They kind of updated it, but they hadn’t changed it.
So it still had all of the great-grandfather’s things in it.
So the house had a huge amount of personality just on its own.
Credit: Claire Folger/Lionsgate
Did you pull from any particular films or shows for inspiration?
Well, we did watchSleuth, that was one that Rian wanted me to watch from the beginning.
There were things about that that we liked, that we used as a reference.
Claire Folger/Lionsgate
I think that was one that had a display of the guy’s books in the background.
But the script was so wonderful.
Did you have to build any part of the house?
Claire Folger/Lionsgate
It wasn’t easy to get a company up to it.
What was the hardest of the house’s odds and ends to source?
I don’t know that there was any one thing.
We made a lot of things.
And often we’d find something interesting, and then that would kind of spark another thing.
For instance, there’s a bar in the study scene.
You know, from that, we then made it into a bar.
It was a very corporate thing to do with a child’s toy.
[Laughs]
I have to ask about that giant display of knives.
How did that come about?
And so it was a thing that grew out of conversations and making different prototypes.
Rian one time described it to me as a score.
What was the absolute weirdest thing that was created for the house?
Yeah, I think that was very much thanks to Rian.
I mean, it’s interesting when you have that much of a movie happening in one place.
It’s got to take on a life of its own or it will get boring really fast.
So you really need to confirm that it was always active and interacting with people in the film.
It has to be as much a part of them as the background.
Knives Out, which stars (deep breath!)
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
