Perry Mason
is an American period drama television series based on the character of the
same name created by Erle Stanley Gardner which premiered on June 21, 2020, on
HBO. The series was developed and written by Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald and
stars Matthew Rhys in the title role. In July 2020, the series was renewed for
a second season.
The series
focuses on the origin story of famed defense lawyer Perry Mason. In 1932, Los
Angeles is prospering while the rest of the U.S. is recovering from the grip of
the Great Depression. Down-and-out private investigator Perry Mason is
struggling with his trauma from The Great War and being divorced. He's hired
for a sensational child kidnapping trial and his investigation portends major
consequences for Mason, his client, and the city itself.
On August
15, 2016, it was reported that HBO was developing a drama series based on the
Perry Mason stories written by Erle Stanley Gardner. The production was expected
to be written by Nic Pizzolatto who was also set to executive produce alongside
Robert Downey Jr. and Joe Horacek. Production companies involved with the
series were slated to consist of Team Downey. On August 25, 2017, it was
announced that Pizzolatto had dropped out of the production in order to focus
on the third season of True Detective and that he was being replaced as the
project's writer by Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald.
On January 14, 2019, it was announced that HBO had given the production an order as a limited series. It was further announced that Jones, Fitzgerald, Susan Downey, and Amanda Burrell would serve as additional executive producers, that Matthew Rhys would serve as a producer, and that the production was in the process of hiring a director. Jones and Fitzgerald serve as showrunners for the series as well. In March, Tim Van Patten was announced as director and executive producer. On July 22, 2020, it was revealed HBO had decided to turn Perry Mason into a regular series, renewing it for a second season.
Casting
Alongside
the initial development announcement, it was confirmed that Robert Downey Jr.
would star as the titular Perry Mason. On July 25, 2018, it was reported that
Downey had dropped out of the role due to his feature film schedule and that a
search for his replacement was ongoing.[18] On January 14, 2019, it was
announced that Matthew Rhys had been cast to replace Downey. Tatiana Maslany joined
in April. John Lithgow was added to the cast in May. In June, Chris Chalk and
Shea Whigham were cast in lead roles, with Nate Corddry, Veronica Falcón,
Jefferson Mays, Gayle Rankin and Lili Taylor set in recurring roles. Juliet
Rylance, Andrew Howard, Eric Lange, Robert Patrick and Stephen Root joined in
July. Justin Kirk would be added in October.
Costume designer Emma Potter.
Inside the Costume Design of HBO's 'Perry Mason': "There's So Much Wear and Tear and Life"
8:45 AM PDT
7/3/2020 by Degen Pener
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/a-look-behind-scenes-at-costumes-hbos-perry-mason-1301153
Courtesy of
WarnerMedia
Matthew
Rhys in 'Perry Mason'.
Costume
designer Emma Potter talks about the fascinating sources she relied on to bring
the characters of the Depression-era miniseries, starring Matthew Rhys, to
life.
On HBO’s
new miniseries Perry Mason, wildly contrasting aspects of 1930s Los Angeles are
spotlighted by differences in costume. “With the Great Depression happening and
also with the movie industry happening, there was this strange juxtaposition in
the city,” says Emma Potter, costume designer of the series, which stars
Matthew Rhys as the famed private investigator. “We capture all of that, from a
New Year’s Eve gala in a Hollywood studio to seeing people with nothing who
migrating to the city from other states looking for work.”
Potter says
that in her work on the show, which airs its finale Aug. 9, she above all
wanted to “avoid a glossed-over or stylized feel from a costume standpoint.” To
do that, she relied on original photography and documentation to get a sense of
what people really looked like, including the book Quick Watson, The Camera —
Seventy-five years of News Photography, edited by Delmar Watson, which
documents the work of the Watsons, a family of photographers in Los Angeles.
And from looking at shots by photographers like Dorothea Lange, she saw that,
for many people of that era, “the clothing becomes like a second skin. There’s
so much wear and tear and life on the garments. You saw how much life was on them
and how much it had worn people away. They aged a lot faster and they were just
more weathered. We were trying to find these real people. That was the driving
force of the whole design process.”
