Turns out, the Arconia apartment building central to “Only Murders in the Building” still has a few secrets left to tell — including a whole other wing consisting of tenants who (shudder) rent, all of whom had the trajectory needed to fire the bullet that killed Sazz (Jane Lynch) at the end of Season 3.
“That was completely fun,” production designer Patrick Howe told IndieWire. “Radically different from those who own. And I hope it was not too much of an insult to them. But the writers put in the lines about windows being painted shut so the owners wouldn’t have to look at air conditioners. So I was like, all right then, anything’s fair game.”
The resulting apartments lack the airy graciousness of what we’ve seen in the previous three seasons, allowing a note of jealous voyeurism from the “Westies” to creep in, particularly given the “Rear Window” aspect of the bank of windows facing the east wing. And the all-important eyelines — Charles, Oliver, and Mabel’s first big clue as they realize a bullet came from the other side of the building — became the first thing Howe worked on when designing the season.
The order of the apartments was particularly important, which necessitated building them in a row on the set, a project aided by showrunner John Hoffman’s assurance that the apartments could be smaller than what we’re used to seeing in the Arconia.
“You could walk down the hall and go to each apartment in order,” Howe said. “And usually, there’s some logistical reason why that can’t work out. But we made that work because it was important to John to physically have that connection of one next to the other.”
It almost didn’t; Howe said they ran out of space, so the apartment for Christmas All the Time Guy (an ugly-sweater-clad Kumail Nanjiani) is actually Sazz’s L.A. apartment decked out in a headache-inducing array of holiday decor. Seen in the L.A.-set season premiere, Sazz’s apartment is a startling recreation of a very specific L.A. vibe, one that has not been seen in the Manhattan-centric series.
“John had written that [it was a] Spanish bungalow. But had he not, that’s what I would have insisted on, because I find it iconic for Los Angeles,” Howe said. “First of all, I find it a beautiful style. I’ve always personally liked it. And it is really iconic for a certain era and aspect of a lot of Los Angeles, particularly Hollywood and the downtown L.A. area, right? And so these ’30s, Spanish influence bungalows were the look and so I had fun just developing that.”
The moodiness of the cluttered, darkly painted apartment has a Raymond Chandler quality to it, satisfyingly flirting with film noir and offering a glimpse into Sazz’s personality. And though the script only called for a brief inspection (maybe three-quarters a page of dialogue, Howe said), he built out the space to intimate much more.
“You can’t just open a front door into a closet and look around a closet,” Howe said. “That’s about, again, how can you imply a lot of space in an apartment without consuming too much real estate or too much cost when it’s going to have such limited use.”
It also offered a new architectural language for Howe to play with after picking up the Arconia baton from Season 1 production designer Curt Beech. “As much as I enjoy designing Arconia apartments, there’s a certain vocabulary that you want to be the same of any apartment,” Howe said. “They’re always going to have the same front door, and then they have to have these kinds of windows because that’s what windows the building has. And when we use the location’s exterior, it wants to match. So sure, we take a lot of license on the footprint inside, but I’ve definitely loved doing apartments outside of the Arconia!”
New episodes of “Ony Murders in the Muilding” premiere Tuesdays on Hulu.