Would you like a drink?
Yes, please.
It's an extraordinary challenge to take on a story
with this kind cf popular acceptance and fan base.
And realizing that so many people have read it
and realizing that so many people
have envisioned every room and every place
in this story is daunting in many ways.
And you have to just kind of, you know, put that aside.
SAM TAYLOR-JOHNSON: It was David Wasco and Sandy Wasco.
They came with such a, sort of, vast knowledge
and such the perfect sensibility
for creating extraordinary spaces
such as Christian's apartment and the red room.
All of the interiors for the Escala apartment, which is Christian's home,
are being built here, which is fantastic.
We're also shooting them right in a row,
so we're living here for quite a while.
So, it's the living room,
which includes, of course, the kitchen and staircase going up,
Ana's bedroom, her adjacent hall,
and the red room that's down the hall
are all on one stage.
The other stage is Christian's bedroom and the bathroom.
So it's extensive.
WOMAN: Your hand goes like this.
DAVID WASCO: I really wanted to give him a sophisticated environment.
Even though he's a young man,
he would have the money to hire, you know, a real-world decorator
and to make it a pretty quality environment.
Do you play?
WASCO: To have the book as a blueprint.
There were these things that Erika described that sent us in a direction.
The apartment was described as all white.
And in the book there are some driftwood-ey type accents,
but I think it was very important
for Christian's environment to be minimalist,
but not white and silver and metal.
It was natural.
We brought in a lot of natural things,
whether they were the wood tables, warm, sort of, linen,
also the marbles.
(ANASTASIA EXC LAIMS)
(SHUSHING)
SANDY: We built a lot of the furniture in that set.
A local concept illustrator, art director,
designed quite a few of the pieces of furniture for the penthouse,
so they were custom-built just for this.
If there was a real Christian Grey and he had
unlimited money and he had taste,
okay, who are the artists that he would collect?
And with Sam's knowledge of the art world and her friends,
it opened doors more than what I'm used to,
where there was, sort of, this just flood of interest.
Really great, big and unknown artists that were friends of Sam's,
or people that she knew,
that were willing to allow their pieces in the movie.
Taylor, there's absolutely no need for you to announoe rne.
There is no need for you to show me in.
I'm perfectly comfortable in the apartment by myself.
We're shooting on a sound set,
but outside are the tops of skyscrapers.
It's amazing, the loss of balance you feel when you walk into that.
Just because of the outside windows
you feel like you're that high up.
And it's very beautiful, very elegant very big spaces, uncluttered.
It's lovely.
SANDY: Christian's bedroom is mostly green.
We kind of went to, sort of, solid colors.
WASCO". There is a sea-green color behind the headboard.
In the book, there's a large seascape painting behind the bed.
And so we have a seascape painting by a local artist.
SANDY: Then the white room, which is Ana's bedroom,
and we put up in there de Gournay British wallpapers.
It's very lonely, all-white, very pure, very beautiful.
Let's get you cleaned up.
WASCO". Almost all the marble throughout the apartment,
everything was all hand-painted by the scenic department,
but because we're in a bathtub scene,
we chose to actually get a real piece of marble.
So, we were very careful about picking that.
It was kind of a pale green color.
It's just beyond this door.
What is?
My play room.
Like your Xbox and stuff?
The red room is a character unto itself, almost, within the movie.
It's something that presents itself
as an aspect of his personality,
and an aspect of the sexual exploration that Ana goes through.
(CHUCKLES) The red room
is his play room, his sanctuary.
And it's very much the only place where he feels safe
and it's all on his terms.
I think, when that door closes he becomes something else.
And that sort of animalistic thing is unearthed.
The red room of pain was really maybe the most challenging.
We went through many, many different levels of concept illustration.
And above here are gonna be the...
(INDISTINCT CONVERSATION)
WASCO: It is probably the most avant-garde set in the movie.
It was the set that the director asked
that it be astoundingly original and unique to the audience.
She wanted a jaw-dropping experience
for the audience with this set.
So, it was going kind of over-the-top at first with ideas.
Showing the ideas, first to Sam,
then showing them to the producers,
then showing them to Erika, the book writer.
Sam wanted it to be very relaxing, did not want it to be cliche,
did not want it to be something that you can Google
and come up with something that looks like this.
We designed the room with cabinets,
so it sort of gave it a more masculine twist
than everything being displayed.
It's a play room, but it's a work room, it's a retreat.
But there's also that mystery.
And Erika repeated to us when we were designing it
that there would be additional things behind closed doors
that would be revealed later.
(GIGGLING)
MAN: Okay, now let... No, no. You can't touch that.
(ALL LAUGHING)
WOMAN: This is terrifying! Stay there.
WASCO: Sam steered us to referencing tack environments, which were stables,
how certain things were hung
in a very orderly fashion on walls with pegs.
So it was a lot of horse ephemera and things.
You have a metal grill that has to articulate.
The grill was supposed to work mechanically through motors,
and then Sam changed that to become analog.
She wanted to give Christian the business of grabbing the grill
and clicking it down, and the noise that it would make.
Yeah, I remember walking in and just thinking,
"This is quite extraordinary. I've not seen anything on film quite like this."
Wait, is this like S&M? Here we go.
This room. This is S&M.
TAYLOR-JOHNSON: Christian Grey's apartment was quite phenomenal as a set.
It was important to feel that, you know, Ana's world
is sort of a sweet, charming existence.
And then Christian's world, you know,
huge, volume and his apartment...
And the difference between the two worlds and how they collide.
Whoever took on this job and worked with me,
we were gonna create something that
resonated with the readers of the book
and their images of what that could be.
But also made something, sort of,
slightly other-worldly and extraordinary, too.