Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470106
1 1 8 P E R S P E C T I V E | M AY / J U N E 2 0 2 2 This thing is defi nitely coming, and I think it's going to hit us hard, remarks Alex Buono, co - director, while glancing at a news blast on his cellphone in a scout van to a doubting and disinterested group. We were far more concerned with sorting out prep schedules than stories of a viral outbreak across the seas. It's February 2020, and we were a month into preproduction for season two of Russian Doll. With scripts still being formulated, and the start date of principal photography rapidly approaching, the production's crew was laser focused on fi nding and locking locations for the season. Little did we know then that only a month later, our show would be completely shut down. ut to just under a year later when the crew picked up from where we left off , doing our best to shake off the ravages of VID-19. The same group sits again in a scout van, the big diff erence now, we have seven fully fl ushed out scripts and we are all donning N9 masks. Russian Doll, season two, takes us on an existential ride through time, with its lead characters, Nadia and Allen, uantum leaping into their parents and grandparents. The time portal that transports them is none other than a number six train on the N subway system. The challenges faced for the season were big; fi ve time periods across two continents, a tight budget, a short shooting schedule, the stringent new normal of VID protocols, and most formidably, the N Transit Authority. A B Y D I A N E L E D E R M A N , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R R u s s i a n D o l l S e a s o n T w o F I N D I N G A F R E S H " D A T E D " L O O K