Inside the Black Bag sets and filming locations – including the Georgian home that's the perfect spy house
In Steven Soderbergh's new spy thriller Black Bag, Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play eternally devoted spouses who are also legendary intelligence agents. A good portion of the film takes place at the London home of their characters, George Woodhouse and Kathryn St. Jean. The Georgian property – where dinner parties become liar traps – is the perfect, sophisticated spy house.
THE LONDON HOME
'I really loved the idea that the front would be stylish but unassuming…gorgeously anonymous in our case,' says production designer Philip Messina of the home's exterior, which was shot on location in Islington, north London. 'We actually coincidentally found out that previously Keira Knightley lived in the adjoining unit.'
Philip added a portico to the facade to make the entrance more intimate – all of which was replicated on stage at Pinewood Studios, where every interior set was built on a soundstage.
'The exterior is this beautiful street in Islington and the interior is on a stage,' the film’s location manager Emily Wright told Time Out. 'To get the views out of the windows in the house, we recreated the street on a soundstage. We brought a couple of residents down to Pinewood to see their houses recreated and they had a beautiful reaction.'
Once you get inside, 'The front room is very sort of traditional Georgian, with that traditional fireplace [and] staircase,' says Philip. 'But as you move through the house, it breaks away and becomes a modern house in the back.'
THE DINING ROOM
The mixed interior styles create a spy facade that differs from what lies behind the curtain. Philip, who worked with set decorator Anna Lynch-Robinson, first approached the interiors through the dining room – perhaps the most important room to the storyline. 'I really started from the dining table out in four directions,' he says. 'I've never designed a set that way.'
Philip also custom-designed the table. 'Very early on, [the director] Steven said, "I want to have a dining table that has light emanating from it,"' he says. 'And I've done all the Ocean's movies with him. I've done the sort of slick version of that, and I didn’t want to do the slick lit table.'
Inspired by a photo that Steven showed of a coffee table with glass pendant balls on it in the director's New York home, Philip devised a version with hand-blown glass to create a light source that feels almost like an upside-down lamp. 'The dining table is actually kind of like a Rubik’s cube,' he says. 'It came apart in all different pieces, and the whole centrepiece [with a brass band around it] pulls up.' This meant the camera could actually film from inside the table, and the light source could be removed for other scenes.
On one wall, a painted mural of the English countryside nods to George's Zen moments fishing on the lake (filmed at Shardeloes Lake, near Amersham in Buckinghamshire). 'In the left-hand corner, there’s a scene of two dogs, hunting dogs, ripping a fox apart,' says Philip. 'I don’t know if you ever register it or not, but that was my ode to like, Oh, there’s an idyllic landscape, but there’s something a little gruesome in the corner if you care to look.'
OTHER CENTREPIECES
Nearby, a glass atrium encases an acacia tree. 'There’s a transparency to it, but there’s also a confinement to it,' explains Philip, noting the same is true of the couple's office. 'I just like the idea of this tree, this beautiful tree, growing in this very artificial kind of space.'
Other details drive home the vision. A few statues with faces scattered around act as inanimate witnesses to all that takes place in the dining room. Heirloom pieces, like a cabinet filled with blue glassware, add to the room's elegance and mysterious blue-grey colour palette.
THE BEDROOM
While the home's main level is open, the secrets lie upstairs, says Philip. 'The bedroom is where the real conversations happen.'
Cate Blanchett expressed how she wanted her character's home to be sensuous, and that feeling peaks in the bedroom. Philip shared Cate's vision, explaining, 'There’s a difference between sexy and sensuous, and I think sensuous can run a little deeper.'
As Philip was putting together the bedroom colour palette – with a not-too-shiny gold, deep turquoise, and dusty pink – costume designer Ellen Mirojnick told Philip that Cate wanted to see what colour he was thinking of for the bedroom. So he sent over a colour swatch in the range of what he envisioned – it turned out to be the same shade Cate's bedroom is painted at her own house. The jewel-toned green-blue is 'almost like a turquoise colour on the wall, but it's dark and muted,' Philip says. 'Cate has amazing taste. She's just one of those people that it's like you know her place is going to be amazing.'
OFFICE SCENES
All the scenes set in the offices of the British Intelligence were filmed on location in central London, including the lobby of the Financial Times building near St Paul's Cathedral, and a Whitechapel office block.
Black Bag certainly nails a sophisticated style – one a work-obsessed couple, who make good money and pour it into their home rather than spend it on holidays or family, can ceaselessly revel in.
Black Bag is in cinemas now.
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