Danny Jarabek
Netflix series 3 Body Problem adapts the first book in Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy and is the return of Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (along with Alexander Woo) to the small screen. Also returning to the creative team behind Westeros is production designer Deborah Riley. Riley’s transition from the medieval fantasy realm to that of science fiction in 3 Body Problem presented itself with a whole new array of challenges. The series features numerous locations and timelines that require extraordinary attention to detail to bring to life the expansive storytelling of the novel.
In conversation with Riley, she discusses the visual worldbuilding language she incorporated for sets that ranged from the Cultural Revolution in China to a virtual reality realm to secret military facilities for contacting extraterrestrial life.
Read our full conversation with production designer Deborah Riley for 3 Body Problem now streaming on Netflix.
Hi, this is Danny Jarabek here with Awards Radar, and I am very delighted to have with me today Deborah Riley, production designer for Netflix series 3 Body Problem. Deborah, thank you so much for joining me. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you, and I’m very excited to be chatting with you today about this series.
It’s brilliant to be here, Danny. Thanks for having me.
Yes, absolutely. So, 3 Body Problem, it’s an epic sci-fi adventure, and it’s so much fun to watch. And so much of that, I think, is large in part due to the production design and the world building of bringing this story, bringing this universe, multi complex universe, to life. I’d love to hear from you … I know you have a longstanding creative relationship with David [Benioff] and D.B. [Weiss]. Where did you start with jumping onto this project?
Yes. Well, I first met the guys back in 2013. So, as you say, I’ve known them and been working with them for a long time. When they first introduced me to 3 Body Problem, I have to admit that I’d never heard of it. So, like everybody else, I read the first book. It’s a really intimidating read from a visual perspective because it’s very difficult to understand where to put your toes in. I’ve been used to being in Westeros where, at the end of the day, you could always have a green hill with a horse and a flag, and you could shoot something. But this was obviously something that required a lot more rigor in establishing exactly where we were. It goes through all of these various stages, but how do you make it look like a cohesive whole? That was something that was a real challenge. The place that I started, which, essentially, went back to what I learned with the guys is that what they really respond to is a very grounded world. Just like it was important to create a grounded world so that the audience could believe in dragons, in this instance, it was creating a grounded world that the audience would believe in the fictional science. And that science fiction was something that in my department I took very seriously because I didn’t understand anything about it. I didn’t know what nanotechnology was. I didn’t understand cryogenics and brains and launching rocket ships. So, that was something that was a really big learning curve for all of the art department. We took it very, very seriously, but it all had to come from a very grounded place.
With your department and some of the related art departments, as you’re saying, what was the kicking-off point for finding some of the visual language, specifically with you were working with different timelines and different places, starting the series in this Chinese setting with the context of the cultural revolution. What were some of the iconography visual information that you were absorbing yourself into to start to flesh out this world?
The very first place that I started was the very first place that you see on the show, and that’s within the history of the cultural revolution. And I was very lucky to be working with the director, Derek Tsang, and he really was the guiding light through all of that. And I had a wonderful Chinese art director named Chapman Kan, and they really were able to lend the historical significance to those sets and make sure that it wasn’t something that the art department was ever taking liberties with, that we were portraying it as exactly as we possibly could and trying to tell the truth of those sequences, and in order to establish the horror that Yu Wen Ji was witnessing that then would lead to the moment that she presses the button. And the part that I enjoyed most in all of the work in China was the Red Coast base, that control room. That was a wonderful build that we did on stage in Shepparton and really, really enjoyable. But, again, trying to tell the truth of that space. And from there to then be able to go into the VR game. The thing that’s really original about that VR game is that the players inside of it, that they feel that it’s a real environment. You know, they can touch it. They can feel it. It’s cold or windy, whatever. So, again, it was about the reality of that. We had a lot of concept work that we did to try and figure out exactly what David and Dan had in mind. And Alex, obviously. Then, from there, it was about working with visual effects, figuring out how much we needed to build on stage and how much they would then take over. Jonathan Freeman, our cinematographer for those first two episodes, he was really pivotal in defining exactly how that world would look. So, it was an enormous collaboration. And then, of course, you’ve got modern day sequences, and then we’re up on a Mongolian temple in Kublai Khan’s pleasure dome. It launches everywhere. And then as I said, we’ve got cryogenics and rocket ships. It was like doing every Olympic event at once, from an art department perspective.
Truly. That’s something that I constantly was feeling the marvel because there’s so many places, there’s so many things happening. It’s feels like you were living in this fantasy dream production design environment space.
Yeah. And we were all saying, “What is this? Is this modern day? Is it fantasy? Is it period? What are we doing?” It’s like, “I don’t know. Let’s just keep going.”
I love that. You mentioned a couple of things that I wanted to touch on a little bit further. Your relationship with VFX in this because I was curious to hear a little bit more of how you managed to decide what aspects you wanted to build versus what were going to be done in postproduction. Were there any specific sets that you really in particular wanted to make sure you were able to build for these?
Well, we’ve been very lucky as a team insofar as we’ve all been working together now for over a decade. So, the basic rules that we’d established on the other show were brought forward into this one, which is always we build whatever we can to catch as much as possible in camera. And visual effects obviously take care of the extensions. In this world, there was obviously a lot more that they had to do create an anti-gravity sequence. You know? There’s so many wild notions that then visual effects had to take over. So, from the cutting of Judgment Day to flying horses or whatever, it was a huge job for them as well. I think one of the sequences that I enjoyed the most that relied very heavily on stunts and visual effects was actually Kublai Khan’s Pleasure Dome and that Mongolian architecture that we created and the giant cauldron that Jin and Jack find themselves in. Then, when it moves into that sequence and relying on our stunt friends who, again, we’d worked with for a long time, it was the perfect set where all of the departments had to collaborate to create the one image. I thoroughly enjoy it when we’re all working together towards a very singular goal. It’s really rewarding.
