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When a neglected home is a metaphor for the deteriorating marriage of its once-happy inhabitants—as it is in HBO’s new limited series Scenes From a Marriage—much thought goes into creating its interiors. Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac star as slowly uncoupling alpha wife, Mira, and beta husband, Jonathan. She’s a high-powered tech executive, mother, and frequently traveling family breadwinner. A lapsed Orthodox Jew, he's a college philosophy professor and asthmatic who provides much of their young daughter Ava’s care
The series is adapted from Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 miniseries, which was later edited into a film and blamed for the increase in Swedish divorces. The original’s low-budget sets were uninspired, but Israeli writer/director Hagai Levi (In Treatment, The Affair) wanted the house in his update to be the story’s “third character” and “look and feel very different in every episode,” he tells AD. Its ever-changing interiors are reflective of Mira and Jonathan’s sometimes sparking, sometimes sputtering relationship.
A Mount Vernon, New York, house was used in exterior shots as a stand-in for the fictional family’s Brookline, Massachusetts, residence. With its Doric columns, railed front porch, and roof dormer, production designer Kevin Thompson says the two-story house, which he believes dates to the 1920s, was chosen more for its location in a “relatable neighborhood” than its “hodgepodge” architectural style. “We didn’t want to make the couple too rich, and we didn’t want to make them too poor,” he says.
The sets of Scenes From a Marriage were constructed on a soundstage in the same Westchester town. Thompson designed a layout similar enough to the real home’s to be believable, but with a “cinematically friendly” setup to accommodate cameras and lighting. His open plan with a center hall and staircase and windows on all sides is “a traditional American style people will be familiar with,” he says.
Mira fancies herself a design pro—though tellingly, she abandons a renovation project for which she has “a vision.” Set decorator Stephanie Bowen says her understated aesthetic—clean lines, collectible pieces, and Scandinavian accents (in a nod to the original)—are best represented in the dining room, with its Danish midcentury rosewood table, chairs, and side cabinet, and the main bedroom, where a custom upholstered bed’s beige linen fabric “was intentional. It represents the beigeness life can sometimes hold.” There is also a vintage Paul McCobb dresser in the room from Vivamus Gallery.
Jonathan’s sole style contribution—at least initially—is his wood-paneled, salmon-colored study. “He didn’t let her into that room in terms of the design,” Thompson jokes. Furnishings include an antique desk and a vintage rattan table and bookcase purchased at auction. The latter is stacked with a real reference library of Jewish philosophy books. Ava’s toys and artwork encroach on his space, “suggesting a working parent who is also negotiating the care of a young child,” says working mom Bowen.
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Decor callbacks to the Bergman classic are scattered throughout the house, most notably the green couch. “We decided several pieces were heirlooms from Jonathan’s family, like that sofa,” Bowen explains. In the original the married couple sits on a green velvet couch during a magazine interview. In the update Mira and Jonathan are seated on a midcentury “banana” curved love seat upholstered in a Schumacher emerald green mohair fabric as they answer a graduate student’s questions. The dining room wall’s collection of 19th-century French prints of historical religious figures echo costume drawings displayed in the original’s study. Barometers hang in both kitchens.
Levi says the most surprising set decision was instinctual and came to him late in the process as rehearsals and construction were already underway. Most episodes open by breaking the fourth wall, showing one of the actors arriving to set. “I wanted to escape a bit from the hyper realism to emphasize the idea that this story is not totally about this specific couple…but something more abstract. As if it’s about every man and every woman everywhere.”
