Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1536054
26 PROP CULTURE I SUMMER 2025 many different options. You could easily get lost in a place like that. PROP CULTURE: Let's talk some more about Duster. As a Property Master, the chance to work on a period piece is always a highlight because it really fuels the imagination. I'd love for you to share a little about the initial creation of Duster. LATOYA MORGAN: Absolutely. For me, it began with a meeting with J.J. He had read a script I'd written and really connected with it. He then told me about this image that had been in his mind for several years—a phone booth in the middle PROP CULTURE: What stands out about Duster is its ability to be firmly rooted in a specific time period without making the period the subject itself. It avoids becoming a nostalgic look at car culture or CBs and instead uses those props effectively to create an authentic sense of the time period. LATOYA MORGAN: Exactly! That was a very conscious decision. We absolutely wanted to be period-correct with everything we presented in the show, but that isn't the core of what Duster is. At its heart, the show is about these characters from completely different backgrounds whose lives unexpectedly collide. Our primary focus was to create a character-driven show, but that we had all those wonderful things from the time: those great muscle cars, great music of the time. We wanted to take people on a really fun ride and along the way, yes, they'll talk on pay phones. Yes, they'll use CB radios, but that is not the main purpose of the show. The purpose of the show is to be a character-driven, sort of funny, but also a dramatic wild ride that I hope audiences enjoy. PROP CULTURE: Another aspect of Duster that stood out to me was its restraint in depicting the era and overemphasizing the period. It didn't try to cram in every 1972 detail, which made it feel very organic. Was it a conscious decision not to overwhelm viewers with constant reminders of 1972? LATOYA MORGAN: Yes, absolutely. That was a very deliberate approach for several reasons. We didn't want to create a caricature of the 1970s. Our goal was to make the world feel genuinely lived-in and authentic. It wouldn't feel real if every single element in a 1972 setting was brand new for that time. We loved the idea of a more organic and authentic feel. J.J. and I are both big fans of 1970s cinema, and for me in particular, a film like Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson was a key touchstone. The aesthetic of that movie felt so right. Everyone looked like regular people in jeans and T-shirts. That's the feeling we wanted for Duster—regular people caught up in this extraordinary adventure. So it wasn't about going all-out with crazy, wild colors, and over- the-top styles. We were very particular of the desert, with the car screeching up to it. He said it might be Josh Holloway who gets out to answer the phone, but that's all I got. From there, we started spitballing ideas back-and-forth, really building out the world and we decided in that moment to work on it together. We were excited about doing something set in the '70s. Not only because it is such a gorgeous era, but it also presented an opportunity to, in a way, turn back the clock to a simpler time. No cellphones, none of that stuff. I really love the idea of leaning back into some of the obsolete things—pay phones, CB radios, even the lack of power steering in some of the cars. I find that kind of detail fascinating. JOSH HOLLOWAY AND RACHEL HILSON IN DUSTER LATOYA MORGAN AND JOSH HOLLOWAY OF DUSTER