Constructing the world for a Netflix Christmas special with the vibe of an “old skool holiday variety” program fitting for a contemporary pop queen isn’t any easy task. Jason Sherwood was sure he was the suitable person to tackle the challenge.
Sherwood first heard Sabrina Carpenter was planning on doing a vacation variety special in July, just weeks before it was set to shoot in August, as he recalls it. “It was a four-week thing. It was a complete blitz,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom.
The designer says as soon as he heard the concept for the singer’s special, A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter, it was clear that he was a “natural fit” for the project as his background includes theater, music and TV. Sherwood notes that he understood what the singer’s vision for the special was quickly.
For A Nonsense Christmas – which gets its name from a song on the singer’s 2023 holiday EP, Fruitcake – Sherwood worked with Carpenter and the team to create two principal sets. The Short ‘N Sweet singer has cultivated a distinctly recognizable brand for herself, which Sherwood says made the method design process easier. “It’s very nice when you find yourself making a stage or an environment for an artist like that since it’s so clear what ideas will work and what ideas won’t work,” he explains.
“Obviously you must stretch, and you must expand, nevertheless it’s a very, really clear process since the person at the middle of it, who you’re making this for, has such a transparent identity and the audience has such a transparent relationship to that identity,” he continues. “Within the case of this [A Nonsense Christmas], it was super easy to feel out right off the bat what Sabrina was going to be enthusiastic about. She’s a very clear communicator and has a transparent vision for what she wants a project to be.”
Sherwood says that unlike most projects, the team designed the complete show without knowing the setlist or which guests could be participating within the special. “We actually needed to create a [visual] language that will be adaptable and something that will be type of malleable in a way,” he says, adding that the team landed on a vacation home set and a fantasy performance set.
‘A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter’
Alfredo Flores/Netflix © 2024
The vacation home set took inspiration from 90s sitcoms corresponding to Friends. “She wanted that to feel really old skool. Like an old skool sitcom. To have a little bit of Friends in it, to have a whole lot of holiday in it,” Sherwood says. The fantasy performance space incorporated elements of old Hollywood glamour – a tiered stage and grand staircase – to suit the vibe of the special.
“We had these ideas that we might kind of volley between them using this old retro TV set,” Sherwood says. “Sometimes you’d be within the front room, and you then’d zoom in on the TV after which we’d go into the fantasy version of it.”
A Nonsense Christmas features several duets – typical of the vacation variety show genre – with artists corresponding to Tyla, Shania Twain and Kali Uchis. Sherwood says the team was in a position to get something special for every individual guest. Probably the most anticipated performance, and the production designer’s favorite, was Carpenter’s duet with fellow pop star Chappell Roan. The pair sang a rendition of Wham!’s holiday classic “Last Christmas.”
“As a team, we kind of got here up with this concept of them doing karaoke and I used to be like, ‘Well, what if we take the home and trash it and make it seem like you’ve just thrown a kind of eighties prom meets Christmas party meets house party while the parents are away?” Sherwood explains. He and the team decided to take the “pristine” house set and “totally trashed” it.
“We put bottles and cups and popcorn everywhere in the floor, and we’ve got the 2 of them walking down the steps in party dresses barefoot. They take these corded mics which might be attached to the old retro TV they usually sing prefer it’s the tip of a celebration,” he says. Sherwood notes that the Roan scene was a moment where the team could take the design and “turn it on its head.”
“We get to serve up this type of cheeky but additionally really sweet moment between these two burgeoning popular culture icons who get to be type of playful and off the cuff together,” Sherwood says. “It’s a very, very nice moment.”
Sherwood seems to understand the special for allowing him to bask in his love of old Hollywood and variety specials. “It’s [variety specials] a thing that I’ve all the time appreciated as a person, and the rationale why I like them is that they transport you,” he says. “I feel transporting people and welcoming them into something that seems like an escape from the true world and into this little holiday jewel – this little jewel box of ours – that’s kind of what I need them to walk away with.”
