Sofia Coppola’s Go-To Costume Designer On Dressing Bill Murray, Miley Cyrus & George Clooney for ‘A Very Murray Christmas’

George Clooney, Bill Murray, and Miley Cyrus in A Very Murray Christmas. Photo: Courtesy

Everyone has witnessed Bill Murray in his Scrooged state, but come this Friday you’ll want to tune into Netflix to see the iconic actor be more Bing Crosby than bah humbug in a holiday variety show spectacular directed by none other than Sofia Coppola. Yes, in the ultimate gift that keeps on giving, the auteur and her “muse” have merrily reunited for the first time since Lost In Translation. And if that sends tingles down your spine, then you’ll love the sugarplum goodness of A-list talent the two enlisted to make it A Very Murray Christmas indeed. (I mean when these two come a’knocking, who is really going to say no?)

We can just picture the Christmas stockings now — Miley Cyrus, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Chris Rock, Rashida Jones, Phoenix, Jason Schwartzman, oh and George Clooney at his most dapper in a tux. So just who does Coppola turn to when dressing stars of this caliber for the ultimate holiday bonanza? That would be her pal and longtime collaborator Stacey Battat, whose impressive list of costume designer credits not only includes Coppola’s seminal films Somewhere and Bling Ring, but also Still Alice, Freeheld, and Christina Ricci’s latest vehicle, the Zelda Fitzgerald-inspired Z.

Here Battat describes the pandemonium of dressing 75 people for the extravaganza, from throwing Cyrus in a Santa Baby dress without a fitting to napping with Murray while waiting on Burberry, and Rick Ross’s special jammies that never came to fruition.

Yahoo Style: How many people did you have to dress for this holiday special? How did you go about finding the right looks for everyone involved?

Stacey Battat: Hard to say! We literally dressed everyone including the entire band—all of the Rockettes, Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, Miley Cyrus, Maya Rudolph—fortunately George Clooney brought his own tuxedo, which was pretty fantastic. He looks wonderful in it. I’m not sure how I could have improved that look.

What was the trickiest costume to pull off?

They were all tricky! When dealing with that kind of an A-list cast, there are a lot of timing limitations and sometimes people can’t come for a fitting until the day of the shoot or don’t come at all. I made Miley’s dress based on information that I managed to gather from the Marc Jacobs PR office, which was “she fits our samples.” But the best, trickiest and also most fun was Bill’s costume.

How so?

Bill is notoriously mercurial, but I thought somehow I would be spared since I already knew Bill. A few weeks before I was in Charleston, SC, where he lives, and he was the best host. Not a day passed that I didn’t hear from him with some sort of restaurant recommendation or fun activity that we should try. I figured when I called him to get his sizes and schedule a fitting it would be easy, but instead I got his voice mail.

Eventually, a few days before the shoot, Mitch Glazer (the producer) tells me that Bill will be calling to schedule a fitting. Each day my team and I wait for the call. When it does come, we piled into a car with 30 tuxedoes all in various sizes and brands because I knew our time with him was limited. He tried on a few tuxes and eventually landed on a Burberry one that was almost perfect, but needed just to be a little bit bigger. Of course that was the one suit that we didn’t have, so my assistant rushed to the Burberry store nearby. It was supposed to be a 15 minute hiccup which eventually turned into 30…45…60 minutes.

At this point I am pacing the room, afraid that Bill is going to ask me to leave, but instead he just looked at me and said, “Relax, let’s take a nap.” So we proceeded to take a nap while listening to Human League on an iPhone and watching a basketball game. So Bill!

You’re Sofia Coppola’s longtime collaborator, but you two have never worked on a variety show together. How did it differ to your usual projects and was it something that you’d do again?

I love working with Sofia. We have never worked on a variety show, but I think we would do it again. We had a great time and so did everyone on set. Movie sets are notoriously quiet places, but this one was always ringing with laughter! Some of the performances are just mind blowing. Sofia has a way of finding things in people that have been otherwise untapped. That’s what makes her a great director. I swear you never knew Maya Rudolph can sing like she does, she’s so talented!

Everyone likes to give Miley a hard time for her wardrobe choices of late, but I think she’s just being Miley y'all! Was she particular about the way she was dressed for the show and what can we expect to see her in?

Miley was amazing. I was completely impressed with her professionalism and talent. I didn’t get to see her until the morning of the shoot and she was totally game to wear the dress that we had made for her. She just put it on and went with it!

Rick Ross was supposed to appear in the special but never made it to set, were you bummed about that? What was he going to wear?
Yes, totally bummed. I made him red silk charmeuse pajamas with ivory marabou piping. I’m still heartbroken that I never got to see him in them.

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