it, it makes it really special.
14:02And that sort of, you want to spread that, especially at this time of my life.
14:06It's about gratitude and having good work to do and doing it well and enjoying yourself and still having fun.
14:13And I remember Linda saying to me, it's like doing restoration comedy.
14:17And I think that's the most accurate description of this medium.
14:21You're playing the truth, you're finding the truth, but there is this dance you're doing with an audience at the same time.
14:27I hope it turns America gay is really what I hope this show does.
14:30When the world watches this show, hopefully when they turn the TV off, they're gay.
14:35Bye.
14:36Bye, everybody.
14:37Later.
14:38Later.
14:39Bye.
14:40Bye everybody.
14:41Later, we're back to work.
14:42Bye.
14:43Bye, everybody.
14:44And it was a pleasure.
14:45Come again.
14:46Bye.
14:47Bye.
14:48Bye.
14:49Bye.
14:50Bye.
14:51Bye.
14:52Bye.
14:54Bye.
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14:59Bye.
15:00Bye.
15:01Bye.
15:03Bye.