‘Black Cake’ production designer Arwel Jones recreated a Jamaican beach in a studio in Wales [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Black Cake” production designer Arwel Jones wasn’t familiar with Charmaine Wilkerson‘s best-selling novel on which the Hulu series is based, but he quickly familiarized himself with it — but not too much. “I’m always very careful about doing too much research into the book itself if there are variations with the script,” he tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: TV Production Design panel (watch the exclusive video interview above). “It can take the wrong turn with a slight design hint when you do certain tweaks, so it’s good to have it as your basis, but it’s very, very important to leave it behind and go off the script.”
The eight-episode series focuses on the life of Eleanor Bennett, née Covey Lincook, who’s played by Chipo Chung as an adult and Mia Isaac as a young woman. She dies in the present day, leaving her adult children with a flash drive containing stories and secrets about her life she had never shared. That show spans the world — her native Jamaica, London, Scotland, Italy and California — but obviously could not shoot on location entirely.
“I always say I’d build everything if I could so that I could control it. The greater exteriors, like London itself for example, you can’t replicate London. You have to go get some of London for real,” Jones says. “The same with Italy. We have to get those exteriors, but most of the interiors were builds in the end in a studio in Wales, believe it or not.”
SEE ‘Black Cake’ reviews: Mia Isaac is ‘incredible’ in Hulu’s ‘beautiful and gutting’ new mystery drama
Something else to add under the “believe it or not” column: Jones and his team recreated a Jamaican beach in the Welsh studio when unforeseen circumstances prevented them from filming more footage in Jamaica. “We did two weeks shooting in Jamaica with a certain amount we were intending on shooting back here. But due to various things, we ended up having to replicate a bit of those locations from Jamaica back and doing a lot more of Jamaica. So we even did a Jamaican beach party in a studio in Wales at one point,” he shares. That meant they had to import 18 tons of sand — and very specific sand at that. “We did find as close a match color-wise to the sand we had seen out in Jamaica, so it was a special source. And it was a very refined sand as well, of course, because we couldn’t just get a normal build of sand because people are actually going to be in it, acting in it, working in it, so it had be cleaned. You learn a lot of different things in this job.”
As Covey’s journey takes her across the world, it’s not just the location that changes, but the aesthetic as well. Jones developed a color palette to track Covey’s story from the bright promise of her youth in Jamaica to her low points in Europe before she settles down in California.
“One of the very first mood boards that we submitted to the showrunner [Marissa Jo Cerar] was going with those rich palettes of colors, especially the idea of warm memories as well because we’re telling the story as a flashback quite often,” he shares. “We’re starting off with warm colors, gold and sands and yellows, very rich blues. And I really wanted to drain that out by the time we got to the U.K. and go a bit further with Scotland, making it really kind of dark, just matching the story beats a little. And then just slowly bringing that color back in for California, maybe not quite as vibrant and warm as it was in Jamaica, but it’s heading back towards there because that’s where the family settled and was raised. We wanted it to feel like a real warm family home.”
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