Frankenstein Production Designer: Tamara Deverell Interview

At the Nightmare Alley premiere, surrounded by Bradley Cooper and the rest of the cast, Guillermo del Toro leaned over to his production designer and said one word: Frankenstein. Tamara Deverell was, at that point, mid-way through Cabinet of Curiosities, exhausted from Nightmare Alley, and trying to keep her head straight across seven different directors and five different cinematographers on the same anthology series. She said yes anyway.

A few years later, she walked off the Academy Awards stage with an Oscar in her hand for that conversation.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Zebra Home Cinema, the Canadian production designer behind Frankenstein, The Strain, Mimic, and the early seasons of Suits explained what a production designer actually does, why almost every set in Frankenstein was hand-built rather than CGI'd, and the single piece of advice she gives every art-school student who asks how to break into film.

What a Production Designer Actually Does

The role is one of the most powerful and least understood in cinema. Deverell's own definition is unusually precise.

"I'm responsible for the entire look of a film or television show. Everything you see on the screen — whether it's a location or a set that's built, even if you don't know it's a set that's built — I have a finger in. The colour palette. I work closely with the costume designer, the cinematographer, the director, and all the department heads — the head of visual effects — to create the final look of the film."

That sounds enormous because it is. The production designer doesn't do it alone — they sit at the top of an art department that includes set designers, illustrators, concept artists, graphic designers, 3D modellers, model builders, construction crews, scenic painters, set decorators, set dressers, electricians, riggers, and the greens department (anything alive and growing on screen, no matter how small). On Frankenstein, Deverell shared her Academy Award nomination with the film's set decorator — a reminder that the look of a film is built by a team, not authored by a single voice.

The job is, fundamentally, collaborative. That's what attracted Deverell to film in the first place, fresh out of art school in Vancouver.

From Vancouver Art School to a Toronto Costume Department

Deverell started young. She was studying painting at Capilano College in Vancouver while still in high school — moving through printmaking, painting, art history, and photography. For a while she thought she'd become an art historian, an interest that turned out to be ideal grounding for someone who would later have to research nineteenth-century Arctic exploration ships in detail.

Her father, a screenwriter still working in his eighties, suggested she try film. He called some producers in Montreal — where her older brother lived — and arranged for her to come out and see what stuck. "There was a bit of nepotism, a bit of networking," Deverell admits.

In Montreal, the producers had only the vaguest idea who she was. She talked her way into a job as an assistant costume designer on a Canadian feature with a then-eighteen-year-old Kiefer Sutherland in the cast — a credit she suspects doesn't even appear on his IMDb. That stretch in the costume department, working out of a department of essentially two people, gave her something most art-department careers don't include: time on set, watching every other department actually do its work.

She drew constantly — she was an artist before she was a film-maker, and it showed. The script supervisor on one of those early films noticed and pulled her aside.

"She said, 'You should be in the art department.' And then she said, 'Go and meet a friend of mine, François C., who's a Quebecois production designer.' I met with him and that's how I got in."

From there: prop buyer, set dresser, set buyer, assistant art director. Two years moving up. Drafting classes at night school — the only course she could find was "drafting for mechanical engineering," which she took anyway, a year before computer-aided drafting overtook the industry. Then a move to Toronto and a meeting with Carol Spear, the Canadian designer behind most of David Cronenberg's films. Spear became Deverell's mentor, and quickly her boss — Deverell rose to art director, then production designer, on the job rather than in any classroom.

The Suits Years — Television Pace, Studio Replicas, and Harvey's Office

For people who only know Deverell from Frankenstein, her IMDB tells a more interesting story than the highlights suggest. She designed two seasons of Suits in its original Toronto run.

The show's pilot had been shot in a real New York law office. When production moved to Toronto, that office had to be rebuilt as a studio set — and Deverell joined around episode four to expand it. Her brief, in her own words, was the opposite of Frankenstein: nothing futuristic, nothing Gothic, nothing that demanded research into Victorian glassblowing or moss propagation. Just a modern, slightly heightened, very good-looking world.

"Suits was straightforward and it was a world I knew. Every set was the top, you know — the law office was this great law office. It was posh, elegant, everybody was good-looking, the actors were really lovely."

The library and several offices were built or expanded under her watch — including the additions that Suits needed as the show's popularity grew and producers added rooms episode by episode. Harvey Spectre's corner office was given to him as a deliberate visual signal of his hierarchy in the firm — the unique-shaped corner room signalling that this man owned the floor. The famous paintings in that office, which still generate reader emails for Deverell years later, were largely sourced by her successor on the show, Clive Thomasson, who had been the set decorator before being promoted to production designer.

