Apple TV+ bills “The Studio,” its Seth Rogen-led skewering of the Hollywood studio system, as a “comedy.” It is also, according to the show’s costume designer, Kameron Lennox, a fantasy.
“These characters are trying to hold on to this old love and passion of what filmmaking was and should be,” Ms. Lennox said. “But we’re losing that sense.”
“The Studio,” which was created and directed by Mr. Rogen and Evan Goldberg, revolves around Mr. Rogen’s Matt Remick, a bright-eyed striver who has scratched his way into the chief executive’s seat at the fictional Continental Studios. Collectively, Mr. Remick and his royal court of department heads are smitten with a navel-gazing nostalgia for Hollywood’s golden age.
They end the days watching “Casino,” endeavor to greenlight anything other than reheated I.P. projects and kowtow to the many Hollywood aristocrats who appear on “The Studio” as exaggerated versions of themselves. (That the show airs on the very sort of streamer that helped upend the old Hollywood system adds its own layer of irony.)
And if the Hollywood of today is an expanse of executives in gray sweaters and thousand-dollar dress sneakers, that memo was lost on its way to “The Studio.” In his turmeric-colored dress shirts and blazers with lapels jutting out above his shoulders, Matt is a throwback to a time when studio moguls dressed more like Italian industrialists. (A time that may not have even really existed.)
As Ms. Lennox recalled, when real-life executives scanned the racks at the show’s costume department bungalow on the Warner Brothers lot, they wondered, “Is this how we’re supposed to be dressing?”
In a recent interview, Ms. Lennox elaborated on the cast’s custom-made suits and how she pulled together Kathryn Hahn’s trend-overload wardrobe and juggled the show’s cavalcade of conspicuous cameos. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Offscreen, Seth Rogen has come into his own style, so when I was watching the first episode, I wondered if he was wearing his own clothes?
No, but I’ve been on projects with him before and I’d seen him move into wearing more relaxed double-breasted suits and stuff. When he showed up to set, we started incorporating these suits.
It was interesting when he approached me for this project and started talking about this character. He was very clear about how he wanted to present himself in this, even about how the shoulders fit. He said, “It just needs to feel relaxed, I don’t want any structure, but double-breasted.”
When he found it, he was like, “This is what I want it to be.” Except for the fact that it needs to feel expensive.
But the suits themselves were custom-made for the show, yes?
We were sourcing clothes in Europe and Canada, wherever we can find. There’s a lot of Italian suitmakers that we ordered from and then we just tweaked the suits. But there’s only so much you can source. So we had suits made by the head of the costume department at Warner Brothers. And then I had my own cutter that made some things.
When somebody like Seth says “this is, you know, I want it to look this way,” it’s almost like a freedom to say OK, let’s get really, you know, like really laser focused on all the little bits. Like the lapel pins — we had those all custom-made to be the Continental Studios logo.
There’s a moment in Episode 2 where Matt calls out that he’s looking for his Brunello Cucinelli sport coat. But that jacket wasn’t actually Cucinelli, right?
No, but it looks like Cucinelli. I mean, that’s a gray area there. There’s only so many Cuccinellis you can afford.
Am I wrong that the lapels on Matt’s suits seem to beef up as the season goes on?
As his ego and his confidence grows, his lapels start getting bigger and bigger. We would joke, like, “If you could see it pointing up from behind him, you knew that today he had a big ego.”
What was going on with Maya Mason, the marketing chief played by Kathryn Hahn?
I just thought of people like Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani and J.Lo, who have stylists that come in and create looks for music videos. But then some people try to incorporate that style in their day-to-day life. Maya’s maybe one of them. In Episode 1, she’s wearing a Stüssy shirt and Diesel jeans that are boots. Like, “This is cool, this is what the kids are wearing.” I shopped for her at H. Lorenzo and Ssense.
Each episode is chockablock with these cameos of really well-known Hollywood figures. Did you dress those people?
A lot of people we dressed, yes. But, Martin Scorsese has a suit maker in Italy. And so he brought his suits. We just made sure it was all ready for him. Peter Berg wore his own boxing sweatshirt, which was fine because that was on point.
There’s also a Golden Globes episode and a lot of those cameos are people that literally gave us two hours out of their day to come in, so Aaron Sorkin came in wearing his own tuxedo.
Ron Howard we dressed, but we dressed him like Ron Howard. But he wore his own hat from his company, Imagine.
Then his daughter Bryce came to set when he was shooting and he’s like, “Oh, I want to introduce you to my daughter Bryce because she was so amazed that you were able to dress me like myself.”
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