Steven Prusakowski
One minute you’re inside the structured, bureaucratic rooms of an American diplomatic facility; the next, you’re navigating snow-covered foreign streets and stepping into hidden, high-stakes surveillance rooms. For Peacock’s spy thriller Ponies, production designer Sara K White bypassed the dreary “sad Soviet” trope, using months of library research and archival footage to build an immersive, historically grounded world.
The series, starring Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson as embassy secretaries thrust into espionage after their spy husbands are killed, takes viewers on a wild ride from the bureaucratic, sterile hallways of the West to the deeply layered, unpredictable heart of the Soviet East, and much of the heavy lifting is done by the vibrant, immersive sets of White.
White answered my questions about how she provided the team authentic feeling environments in which to play their spy games.
What kind of research do you do to prepare for a series where you have to capture both the look & feel of a specific era across two continents, in addition to inside the workplaces at government facilities, and the streets of international cities?
I had the good fortune of having three months from the initial interview to the start of production. Years of love and immersion in the American 70s meant my task was the void of knowledge on the history of Russian & Soviet culture, crafts, art & architecture. In the cool NYPL’s Art & Architecture Room & Picture Collection, I swam through piles of books and folios full of the charismatic graphic & industrial design. If you can, I heartily recommend using these unique resources.
I also dug into the socio-economic and political forces that moved the country from the Tsarist era in the 1800s into the failing USSR of the late 1970s. I wanted to know not just what the country looked like, but why. Who would have access to an apartment in an elegant Stalinka, what did that mean about their wealth and power by the 70s? I read treatises on government spending in the nascent USSR and the state-mandated urbanization that began under Stalin. That drive created the need for state-supplied housing – the cheap, plentiful Panel House known as a Kruschevka, where Sasha finds himself. That knowledge also helped me position Andrei in a 1940s apartment that straddles both styles.
Archival Footage Service on YouTube and PastVu.com was an incredible resource for street life. I never would have known just how deep the snow was in January 1977 or that there were old wooden Russian Revival houses still lining the streets. It also let me see the everyday signage, colors and fashions from a layman’s perspective. My favorite research, though, was watching popular 70’s Soviet movies on MosFilm’s YouTube channel, a great way to see the USSR from its own propaganda machine. Autumn Marathon and The Irony of Fate were great references, along with Office Romance.
Which is more challenging, trying to create 1970s America or 1970s Russia, since not everybody would be familiar with what Russia looks like?
Both are fraught, of course, and you’ll never win everyone with any interpretation. There’s a sense of scale we missed with Moscow because Budapest is just a smaller city. We had to work very hard to get the wide open squares and roads. We had a close match on a lot of architecture, but I was constantly adjusting the frame to miss the Austrian flair from Hungary’s past.
The biggest challenge of our 70’s America was being set in an embassy. Our on-staff researcher was Russian and couldn’t get any images out of the US Government. Our showrunner had but a few sentences that described the built environment, and design direction was based on those. I interviewed several people who had worked at or lived at the Moscow Embassy, but we’re talking 90’s at the earliest. We eventually got enough info to bring in details like the Embassy-supplied bedroom furniture in Twila’s apartment, which spoke to the lack of importance that room had played in Tom & Twila’s relationship. We otherwise leaned more heavily on the wider American culture, which did allow us to create distinction between the US & USSR’s spaces that was more architectural, less decor and palette, which felt more correct for the tone of the show.
How much was the focus on trying to capture the accurate look compared to capturing the feel of the era? What type of sets did you need to build to pull off creating these locations?
Budapest gave us its Soviet history, and we exploited it every time we could. Our budget only went so far, though, so we did lean into the feel of the era, without being lackadaisical about details. With built sets leaning into differing massing styles, I also defined each country with loose color control, warm tones in Soviet spaces, cool tones for America.
But a critical part of our visual language was in the streetscapes. Bea & Twila are women out in the world, interacting with Moscow. For that reason, signage felt like a set unto itself. My lead Graphic Designer, Gyömi Kabai, and her team were an absolute powerhouse, giving each sign its own unique life and history. Her successful grasp of the tone of the project was critical. We didn’t want the streets to feel like a Soviet ‘70s funhouse, rather a space that represented Moscow’s history.
Were most of the sets practical or did you turn to digital to bring them to life?
We have coverage from VFX to hide non-period details that we truly could not remove – power lines, HVAC systems and roller window shutters were my nemesis on this one. But we leaned on the practical quite often, framing the show to allow signage, vehicles, and supplementary sidewalk dressing to tell the story every time we could.
What are the core challenges when creating these places? How did you overcome the challenges?