For any production designer building a contemporary TV show, the Suits example matters: the wardrobe, set, and design work all communicated hierarchy at a glance. Wide-lapel suits and corner offices weren't decoration — they were a visual coding system that told the audience who held power before a single line of dialogue.

Thirty Years with Guillermo del Toro

Deverell first worked with Guillermo del Toro in 1996. She was the art director under Carol Spear on Mimic — del Toro's first film shot in Toronto. Toronto's crew has effectively grown up with del Toro since: he likes the city, he likes the people, and he keeps coming back to the same collaborators.

For Deverell, the partnership has produced four major projects she's designed personally:

Deverell calls Nightmare Alley one of the most beautiful projects she's worked on — "the Art Deco and the carnival we built" — and Cabinet of Curiosities one of the most logistically punishing because of the sheer number of directors and cinematographers passing through the same studio.

What makes the partnership work, after thirty years, is the shorthand. Del Toro doesn't pitch a film to Deverell with a Powerpoint. He leans over at a premiere and says one word.

Frankenstein, Hand-Made

The craft story behind Frankenstein is the one most likely to surprise viewers who assume modern fantasy filmmaking is mostly green-screen and CGI. The opposite is true here.

"GdT wanted something very hand-made. We had hand-built. The ship was built on a giant gimbal — when the creature pushes it, it's actually moving on a mechanism. So many moving parts. We built the giant ice field. We did have visual effects extending the sets, but even our visual effects department — they're not just punching numbers into AI. They're actually hand-painting in a digital world."

A few specifics from the build:

• ▪The Arctic exploration ship was constructed at full scale on an enormous mechanical gimbal — when the creature pushes it on screen, the entire vessel really tilts. Deverell's team had to do a deep research dive into nineteenth-century Arctic exploration vessels just to make the geometry right.
• ▪The ice field around the ship was physically constructed and dressed — not a digital matte. Visual effects extended what the production had already built rather than starting from blank pixels.
• ▪A team of around twenty sculptors worked in the art department alongside painters, model-makers, scenics, and a dedicated greens crew. Del Toro had asked for moss — specifically — so the greens department had to source, propagate, and combine real moss with painted scenic moss to deliver the effect at scale.

The result is a film that, even when extended digitally, has the texture of something that was actually made by hand — a quality the audience perceives as warmth and craft even when they can't articulate why.

For anyone who watches Frankenstein on a properly calibrated home cinema, this is the technical justification for high-end picture and sound. A film built this way carries information in every shadow, every corner of every set, every hand-painted finish. Compress it for a phone or a laptop and a lot of that detail collapses. Reproduce it on a system that respects the source — and the work of those twenty sculptors, the moss squad, the gimbal crew — comes back into focus.

What She Tells Aspiring Designers

When Deverell visits art schools, she gets asked the same question she answered for us. Her advice is structural rather than romantic.

Be visually literate across disciplines. Production design isn't only art. "My career success is being somebody who understands not just art but history and science. I'll delve into — you know — how do you build an Arctic exploration ship? I had to do a deep dive into that on Frankenstein. So it's about being crafty and artistic and opening your world to macro vision and micro vision."

Network, but with intention. The film industry is small enough that a script supervisor noticing your sketching on set can change your career. Deverell got into the art department because someone on a costume crew told her to. A reputation is built one job at a time.

Don't aim for production designer first. This is the counter-intuitive part. Many art-school graduates decide they want the department-head title because it's the most visible role. Deverell's caution: "You might find that you want to be a graphic designer, or an art director, or a set painter. Those are careers in and of themselves — just like a boom operator is a career, or a second assistant camera person, or first assistant. There are so many careers in film-making that are worth exploring and finding out about."

Start small. Music videos, commercials, short films. "That's where so many people start. That's where I started."

The industry's barrier to entry has dropped. Cameras are cheap. Editing software is free. The thing you can't shortcut is the number of jobs you've actually been on.

Watch List, From the Production Designer Herself

When we asked what she'd been watching this year that hadn't received its due, Deverell pulled up a few titles:

• ▪*Sinners* — a film she's come back to repeatedly. "It's really about Black history and the relationship between Black and white America. A phenomenal film. People will talk about it for many years."
• ▪*The Testament of Ann Lee* — about the founder of the Shaker religion in the United States. "Incredibly odd and compelling. I was dazzled by it."
• ▪*Marty Supreme* — "Very filmic. Beautiful to watch."
• ▪*Project Hail Mary* — "Absolutely beautiful. Probably Ryan Gosling's best performance to date. One of those rare films that everyone can watch across different generations."
• ▪*One Battle After Another* — "Pretty phenomenal."

