lay off Season 2 brings viewers to Lumon's test ground in Episode 7, and a glimpse of Gemma's (Dichen Lachman)'s day job as the organization tries to create a separate Innie for her to endure the pain. "It's a medical facility robbed by prisons," production designer Jeremy Hindle said of the scene. "It's a spacecraft indeed. It's Kubrick."

All wrong angles

The table in the Gemma room (background) is very proud of Hindle. "I wanted a place where she ate, and it looked like two people could sit there, but they could never look at each other," he said. "Every group had something broken." Hindle and his team designed and built almost all the furniture on the floor. "The actor should be able to play anything (on the set) and should be able to play," he said. "Anything that no one has seen in the test area." The door leads to a practical corridor that provides the camera operator with the ability to shoot continuously.

Not happy and bright

The corridor, Gemma's suite and Christmas room are all built on a 25,000 square foot stage. Three more sets were built in the second phase - control room, dentist's office and aircraft. For Christmas rooms, toys and decorations are made, while sofas are imported from Poland. “It’s a prison,” Handel said. "This is not fun."

Bird's vision

Due to the 2023 writer strike, the production design team has more time to conceive the idea of ​​testing the floor. Handel said that there is only the overview rather than the script, and the team knew that episode seven (the last shot) was independent, so it had "start, middle and ending." On the map to the right you can see the area where the test floor was actually built (pink) in the second phase. The rest of the space is rendered digitally with VFX.

An endless corridor

"The TV will never have a ceiling. You can tell me through the lighting. I always build the ceiling." While causing "huge fire problems," Hindle said, it's the only way Hindle thinks can light up the room properly. "I think that's why the show has such a wonderful body feel because it feels like a real place," he added. In the series, the architectural ceiling also adds to the overall feeling of claustrophobia. “It should feel like you’re always lost.”

Dual Responsibilities

The show’s photographer Jessica Lee Gagné also made her debut at the director’s office of the episode, which returns how Gemma and Mark (Adam Scott) meet and draw audiences through Gemma’s test building. "With that room, Jesse wanted to use the same suit when flashing back to them at the IVF clinic," Hindle said. “It wears a different space, so the design has to be able to be something else, but it’s still that space.”

The story first appeared on the May Independence issue of Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive magazines, click here to subscribe.