Executive producer and novelist JP Delaney and production designer Jon Henson talk bringing Delaney's beautiful (but eerie!) vision to fruition.
The Girl Before's ultra-minimalist dream house harbors dark secrets.
Designed by uber-controlling star architect Edward Monkford (David Oyelowo), the home is a character in its own right, with customizable mood settings, questionnaires, and advanced technology to supposedly gather data on its occupants "to improve the user experience."
"The house has moods," co-writer and executive producer JP Delaney — who adapted his own novel for the miniseries — tells. "Depending on where you put the camera and how you light it, it can be austere, but it can be luxurious. It can be claustrophobic. It can be cocooning. It can be warm or it can be sterile."
It's also, according to Delaney, "Edward's brain made concrete." "And that's why he feels this controlling possessiveness for it, is that he's not just designed a house, he's designed a way of life and that feeds into his own psychopathy," Delaney explains.
Here, the author and production designer Jon Henson reveal how they brought it to life for the HBO Max miniseries, which also stars Jessica Plummer, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Ben Hardy...
The New York Times: In ‘The Girl Before,’ Minimalism Offers a Dangerous Sanctuary