Given our limitations, I had to focus on what would take the average viewer out of our story. White plastic roller window shutters were on absolutely every window in Budapest, and they were completely wrong for period, so I had to use visual sleight of hand to distract the viewer. We found locations where they are less visible or overshadowed by other architectural marvels, construction and graphics hid them when we could, and I would pester our DPs, Callan Green and Anna Patarakina, to frame them out whenever possible. And I did tap our VFX supervisor on the shoulder every day. Thankfully not one interview has brought that up, so I think we succeeded!
When you’re creating these are there ever epiphanies that shape your approach or understanding?
Absolutely – especially in a TV show. I’m not even privy to the entire arc of the characters when I come on a show, so their motivations and personalities can flesh out in front of me and I’ll work to redefine or stage upcoming sets to meet them in their story.
On this, because I didn’t know what we would get for locations and resources in Budapest, it took being in the scout van to understand how the worlds could be differentiated, especially since we weren’t relying on the trope of a sad, gray Soviet Union. The built environment and the research merged into a theory of design that could serve the story and reflect the real world in an authentic way.
What kind of collaboration is there across departments to build this world and populate it in a way that helped support the telling of the story?
There were a lot of long-time collaborators on this show, which made it a better show from start to finish. I was lucky to bring my US Supervising Art Director, Christine Foley, it was great to have a team member I could trust implicitly. I’d known David Iserson for a few years, and was working with co-creator Susanna Fogel for the fourth time, Costume Designer Anastasia Magoutas for the third, which helped us immensely in creating a color language for the show. It was a hard sell at the beginning of the project, because it goes against the well-worn “sad Soviet” aesthetic. Once we dialed it in, we had a few passes at the LUT to give us the color space we needed while still feeling like it was “vintage.”
I worked closely with Callan Green, our Ep 1 DP, when selecting an aspect ratio. It was exciting to land on 3:2 for nostalgia – and to allow us to see more of the incredible period ceiling design! Truly, if you watch this show for nothing else, keep your eye at the top of frame to see some of the best ceilings of the 20th century. We’d often find spectacular locations on the outskirts, so I’d work with the AD and Locations team to find ways to pair other sets and scenes so we could get that eye candy on screen.
Is there any one piece that you were most proud of?
I’m truly so proud of The Bubble. It’s a distillation of form, every element had to be very precise. We spent a lot of time working on the baffles – the walls and ceiling were foam so we could wild them, the floor was oak to allow us to lay crew platforming down. So many small details – the faux texture, the stain color, should they be 4” or 5” high, should they wrap the central columns, what’s the height of the base to allow the floor and walls to elegantly give space to each other, etc. Creating a light fixture that was properly distanced from the wall to graze the razor edges with light also took a few passes. The channel glass was all custom bent plexi, with a tinted film that gave us a hint of ferrous glass & enough of a texture that we didn’t have to rely on VFX to fix every reflection.
Seeing the steel base come in was a delight, finessing the weighted swing of the hidden door required a number of tests, but it was so satisfying to get right. And, because we were featuring American decor, we were limited in resources. We had to make our own Steelcase-style table & custom paint all the chairs. We were able to so accurately deliver the set that you can barely see the difference between the concept art and photos. When we opened that set for the first time, David Iserson, our show runner, immediately began re-staging scenes into it, so all that work was worth it. It ended up with a lot more screen time than we thought!
In design, much of the work can be invisible to some degree. Although your creativity and expertise are pushed to the max, not everything will be as appreciated relative to the work you put into it. Is there any one part of your production design that may look small but really challenged you?
You’d never know by watching it, but working on the K Bridge in Budapest for Episode 4 was a huge undertaking for us. Twila & Vera stand at a railing until it gives way, plunging Vera into the river below. We couldn’t alter the bridge, so we had to build a portion of the bridge next to the bridge so we could shoot the stunt work. Matching the construction and tremendous age in our bridge piece, and making it safe as the Hungarian snowpack melted around us, raising the water level and current, were thankfully invisible to the audience. To my art director for that set, Gergő Kukucska, and his team, it was months of hard work!
Are there any Easter eggs or fun specific details that you hope the general public will spot? Or others you did just for you?
We consistently used a ruddy marble in spaces that were compromised by Soviet assets, a theme for a careful viewer in a number of spaces. In Ray & Cheryl’s apartment you’ll notice her headboard has a slab of it embedded to hint at her betrayal. Her son also has red stars and dancing bears in his bedroom wallpaper, countering her assertion that she doesn’t want him to grow up influenced by the Soviets.
I also brought in a few details I pulled from the 70’s Soviet films. We had a huge poster from Widows on the street, for obvious reasons. But for me, it was the little details from The Diamond Arm, Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future, and particularly the apartment wallpaper of the philandering lead from Autumn Marathon, which we riffed on for Andrei’s study. It was great fun to nod at something special for the Russian audience members who know the cultural history of the time.
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