How do you design a modern Los Angeles noir without simply recreating the past?
In this episode of Decorating Pages, I talk with Production Designer Meghan C. Rogers about creating the visual world of Season 2 of Apple TV’s Sugar, starring Colin Farrell. Meghan joined the series for its second season and pushed the show’s established noir language further, using architecture, texture, lighting and locations to make Los Angeles itself part of John Sugar’s story.
We get into the massive Indonesia sequence built at the Paramount water tank, including the engineering, water-safety and fire requirements behind a set that had to work both inside and outside. Meghan also takes us through the Hotel Del Corazon and its Casablanca-inspired circular bar, Sugar’s mid-century hideaway in the Hollywood Hills, the boxing gym, K-Town locations, homeless encampments created beneath some of LA’s incredible concrete architecture, and a vintage trailer the art department found on Facebook Marketplace.
We also talk about the less glamorous realities behind what appears on screen: graphics departments, graffiti and artwork clearances, sun studies, multiple company moves in a single day, rebuilding interiors, finding camera-friendly architecture and what happens when production asks you to flip a set…and then suddenly needs the original set back.
For Meghan, the opportunity was ultimately about showing Los Angeles in all of its layers—from glamorous hilltop views to the city underneath the freeways—and finding a contemporary version of classic noir that still belongs completely to Sugar.
Sugar Season 2 is streaming on Apple TV.
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Discover the Art of TV & Film Design with Decorating Pages Podcast
Hosted by Emmy-winning Set Decorator Kim Wannop, this podcast takes you behind the scenes of your favorite shows and movies. Each episode features in-depth conversations with the industry’s top production designers, set decorators, prop masters, and art department professionals, offering rare insight into the creative process of visual storytelling.
Whether you’re a film and TV fan, aspiring designer, or entertainment industry pro, Decorating Pages Podcast is your backstage pass to the world of production design. Learn how sets are built, stories are shaped visually, and characters come to life—one episode at a time.
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