Tamara Deverell (‘Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities’ production designer): ‘Story is everything’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Matt Noble
·3 min read
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“I can’t even do my job without having a story,” states production designer Tamara Deverell in our recent webchat. She adds, “I’m not just designing to go, ‘oh I’m going to create a cool set.’ I’m doing it to facilitate the story. Hopefully the cool set comes out of that, but it is secondary. Story is everything.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Deverell is the production designer on the Netflix anthology series “Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.” Each of the eight episodes tell a different horror story. The collection of stories were curated by del Toro, with two being works he had written. The Oscar-winning filmmaker of “The Shape of Water” (2017) also handpicked the eight directors for the series. All the stories are dark and touch on various moral themes.

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Deverell explains, “For the most part, each one is their own thing. That was exciting. It was an exhausting exercise working with eight different directors on eight different periods. But, knowing Guillermo as the creator, I know what he likes. That resonates with me. I could always go back to that.”

In the ‘Graveyard Rats’ episode, a greedy grave robber is gets caught in tunnels dug by rats. Deverell says, ‘We had to design it with a slot in it with the camera on a rig that could follow through. And we had a rat creature and VFX rat parts. And and you can’t have the crew breathing dirt. So we had to make cork into dirt, that a crew could breathe.”

It’s not Deverell’s first time working with del Toro. She did art direction on “Mimic” (1997) as well as production designer on his series “The Strain” (2014-2017). And she received an Oscar nomination in the Best Production Design category for her work on del Toro’s version of “Nightmare Alley” (2021). The production designer reveals, “He automatically gets it. He is right there with me on the journey to find the right shape, the right size and the right colour. All with references that are not just movies, but also painters, art history, human history and religions. He’s a kind of walking encyclopaedia. He throws it all in the game when you are doing a film together.”

On working with different directors on “Cabinet of Curiosities,” Deverell admits, “Each director is so different. I love working with different people, but it would be such a shift. I’d go from one director shooting on the floor, and the other I’m prepping with, and I’ve got a zoom with the next one. I’m thinking about how to adjust my personality to jive with this person. I want to give them what they want, and still hold to what I think it right, and maintain Guillermo’s vision on top of all of that. It’s a balancing act.”

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