‘The Town Hall of Hollywood.’ Welcome to the Netflix lobby

LOS ANGELES — Dolly Parton recently held court there, big wig and all. Leonardo DiCaprio and John Kerry arrived at the same time last month. Cindy Crawford on the left, David Letterman on the right. And isn’t that Beyoncé by the espresso bar?

Welcome to the hottest see-and-be-seen spot in Hollywood: Netflix’s first-floor waiting room.

Scratch that. It’s a “lobby experience” and “creative gateway,” according to a design firm that worked on the space. An 80-by-12-foot video screen makes visitors feel like they are inside Netflix shows — visiting the “Narcos” cocaine lab, for instance, or sitting on the Blue Cat Lodge boat dock from “Ozark.” Another wall is covered by at least 3,500 plants, a living mural that includes red Flamingo Lilies, known for their big pistils.

Every era in Hollywood has a symbolic epicenter, a place that sums up everything, especially power and sometimes absurdity. Gifting suites at the Sundance Film Festival epitomized the overheated indie boom of the 2000s. The monolithic new Creative Artists Agency headquarters arrived on cue at the end of that decade and represented an increasingly corporate film business. Next came Comic-Con International, a sweaty July convention for superhero devotees that marked a turn toward franchises and fan communities.

Netflix’s 4,780-square-foot lobby is an icon of the Hollywood of today, with its tech money and displays of social justice and blurred lines between film and television. If you wanted to make a movie or series about Hollywood circa 2019 — an update on “Entourage” or “The Player” or “Get Shorty” — you would have to set a scene there.

“It has become the town hall of Hollywood, where you’ll see celebrities and filmmakers intersecting with politicians and musicians, everyone waiting in the same space on...