Here's How Sharp Objects ' Production Designer Created the Dollhouse at the Center of the Miniseries
A reoccurring symbol in Sharp Objects, the eight-episode HBO series based on the debut thriller novel of the same name by writer Gillian Flynn, is the dollhouse. Throughout the series, the dollhouse, which is an exact miniature replica of the Preaker family manor, represents the obsession with control all the generations of women within the Preaker family share. (This ultimately comes to a head in the series finale, available August 26.)
But before the audience ever lays eyes on the toy home, viewers are presented with the Preaker manor, which is at the center of the well-received miniseries and serves as the original inspiration for the dollhouse that later plays such a crucial role in the show's plot line. Adora Crellin (Patricia Clarkson) has, for decades, inhabited the Stick-style mansion with her three children, who include 14-year-old Amma Crellin (Eliza Scanlen) and her adult daughter Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), now a fast-talking news reporter. The interiors, which were created at a studio in Los Angeles, are characteristic of Adora—an aristocrat in Wind Gap, Missouri, who continues to romanticize the Civil War South. But while that may call to mine a drab and depressing gray uniform, there's a reason her home does not.“We wanted to make her interior very colorful and luxe and not the typical stained and faded look of a Southern Gothic place," says John Paino, production designer for Sharp Objects as well as HBO’s Big Little Lies and HBO’s The Leftovers. "We didn’t want her to live in a ramshackle place. Adora was fabulously wealthy and she would probably hire an upscale designer from somewhere like Atlanta.”
The entrance is especially evocative. During the research process, Paino discovered a picture taken by American-German photographer Horst P. Horst of Pauline de Rothschild—which features the socialite, at home, in the middle of a De Gournay–wallpapered room. (The image first appeared in Vogue in 1969.) He decided to decorate the entrance with a similar wall covering: De Gournay’s “Earlham Chinoiserie.” Paino shares: “I was struck by the swampy-ness of it—and the second-ness of it. It’s like a poison. It’s like a beautiful flower that’s wilted and its starting to stink because it’s starting to go putrid. There was something about the faded beauty of it. It’s also something that would be very, very special, and that wallpaper was extremely expensive. Again, the swampy-ness of it felt perfect. The faded regalness of it. It just felt right.”
There are also interior elements that echo both the novel and miniseries’ themes and twists. For example, the floor in Adora’s suite is made of ivory, a nod to Sharp Objects' teeth idée fixe. “I couldn’t find an ivory floor in existence. Not even the Sultan of Brunei has one. So, that was incredibly challenging and fun: How can we design a floor so that when you look at it looks like tusks from elephants and tusks from walruses and tusks from whales? There was no precedent for it," explains Paino, who opted for a marble stand-in.
But, the most iconic of these elements is the dollhouse—an exact miniature of the Stick-style mansion where it is housed. In Gillian Flynn’s novel, the dollhouse’s furniture matches the house’s furniture—as demonstrated in an interaction between Amma and Camille: “She plucked a footstool the size of a tangerine from the dollhouse’s front room and held it up to me. ‘Needs reupholstering now,'" Flynn's 2006 debut reads. "'Adora changed her color scheme from peach to yellow. She promised me she’d take me to the fabric store so I can make new coverings to match. This dollhouse is my fancy.’ She almost made it sound natural, my fancy.”
This, too, was the case with the meticulous creative team behind the miniseries. Independent Studio Services (ISS) was in constant communication with Amy Wells (Sharp Objects’ set decorator) to ensure that the dollhouse’s furniture matched the house’s furniture. Paino remembers: “It was one of the most important, daunting, satisfying amazing things that I’ve ever been fortunate enough to build for a T.V. show or movie. For sure.”
The dollhouse was scaled at .75 inches—an unusual size that meant that the accessories (e.g., furniture) had to be made from scratch. And there were time constraints: The entire item was constructed in less than two months (a dollhouse maker had said originally that it couldn’t be done in less than a year and a half). Paino concludes: “It evolved a lot over that period of time. I didn’t really know until it was done if it was pulled off, but I think it has been. It also involved a lot of research into baby teeth. I’ll leave it at that.”
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