For the
wardrobe of lead character Perry Mason, Potter leaned into that idea of wear
and tear. “Mason looks like he just rolled out of bed. He’s very worn in and
broken down and fraying,” says the designer, who put considerable effort into
getting one particular garment, his jacket, just right. “We had this idea that
we wanted him to have this kind of jacket that’s almost like a piece of armor,
that he can kind of disappear within.” Potter looked at photographs from the
era to decide on the proper silhouette, then started sourcing vintage jackets
for Rhys to try on.
“It was
important for Matthew and I to start from a place of vintage clothing even
though we would have to build something for him. To put something old and worn
on was an organic way to find this character that was so disheveled,” she says.
Eventually she settled on a brown leather jacket for Mason and made up to seven
versions of it, some with cigarette burns and buttons that have unraveled. “We
had a great ageing and dyeing team who came in and spent a really long time
breaking down the garments.” She also notes Mason’s habit of acquiring clothes
from unusual places. “He’s just going around and scrounging up stuff. So
nothing has to fit him right. Nothing has to make any sense. His clothing might
not fit as properly as other people’s garments. It might actually be a bit big
for him but he’s comfortable in it and he can move around in it.”
While
Potter stresses that Mason “is who he is,” for most of the other main
characters, there are interesting differences between how they present
themselves publicly and how they are when they are alone. “When they are in
their own homes, they are very different people. All of them have these other
aspects of their lives,” says Potter (who was the costume designer on season
three of HBO’s True Detective.)
That’s
especially the case with Sister Alice, played by Tatiana Maslany, who is
loosely based on the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. In her public role at
her church, “she has this stage presence,” says Potter. “She almost kind of
feels like a leading lady. She’s this celebrity icon who people are gravitating
towards. She’s a real spectacle. So something I enjoyed learning was that the
actual Sister Aimee had her gowns made by people who were designing costumes
for films.” In the series, Sister
Alice’s gowns are “very glamorous silken gowns with this pearlescent quality in
red, white and blue or gold and and silver. She is very glossy,” says Potter.
But when
Sister Alice is at home, “she’s a different character,” says Potter. “I don’t
want to give too much of that away, but the version of her that is at home or
backstage, who’s not in her performance clothing, is a completely different
look. It’s that juxtaposition of the character’s public and private sides that
is always so compelling for me.”
For the
character of Paul Drake, a beat cop, played by Chris Chalk, the costume
designer consulted the book Defender of the Angels, A Black Policeman in Old
Los Angeles, published in 1969, written by Jess Kimbrough about his experiences
in the early decades of the last century. “[Kimbrough] wasn’t the first Black
police officer. LAPD had Black officers starting in the late 1800s and the
numbers increased as the city grew. He was however the first to write an
account on his time,” says Potter.
On the show, Drake is fastidious about his appearance. “Chris and I worked really closely on figuring out what it means when he’s in his police uniform. He probably keeps himself a little neater, a little more polished than the other officers around there. He pushed himself a little bit harder,” she says. When he’s not working, one of Drake’s signature pieces is a brown knit pea coat. “It’s another favorite piece in how strong and unusual it is,” says Potter, who consulted Bette Yarbrough Cox’s book Central Avenue: Its Rise and Fall, 1890-c1950: Including the Musical Renaissance of Black Los Angeles and looked at images of what musicians wore when playing at the Dunbar Hotel’s night, a center of the jazz scene in L.A. “I remember [executive producer and director] Tim Van Patten posing a question of what does Paul wear to church or out for a date with his wife and that spurred the whole creative process for me. He was so good at inspiring the design process in a really organic way.”
To put
together Perry Mason’s costumes, Potter relied on a variety of sources, working
closely with Western Costume Company as well as other costume shops such as
Palace Costume, MPCC and American. She built many pieces in-house and
collaborated with makers such as Serj Custom Tailoring for men’s suiting, Bill
Hargate Costumes (for Sister Alice’s gowns) and Anto for men’s shirting. Himel
Brothers made Rhys' leather jackets.
But she
didn’t want to go overboard and create wardrobes that were too extensive for
the era. “It’s not a time period when everyone has a lot of clothing,” she
says, pointing for example to the character of legal secretary Della Street,
played by Juliet Rylance. “It was really important for us for certain
characters such as Della to have a pretty small, concise closet and to repeat
the clothing, to make sure that every time she steps out of the door she doesn’t
have a different outfit. Someone like Della is going to really take care of her
garments and you see the mends or repair work she would have done.”
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