Yeah. That’s really cool to hear. I mean, the whole VR side of the series is just visually so compelling. And also, the headpiece itself that brings us into this world, was that something that you were involved in the process of designing and making?
Oh, very heavily. Yeah. That headset was something that David and Dan and Alex [Woo] had a very clear vision of. And, weirdly, we started doing a lot of research on the history of the headsets and looking at maybe what NASA had been dealing with for a while and what other people had been designing. It became really clear that what the guys were after was something that was seamless, that there was absolutely no way that anybody on Earth would ever understand how it was working. It’s not that there’s any ports. You can’t plug it in. There’s nothing that we understand from our world that relates to this thing, except that it fits a human head. And then the mirror finish on it, speaking of visual effects, drove them completely crazy. But for book readers, you understand why it needs to be the mirror finish. Then, we had to make a headset to fit all of the actors because it’s not ‘one size fits all.’ It had to be very specific to them and the beautiful cases that they would come in with the player’s name written on top. They’re one of the most beautiful props, I think, I’ve seen.
It is an incredible prop. I’m assuming with the VFX, you’re referring to the reflections that it was constantly grabbing?
Yeah. Like, to remove every … the camera and the crew and the lights and everything that they would see. And then, of course, I wasn’t very popular when I made the desk in Wade’s office, that black mirror finish. Also, in the boardroom, there was that big table with the mirror finish as well. So, it’s like reflections upon reflections. And, yes, I wasn’t very popular, but it looked great.
Well, I’m glad that it all worked out because it does look great, as you said. Moving back a little bit, bigger picture, you mentioned, of course, your longstanding history with being in the world of rest of Westeros. What did it entail for you to reframe into this very dense, very heavy science fiction world that’s so rich with this physics history and also scientific history, but also this fictional history to it as well.
Well, 3 Body Problem made the design of Game of Thrones look like a walk in the park, I have to say. Because at least on Thrones, it was consistent. We were in a medieval world. But, yeah, here, exactly as you say, we weren’t. There was nothing that you could hold onto for greater than an episode, really, because it just kept marching forward throughout. So, it was very, very important to me to try and understand the science in particular and to make that as believable as possible. When we’re introduced to the concept of the nanofibers, we were working with a consultant. His name was Matthew Kenzie, and he’s a particle physicist who works at CERN. He was able to describe to us in theory what it was that Auggie was working on and then how that diamond-cutter machine would work, insofar as the fibers themselves would be static, and it was important for the diamond to move through those fibers in the same way that when we get to episode five, you’ve got the static fibers that then Judgment Day sails through. So, there were some very key and fundamental scientific concepts that we had to wrap our heads around and be able to show visually. And then, when it comes to later on when we move to cryogenics and the rocket and loading the rocket, we were working with a NASA aerospace engineer, Bobak Ferdowsi, so we had to be really sure that we had the science as right as we possibly could. Even though it’s fictitious science, an audience has to believe that it’s real.
Yeah. And with episode five, as you mentioned, this Judgment Day massive set piece, what were some of the conversations [and] challenges? I’m sure there were many obstacles to bringing that to life. What was your role in bringing that together?
Well, Minkie Spiro was the captain of that ship. She was our director. And the key to the Judgment Day sequence was really breaking it down into bite-sized pieces and trying to understand how showing every stage of the process would lead to the slicing of the ship and then to be able to illustrate the slicing of the ship in a way that an audience could understand what was happening. It was really challenging. The precursor of it all was in Auggie’s lab when she demonstrates what nanotechnology can do, we see them out on the side of the canal there where Wade and the engineers are putting the setup together, to putting those pylons and the fibers into the water and sinking them. And then, you meet Mike Evans inside the ship, and we built two corridors. The executive corridor where his office is and Felix’s office, and then the public corridor where there’s the cafeteria and the little kids school where you see the backpacks be split. There were very, very long and careful meetings. And exactly the same went for the ship’s deck, which we built. It was just pacing everything, through element by element. What would visually be split, where it would be split, how it would fall, and even just the guy with the hose, hosing. That was an idea of Minkie’s to first illustrate that something was wrong. Then, you see the helicopter slice the little kids through the cyclone fencing. All of that was very meticulously planned as step by step by step what she was going to be able to show. It’s all really a tribute to her.
Yeah. I mean, that set piece is just incredible. The scale of it, the scope of it, I can’t even imagine how much had to come together all at once for that. It’s awesome.
I know. And I remember really thinking to myself, “Is this going to work?” I felt a bit like Raj just saying, “Well, it’s not working. Have we done enough?” And, yeah, it’s amazing when you see the whole piece edited together, that it works as well as it does. It’s extraordinary.
Well, the whole series is incredible, and your work in it, production design, it is just stunning from beginning to end. So, I appreciate the time. Thank you so much for sharing a little bit more behind the scenes. Deborah Riley, incredible Emmy-winning production designer. Thank you so much for spending the time. I really appreciated getting to chat a little bit more about 3 Body Problem.
Thanks so much. It’s a pleasure, Danny. Thank you.
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