Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1124104
9 2 P E R S P E C T I V E | J U L Y / A U G U S T 2 0 1 9 Alice in Wonderland. And while the series is not a take on this classic story, it does at least invite the comparison as the viewer meets Nadia in front of a round mirror, in a dark room, next to a mysterious tunnel. This bathroom is the rabbit hole. The apartment, and all of New York, is Wonderland. As soon as Nadia crosses that threshold—over and over again throughout the series—it gradually becomes clear that the rules of reality are shifted here. She's entering a place that is both familiar and unreliable. Maxine's loft is the hub of Russian Doll, and knowing how often the audience was going to see this space, I wanted to make sure that it was dense with mystery, clues and hidden corners. There were two things designed from the outset. 1. How Nadia moves through the space with each reset, and 2. How the space changes with each reset. Even though only the first three scripts were finished as planning the loft began, I knew that the world was going to start glitching and decaying. As the story unfolds, new rooms are revealed, so the space needed to be big enough to keep the audience's interest over the course of eight episodes. Nadia's reset point had to be as far away as possible from the front door, providing lots of opportunity for her to explore and for the audience to lose their bearings. The floorplan was conceived as a subtle reference to the nested doll, in that Nadia can leave the apartment by various concentric pathways, with the largest arc being through all the rooms. The A. NADIA AT HER RESET POINT. PRODUCTION STILL. B. THE HALLWAY FROM THE BATHROOM INTO THE LOFT. SET PHOTO. C. PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE LOFT PLAN. D. FLOOR PLAN OF MAXINE'S LOFT. E. SNOWGLOBE MAP. COLOR AND TEXTURE DENSITY PLOTTED AS LOCATIONS. A B C D E