‘Only Murders in the Building’ production design team on telling Bunny’s story through ‘little bits of magic’ in her apartment [Exclusive Video Interview]

Joyce Eng
·6 min read
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Production designer Patrick Howe joined “Only Murders in the Building” in Season 2, but there’s a very good reason he felt right at home. “I looked at the art department and went, ‘Oh, my God, I have worked with every single person in this art department except the production designer,'” Howe tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “Somehow I had heard that everybody wanted to return, which is a good sign. That means you had to have had fun or there was something you loved about it if you wanted to go at it again because all Season 1s are really difficult to pull off.”

Much like how subsequent seasons of a series delve deeper into characters, Season 2 of the Hulu murder mystery reveals a whole lot more about the Arconia. Howe and his team, including set decorator Rich Murray, had to design secret passageways, hidden elevators and previously unseen apartments, including that of Bunny (Jayne Houdyshell), whose murder in the Season 1 finale set up the Season 2 mystery. Bunny’s apartment is the setting for several key episodes: the premiere, in which Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short) and Mabel (Selena Gomez) discover her secret elevator; her memorial in the second; a Bunny POV installment about her last day in the third; and the finale, in which trio throws their killer reveal party.

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“It wasn’t even clear there was going to be an episode that she would be in her apartment,” Howe shares. “From the get-go, we were trying to tell the story of this person the audience knew what the character was like, but they had never seen her home with the exception of one little shot of her foyer, of dropping a box off on a table, but no information there really. We knew the set would be used for the first two episodes. It was only slated for the first two, not even episode 3, where we see the last day of her life where she was in her apartment. I did appreciate that. It validated a lot.”

Telling a character’s life story and showing a different side to them through their home was something Howe and Murray loved. Bunny was a cantankerous board president, but her apartment is open and inviting, full of florals and warm colors. Since Bunny was a longtime resident of the Arconia, her apartment had to look that way as well. Murray outfitted it with various pieces and trinkets that he did not expect would have close-ups on the show.

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“The editors just banged out a really great bit. I always love to tell the story about what they did when they opened up on our three heroes breaking into her vent and into her foyer. Then they immediately cut to a quick shot of a Staffordshire rabbit on a mantlepiece and a wrought iron rabbit holding a magnifying glass on her desk and a picture of young Jayne Houdyshell. So it was bunny, bunny, bunny. And then they did a wide-open shot of Bunny’s apartment,” Murray says. “We talk about this all the time and how all of us work together with a team, as a team, and it’s all these little bits of magic that come out about this character that I put in there and Patrick puts in there — you never know what’s going to show up. … The camera and the editing team and the directors and [showrunner] John Hoffman and everyone are so into, ‘Oh, wow, you’ve gone the extra mile to tell that story about this character and what this character is doing through little things on her shelves.’ That’s lovely of them and so gracious of them to say, ‘We’ll give you three seconds of time now to tell the audience what you’ve developed as a character for her.’ It’s just such a fun show.”

There was one element of Bunny’s apartment that was definitely going to have a whole lotta attention: the cage for her bird, Mrs. Gambolini (voiced by Houdyshell). The ninth episode reveals that Bunny’s Rose Cooper painting was hidden in the base of the cage. The cage itself was real, but the art department made the base from scratch. “There’s millions of stories about the base, of course, because there’s information in it. We were fed little tidbits about, ‘There’s going to be this painting and this painting is going to have to be discovered,'” Howe recalls. “Initially, it was about the different places in the birdcage this painting could be found, so the final iteration that you saw was just one of many places that the painting might be as part of the birdcage.”

For Season 3, which just wrapped production and will premiere in the summer, Howe and Murray, the latter of whom won an Emmy for his work on Season 1, got to build a world outside of the Arconia since the murder of Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd) occurred on a Broadway stage one year later in the Season 2 finale. But don’t think we won’t be spending lots of time in the apartment building. “The whole season, as an audience member, you’re watching [the play] be rehearsed, so there are extraordinary scenes when the show within the show is being rehearsed in the rehearsal space, which in this case is Oliver’s apartment,” Howe shares. “So all the qualities of each of these characters continue to be reflected in the scenes within the show that they’re rehearsing, and it’s really beautiful.”

Adds Murray: “Everyone working on this season sort of felt like, ‘Wow, this is even bigger and better than the first two.’ It’s beautiful, it’s heartwarming, it’s hysterical. The cast that they have lined up for Season 3 is astounding. Insane. And then there are so many big changes in these characters’ lives and from our perspective, in all of their apartments. So many big changes. And over a course of a year, people come in and out of their lives. But it all comes back to the script again. These three sort of lonely New Yorkers, struggling to get through day by day and falling in love and out of love. It’s really poignant and beautiful and yet hysterical.”

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