What was the pitch for this film? How much of the real world were you expecting to work with?
Shona Heath: There was so much design work to do, before we even went to building. Yorgos [Lanthimos, the director] was very keen that everything was built, so originally we wanted to use as few real locations as possible. The ones we ended up using had huge Poor Things makeovers and hopefully weren’t recognizable. For example, the church [in London, in which Bella gets married] was given a full-on, sort of M.C. Escher black-and-white, chunky Brutalist approach. That was a local location in Budapest. Probably only five percent of the whole film is in real locations, that being the two medical schools, the church, the forest, and [Lord Alfie Blessington’s] interiors—his house itself was actually a miniature.
James Price: The conceit was that we’d make anywhere that was real feel like a set, because Yorgos really wanted to make a 1930s studio picture as if it were made with today’s technology.
SH: We had to put the skies there, whether they were hand-painted or huge LED screens. We shot ink tanks and cloud tanks to create skies as well. It’s never what you think.
JP: We’d say, “In this world, you can’t take the sky for granted.”
Before we can talk about travel in the abstract, I do have to ask—where in the world were you making this movie?
JP: We were based in Budapest, in Hungary. Alfie’s home was the [Semmelweis University Central Library], it was attached to a university. The woods were a 20-minute drive from central Budapest. The church was actually a crypt, beneath a church, on the outskirts.
The London medical school was in the old television building right in the city center, not far from where Parliament is. And then one site for Lisbon, a restaurant, was an old shelter for orphaned children that we made unrecognizable—we changed the windows, we stuck plaster fish on the walls, and we built a stage.
We enjoyed Budapest for other reasons, rather than actual filming. It was a great place to live for six months—the baths, the food, it’s a great city. I lived two minutes from Budapest Jazz Club. My family came out and spent the summer with me, and they’d hang out every day at Margaret Island. When I was there, I’d join them because there’s an amazing swimming pool. In the evenings, we’d have a bit of goulash and head to the jazz club.
