‘Wicked’ production designer Nathan Crowley: ‘I just wish we could do it all again’
You might expect that a man who has been doing production and set design on feature films for more than 30 years would be a bit jaded, and that earning a seventh Academy Award nomination for his work would be met with a shrug. But that’s not how it’s been for Nathan Crowley. Instead, the man who has made a career of being Christopher Nolan’s go-to production designer exudes joy and excitement while discussing his Oscar bid for Wicked on the eve of final voting on Feb. 11.
“I just wish we could do it all again,” asserts Crowley (watch his full Gold Derby interview above). When his interviewer expresses surprise at this declaration given that the usual feeling is one of relief, he assures, “I think we’ve all been spoiled, because nothing will live up to that experience. I look back on the two years I was working on it and it’s like, I think we were pushing the design as far as we could. So, I really look back with love for the experience.”
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At the same time, the U.K.-born Crowley looks at his Wicked work as the greatest world-building challenge of his extraordinary career. As someone who grew up watching The Wizard of Oz every year, having an opportunity to work on the prequel while also adapting the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical based on the 1939 classic was one that made him feel “honored” to be chosen for the task. Creating the stunning sets that anchored Munchkinland and Emerald City and Oz was as special as it sounds.
“Emerald City was probably the hardest of all the sets to create,” Crowley acknowledges. “I mean, they were all difficult in their own unique way, but that’s one I parked for a long time. You just engage with it slowly and let it gestate in the back of your brain because you have to find it. In the case of Emerald, it was the first thing we started and the last thing we solved. The story dictates that there’s this sort of weird falseness to it, because the Wizard is an illusionist and he’s the man behind the curtain. That’s a very had balance, to get falseness into a film set that looks believable to the audience.”
To achieve that, Crowley incorporated elements he discovered while researching the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the “White City” that was built for it. For Munchkinland, the anchor was the designer’s idea to plant 9 million tulips with all the colors of the rainbow and augmenting it with CGI. “We had a brilliant location manager who helped us find the tulip farmer,” he recalls. “The farmer was the biggest fan of Wicked we ever met. Every little element you work with becomes something.”
Filming primarily at Sky Studios Elstree outside of London, Crowley and his team mapped out the film scene-by-scene using models, illustrations, and visual references to create each environment. His inspiration was the old MGM musicals of the 1930s and ’40s where a giant backlot was built to work from in the design. “That’s the nostalgia I’m talking about,” he says. “The audience has a nostalgia for an old school musical, so hopefully we touch something in everyone. In our case, it’s a weave of reality and CGI and we have to strike a balance. You start with real photography, in a real place, you go into some CGI, you pull back and you edit — and I think the audience then doesn’t question it.”
It helped enormously for Crowley to work with a director who created such a joyous environment to work in as Jon M. Chu, whom the designer described variously as “talented,” “humble,” and “generous.”
“Jon says, ‘I need something new. I want something whimsical. I want something colorful. I want to be astounded.’ And then he gives you the play space to find all of this for him. He was with me a lot, especially in pre-production, so we go look at stuff and we try to amalgamate things together. And then he gives me all of this space to work in, and it’s not challenged. It’s such an enjoyment, because he comes in and makes it better – which is the bit I like the most.”
Crowley adds that the freedom he had extended to producer Marc Platt and Universal chief Donna Langley, who trusted the designer and his crew who have been working together for 20 years to build everything from scratch. “I’m grateful for that,” he says.
Were Crowley to finally win his first Oscar in March, it would prove somewhat ironic in that he has worked on eight movies for Nolan and earned all six of his previous bids for Nolan films: The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Dunkirk, First Man, and Tenet. Too, Crowley wasn’t available to work with Nolan on his blockbuster Oscar-winning smash Oppenheimer because he was too busy working on Wicked and Wicked: For Good.
“I owe Christopher because it took I’ve ever done to make Wicked,” he believes.
Watch an exclusive featurette on the Wicked production design with Crowley.
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