Rocco Matteo (‘Rabbit Hole’ production designer): ‘We designed an action thriller where a lot of the real action is mental’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
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As a film and television production desinger for nearly three decades, Emmy nominee Rocco Matteo was no stranger to the spy thriller genre. But when he was hired to design the new Paramount+ eight-episode streaming series “Rabbit Hole” starring “24” alum Kiefer Sutherland, he encountered something somewhat new for him: a star who led with his body and liked to toss caution to the wind. So part of his job, he discovered early on, was to help save Sutherland from himself. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“One of our directors on ‘Rabbit Hole,’ Jon Cassar, who had worked with Kiefer on “24” for a long time, came up to me one day and said, ‘Oh by the way, make sure that anything Kiefer has to come into contact with is padded very well, because he won’t hold back’,” Matteo recalls. “He is so true to form in his character that if he has to hit something, he will. If he has to pull on it, he will… So when we built a wall, it was done in such a way that it could deflect and had a special foam trim that looked like wood and was forgiving for someone impacting it with their forehead.”
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In the spy drama “Rabbit Hole,” Sutherland portrays John Weir, a master of deception in a world of corporate espionage whose tragic past bumps up against the present when he’s framed for murder. When he joined on, Matteo’s marching orders were to create a moody motif – “an action thriller where a lot of the real action is mental,” he explains. “It’s very much about the mental state of our hero and everyone he meets. Our protagonist is really struggling with what it means to live in a post-truth world.” The designs that he and his art direction team came up with “had to allude to a kind of disquiet, a bit of turmoil under the surface.”
As the show’s production designer, Matteo designed safe houses with secret hiding places for documents and electronics and created designs that spanned decades, from John Weir’s child home and boarding school to modern hi-tech offices. He leaned into the idea of a labyrinth or maze in many of his designs to create an illusion that the interiors require effort from Weir to escape or reach the goal in the middle, making the designs themselves active participants in the story. To that end, he worked in his sets to emphasize the lead character’s uncertainty and the blurred lines between reality and Weir’s perception of events.
It’s also the fate of production designers working on a show featuring pyrotechnics that there will be explosions, and those explosions will destroy what they’ve created. “I designed a warehouse set where that was actually created with the intention of blowing it to smithereens both in the exterior and interior,” Matteo notes. “It’s a little sad for me when that happens, but but I’ve done this long enough where I can come to terms with it. I’ve learned not to get too emotionally attached to these things.”
Matteo’s career has included everything from the series “La Femme Nikita” to the 2011 miniseries “The Kennedys” to espionage series like “Covert Affairs” and “Condor.” “Rabbit Hole” is currently streaming on Paramount +, with new episodes premiering each Sunday through May 7.
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