Interview: Cinematographer Maceo Bishop Discusses the Look of ‘The Curse’

Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie‘s The Curse is one of the most unique television series you’ll see in your lifetime. The viewing experience is indescribable through words, but it begs to be seen and believed. It’s equal parts funny and eye-opening, but the show slowly takes a surreal turn, building up to a finale that no one ever saw coming.

The show also has a unique visual style, brought to life by cinematographer Maceo Bishop, who previously worked with Safdie on Uncut Gems as a camera operator and second unit director of photography. Bishop joined Awards Radar on a Zoom conversation about the look and feel of an incredible television series like The Curse. He discussed his approach to shooting the series and its main references while also discussing using mirrors and windows to create an observational point of view.

At the end of this interview, we also discussed the show’s unreal, jaw-dropping finale but kept the story’s specifics minimal. However, if you still haven’t seen the series and don’t want to know anything about it, it’s best you read this interview after viewing the show since you will never expect how it ends.

Read the full conversation below:

How does one approach such a unique project like The Curse? 

To be honest with you, when I read the script, I was like, “Is anybody going actually to let us do this?” But with Benny Safdie involved, he’s like a force of nature and gets stuff done. Nathan Fielder obviously had this incredible reputation, but I hadn’t met him yet and didn’t know his work much. I still didn’t know what would come out of all of this and if the ideas presented in the script would come together, and it does feel like a lot with Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder colliding in the screenplay, but in such a great way. 

When Benny told me that Emma Stone would be involved, I knew it would be fantastic and started realizing the project would happen. The approach to shooting the series started with finding a look that matched the story, the environment, and the characters and served it well. Benny started to research and look at what could be some of our rules around shooting it and what we wanted the texture of the image to be. One of the main influences was To Catch a Predator and Candid Camera, which Benny talked to me about early on. These shows are unique in their aesthetic, and we started with that as a seed. 

We went and looked at some of the lenses at Panavision. Initially, we wanted to shoot on 16mm film, but when we were told it wasn’t possible for the studio, we looked at what we could do digitally and worked it from there. We tuned lenses differently and played with what digital could do because we didn’t want the polished look that digital can give you, which can be so great for other things, but it didn’t seem like it was the right thing for us and this story. And that’s how the look was ultimately found.

Candid Camera is a great reference, and I don’t know if this is just me, but it does feel like most of the scenes with Whitney [Emma Stone], Asher [Nathan Fielder], and Dougie [Benny Safdie] are shot at a distance, through windows, very far away from the characters, as if it’s adopting a very observational, voyeuristic point of view. 

100%, and it’s not just you. That is definitely what we were doing. We were always shooting through something, which made it more challenging for the viewer to get the information out of the characters. That was one of our rules, and we were definitely observational.

Was there a specific sort of tone or atmosphere that dictated how the episodes would look?

Yes, and there were the overall rules that we were setting for ourselves, that were consistent through all of the episodes, except the end, which goes through a real transformation and change in Nathan’s character. That changed by necessity towards the end, but I think we were consistent with our approach for all episodes.

Can you talk about using mirrors throughout the series to create this distorted point of view we frequently get of the characters?

Yeah, mirrors take a big place in the show. The houses are in and of themselves mirrors, which I think had more to do with the characters’ philosophy about how they were reflecting back the neighborhood onto itself and having a low impact on the community, which ended up being the opposite of the truth. We also frequently embraced the mirrors during shooting, because it was naturally part of the story. When Whitney walks up to the house and checks herself in the reflection, there’s something there to be unpacked when you see her distorted reflection in the mirror, and we took all of the opportunities we had with them.

In terms of shooting the Fliplanthropy/Green Queen portions of the series, were there any reality shows you looked at as references to match the look and feel of those sections?

I’ve seen so much of that stuff to understand the aesthetic, especially when I went to the dentist [laughs]. Benny did dive a little bit deeper into specific shows. I can’t remember the one he referenced, but they focused on real estate. So we understood what that aesthetic was, but I didn’t want to match anything in particular. We wanted to design our own. Whitney wanted to make a groundbreaking show, which we were after. It was a lot of fun to play with a different aesthetic.

There’s this really cool shot in episode six where Asher sees Bill [David DeLao] at a hardware store, and he tries to say hello. The camera follows him as he tries to follow Bill. Can you talk about how that specific that specific scene was shot?

This was done like a chase scene. Asher sees him between the aisles periodically, and it gets weirder because proximity-wise, he would have heard him. So we wanted to play with that. I hadn’t really thought about this before, but in a similar way, we’re always looking through things and trying to find our characters and see them a little bit better, but always with something blocking us or keeping us from getting a clear shot at them. 

We did the same thing with that Bill scene and ran our track up and down the aisles to look for these brief moments. And with just that little bit of a glance at somebody,  you can get so much information from that. Both characters played it really well, and it gets even creepier and weirder when Bill pretends that this odd chase never happened. 

The finale is such a great episode because it takes the show in a far more surreal direction than we initially thought. Can you talk about the process of shooting the finale, making its aesthetic far more surreal, and if there were some moments you wanted to ensure stand apart from the rest of the show?

To be honest, it’s all in the writing. When I was reading the script, it was surreal enough on its own; our approach didn’t need to be too far from what was on the page. So much of it was practical, too. Obviously, not the stuff in outer space, but everything in the house was. Just the technical side of it, putting Emma and Nathan upside down was really fun to do on its own. I love it when how I approach things is that you’re just in the story. You want to be the story’s invisible hand, and I think that’s how we achieved that. We would hold shots longer and at a wider lens, so you didn’t feel us doing any tricky stuff we’re all accustomed to seeing. Hopefully, most people were in awe of this transformation Whitney and Asher were going through, and that feels like it would if that did happen for people [laughs].

Is there a particular scene or shot that you worked on in the series that you’re the proudest of as a cinematographer?

Oh, God, I guess the short answer is that there was a lot I loved. But if I was to talk about something just because I recently looked at it was in episode four. There were a lot of cool places that we got to be in. For example, when Dougie wakes up on a night of partying and is in his car, he doesn’t quite know where he is. He gets out, takes a walk, and he’s by the Rio Grande. We tilt up and see these Black Mesa geological structures in New Mexico. That was cool because we were the first ones to be there. 

We were on Indigenous land and were invited to shoot there. I felt honored to be invited to come in and shoot in a space that people hadn’t shot in before. To have a perspective that many people don’t get to see was just beautiful. We did this simple tilt-up to show this structure that he was nearby. It’s simple, but it was powerful and important to me. 

Of course, Dougie doesn’t know where he is, but you can feel that he is a spiritual person if ever he gets his stuff together. He’s on some path. That’s just me, and everybody will have their own opinions, but we shot this moment in the vein of a fun discovery scene for him. Also, in that episode, there’s a nice long walk with Whitney when she walks through the neighborhood and chooses to walk to the neighbor’s house, and then you see her neighbors and where she’s living. Emma has a very genuine interaction with a neighbor and his dog, and there’s something super sweet about it. 

I’m proud of many things from the show, and I’m glad that people are still getting to see it for the first time. I get text messages from friends who are like, “Oh, my God, I just finished The Curse! I have to talk to you right now!” It’s just fun when I get those texts and calls from friends because it means they saw it, had a good time, and want to talk about it. That’s what it’s all about.

All episodes of The Curse are now available to view on Paramount+.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]