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”It was a celebration of us being back together,” says first-time Oscars showrunner and Executive Producer Raj Kapoor. He’s talking about the instant classic showstopper “I’m Just Ken” that electrified audiences during the 96th Academy Awards, but as he notes, he’s also talking about the joy of returning to the movies. During this intimate conversation also with choreographer Mandy Moore and led by the inimitable Debbie Allen (who choreographed the Oscars a record 10 times), Kapoor and Moore share innumerable backstage tidbits that bring to life how they pulled off the “glamorous Hollywood take” on the Oscar-nominated song with the help of Ryan Gosling. (Just how many Kens can you fit on stage? 64!) Plus how Kapoor kept the show moving, brought energy to the production and just how John Cena ended up in that modesty pouch. 

On a December weekend, costume designer Holly Waddington (earlier credits include War Horse) missed a slew of holiday parties after getting called to meet Yorgos Lanthimos about Poor Things. She spent days in a mad dash, preparing imagery based on the script and eponymous novel. What she ended up pitching involved “strange Japanese dolls with these clothes [in which] the proportion of the cloth is far too big for the scale of the doll.” The surreality of the aesthetic that made it onscreen is discussed by Waddington, and the movie’s hair, makeup, and prosthetic designer, Nadia Stacey (both took home BAFTAs on Feb. 18), who join host Mona May. The trio dive into the visual influences of the film, working with Emma Stone, and the challenges of creating Dr. Baxter’s offbeat look.
Transcript here.

While Oppenheimer production designer Ruth De Jong and director Christopher Nolan were location scouting in New Mexico, site of the world’s first nuclear test, they heard that Russia had invaded Ukraine. “It was at the beginning when everyone was like, well, is this going to be World War III?” recalls De Jong, who “felt a responsibility” given the gravity of the film’s subject matter and Russia’s real-time threats to use nuclear weapons. That commitment to portraying the physical reality of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was also put into practice by costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, who joins De Jong in a conversation with host Jeannine Oppewall, an Oscar-nominated production designer. The trio discuss everything from the film’s absence of “visual noise” to the challenge of straddling worlds in both black-and-white and color to the one hat on the entire set, worn by a single character.
Transcript here.