For production design, Sinners in particular bears rewatching for the way it builds a period and a place out of texture rather than spectacle.

What's Next — and Nova Scotia

After Frankenstein, Deverell has stepped back. She's moved to a rural property in Nova Scotia. She's working on a graphic novel. She's making her own art again — work that's been on hold for the better part of three decades.

"What do you do after something like Frankenstein? It's got to be something really special. I'm not getting younger. I really want to be able to do some of my own artwork — which is long overdue. I'm trying to write my own stories, I guess, for the time being."

If del Toro calls again, she'll pick up. "He knows where to find me."

In the meantime, the woman who built the Frankenstein ship is in the woods of Nova Scotia, drawing.

Key Takeaways

• ▪Tamara Deverell is the Canadian production designer behind Frankenstein, which won her the 2026 Academy Award for Best Production Design alongside the film's set decorator. She has worked with Guillermo del Toro for almost thirty years across Mimic, The Strain, Nightmare Alley, Cabinet of Curiosities, and Frankenstein.
• ▪A production designer is responsible for the entire visual look of a film — every set, every location dressing, every colour palette decision — working closely with the director, costume designer, cinematographer, and visual effects supervisor. The art department under them includes set designers, illustrators, sculptors, painters, scenics, greens, set dressers, and graphic designers.
• ▪Frankenstein was deliberately built by hand rather than by CGI. The Arctic ship was constructed at full scale on a working mechanical gimbal. The ice field was physically dressed. Twenty sculptors worked alongside painters, model-makers, and a dedicated greens department that propagated and painted real moss to del Toro's specification.
• ▪Deverell's career advice for aspiring designers: become visually literate across disciplines (history and science as well as art), build your network in person, don't aim straight for the department-head title, and start with smaller projects — commercials, music videos, short films — to log the volume of work the role requires.
• ▪For audiences watching Frankenstein at home, a properly calibrated cinema is what allows the hand-built detail of the film — texture, shadow, hand-painted finish — to register as the production designed it. The work of those twenty sculptors and the moss squad doesn't survive aggressive compression on a phone screen.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the production designer of Frankenstein?

Tamara Deverell, the Canadian production designer based in Toronto and Nova Scotia. She won the 2026 Academy Award for Best Production Design for Frankenstein, sharing the nomination with the film's set decorator. Frankenstein is her fourth production-design collaboration with director Guillermo del Toro and her fifth project with him overall, dating back to Mimic in 1996.

How long has Tamara Deverell worked with Guillermo del Toro?

Around thirty years, beginning as art director on Mimic in 1996 under designer Carol Spear. She has since served as production designer on The Strain (four seasons), Nightmare Alley, Cabinet of Curiosities, and Frankenstein. Del Toro's loyalty to Toronto crews — and to specific collaborators — is a recurring feature of his production process.

Was Frankenstein shot with practical sets or CGI?

Mostly practical. Del Toro and Deverell built physical sets at scale — including a full-size Arctic exploration ship on a working mechanical gimbal that actually tilts when the creature pushes it on screen. The ice field around the ship was physically constructed. Visual effects were used to extend what the production had already built rather than to replace it. Even the digital work was hand-painted by the visual-effects team rather than AI-generated.

What does a production designer actually do?

The production designer is responsible for the entire visual look of a film or television show — every set built, every location dressed, every colour palette decision. They lead an art department of set designers, illustrators, concept artists, sculptors, painters, model-makers, scenic crews, set decorators, and the greens department. They work in close collaboration with the director, the cinematographer, the costume designer, and the head of visual effects to translate a script into the physical world the cameras will photograph.

What did Tamara Deverell do on Suits?

She was the production designer on the early seasons of the original Suits, joining around episode four after the pilot had been shot in a real New York law office and the production relocated to Toronto. She rebuilt and expanded the law-firm sets as a studio build, designed Harvey Spectre's iconic corner office, and added the library and additional offices as the show grew. She handed over to her successor Clive Thomasson, who had previously been the set decorator on the show.

What advice does Tamara Deverell give aspiring production designers?

Four points, in her own words: become visually literate across disciplines (history and science as well as art); network with intention, because the industry runs on personal recommendations; don't aim straight for the production-designer title — graphic designer, art director, set painter, and many other art-department roles are full careers in their own right; and start with smaller projects like music videos, short films, and commercials to log the volume of work the senior roles require.

What is Tamara Deverell working on now?

She has stepped back from large feature work and moved to a rural property in Nova Scotia. She is writing and illustrating a graphic novel and returning to her own painting and printmaking practice — work she set aside thirty years ago when her film career began. She remains open to the right project: "If something really delicious comes along, or anything Guillermo wants to do — he knows where to find me."