Joshua Petersen (‘Bupkis’ production designer): ‘My objective was to keep things as grounded in reality as possible’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Joshua Petersen knew what he was getting into when he signed on to craft the production design for the new eight-episode Peacock streaming comedy series “Bupkis.” It’s described as former “Saturday Night Live” regular Pete Davidson’s “semi-autobiographical” comedy that presents “a heightened, fictionalized version of Pete’s real life” and combines “grounded storytelling with absurd elements.” So when Petersen read the pilot script and found that the opening scene featured Davidson masturbating to virtual reality porn and accidentally ejaculating onto the clothed chest of his mother Amy (portrayed by Edie Falco, no less), he reasoned, “There’s some expectation of that.” Petersen quickly added, “But it’s also a show that earns its pathos and the deeper emotional things that you get in the first two episodes. It showed me what the show is capable of. That’s what really (interested) me.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

The fictionalized part of “Bupkis” finds Davidson going through this heightened version of his life with Falco as his mother, Joe Pesci as his grandfather, Brad Garrett as his honorary uncle and Bobby Cannavale as his actual uncle in heading an all-star cast. It depicts the different stages and environments of Davidson’s life from early childhood through the present, and it was up to Petersen to design a multitude of sets reflecting that. “My real objective as a designer was to keep things as grounded in reality as possible,” he stresses. “I love to recreate things as closely as possible. We had some really fun prompts, like Pete’s basement. It’s a storied setting because everyone has heard the story of Pete living in his mom’s basement. So in visiting the real one, my goal wasn’t to recreate it one to one but making it more interesting while maintaining the kind of mythology around it.”

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SEEPete Davidson explains how he got Joe Pesci to star in his new show ‘Bupkis’

Some of Petersen’s design challenges involved building the world of Davidson’s past, which in the second episode storyline features a lengthy scene at his Uncle Tommy’s wedding in a ballroom during the actor’s childhood (which in reality occurred not long after the death of his father). As we see in “Bupkis,” Davidson was plenty precocious even then. “That episode kind of comes out of nowhere in terms of the emotional depth of it and the gravity of the scenes,” he says. While Petersen didn’t spend a huge amount of time with Davidson specifically matching his memories with the design, “We had a kind of cart blanche to forge ahead. We had a lot of reference photos from the wedding, which was really helpful in designing that and other period sequences. Having access to his mother Amy’s real house also helped us to model things.”

The complexity of the “Bupkis” shoot involved numerous locations  for Petersen to stage and design, and everything required either reworking or building from the ground up. “Something had to come together every single day,” he recalls. “Even the corner bar where Bobby has a meeting with Uncle Tommy (Cannavale) is at a real Staten Island corner bar. We scouted a bunch of them before finding the right one, but it needed a lot of work just to get the subtle effect of being a real hardwood corner Staten Island bar in a residential neighborhood. That sort of stuff is all over this show…It was all about getting exactly the right look to convey the proper emotion. That’s what I like to work off of.”

All eight episodes of “Bupkis” stream on Peacock.

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