Production Designer Monica Sotto On the ‘Drunk History’ Episode Everyone Should Watch Right Now

Awards Daily talks to Emmy-nominated production designer Monica Sotto about the Drunk History episode “Bad Blood” and how it touches upon COVID before we knew what COVID was.

Do you know the history of Typhoid Mary? It involves the importance of washing your hands, the condition of being asymptomatic, and quarantining. Really.

Even though the Drunk History episode detailing this story aired last August on Comedy Central, it strangely foretold what we would be going through today, except with a turn-of-the-century perspective.

So much of Drunk History centers around the stories being told in the living rooms of inebriated actors and comedians, but what really anchors the story is the reenactments, with set pieces that drop these narrators and the audience in a time and place. One of the people who makes the magic happen is production designer Monica Sotto, who was recently nominated for an Emmy for the episode “Bad Blood,” which follows Cleopatra’s little sister and the history of Typhoid Mary.

In this episode, Sotto creatively builds two extremely different environments: the Queen of Egypt and the Queen of Bad Hygiene, both of which take place during vastly different time periods. I had the opportunity to speak with Sotto about how the Drunk History team tackles so many different eras of history, what video game inspired the look of the Cleopatra section, and what people can learn from this particular episode that relates to their life right now.

Awards Daily: Congratulations on your Emmy nomination! You’re nominated for the episode “Bad Blood,” which involves Cleopatra. How much did you know about Cleopatra before you took on this project? Or any of the stories the show covers?

Monica Sotto: Most of the time, I don’t know anything about what we’re talking about. At this point in the show, we’re looking at esoteric moments in history that end up being really important to our contemporary lives. In the case of “Bad Blood,” I know what most people know, like her relationship with Julius Caesar, but I had know idea she had this little sister Arsinoe. That was really cool and hilarious to portray.

Typhoid Mary was new to me, too. I knew about the term and the idea that it was a person who was infected and infected a lot of people. But I didn’t know she was asymptomatic, which makes sense now. It wasn’t in my consciousness. Of course now, pandemics are relevant, but at the time, we were like, how wild! Sickness can travel so fast. But here we are again.

AD: It was so interesting to watch the episode in a COVID world. I was thinking, oh my goodness—this is something we should all be watching right now. You learn so much from it.

MS: Thank you for saying that. That’s how we feel, too. The minute the coronavirus became news this year, we were like, well, we should watch Typhoid Mary and realize you can be sick and not present symptoms. Everybody has to be extra careful. Even with the flu. I think people got a little lax in their hygiene or something! Even when we’re nominally safe, we do have to take the extra precautions when it’s like this. The story of Typhoid Mary is really hilarious to just come up with the fable “Wash your hands,” but it’s a relevant message today.

AD: Focusing on your nominated episode, you are working in two vastly different styles. One is turn-of-the-century, the other is Cleopatra. What’s it like pulling together multiple styles and decades? Do you ever feel like you’re being pulled in a million directions?

MS: For sure, for sure. We all are. What a lot of people don’t know about the show is that we try to do one historical story a day. “Bad Blood” is an exception. We shot Queen of Egypt over three or four days and Typhoid Mary had a similar schedule. But usually it’s a live show or theater where we do one story that day, all day, and we have like 10 sets that go up and down. I’m mentioning all of this because, yes, the volume is one of the set challenges of the show that I really enjoy. Having that volume and that range is really exciting creatively, but it can be overwhelming. We just take one day at a time. I really enjoy it. I feel like I get to live in so many eras in a short amount of time.

AD: That has to be a lot of fun. The Cleopatra section felt a little Game of Thrones-esque and even Spartacus-esque. Were you inspired by those?

MS: Yeah, you have to look at Hollywood during the “ancient” times, because it’s so iconic. It really translates the era very fast. But interestingly enough, [director] Jeremy [Konner] was especially inspired by the look in the Assassin’s Creed video game. The makers of that game make such an epically beautiful Alexandria, Egypt location, that it was really easy for us to screen cap that to lift inspiration from that. Everybody on the team is really inspired by everything. We try to go beyond the academia and cinema, but also what are we really fans of? It sounds silly, but yeah we pull from YouTube creators, video games, Vanity Fair long-form essays—whatever that material is, we want to know, and see what’s cool and what we can copy.

AD: What kind of sets did you build? When Cleopatra’s little sister Arsinoe waves that victory flag from that tower, that’s an impressive scene. Were there set pieces that were especially challenging?

MS: For Egypt in particular, we didn’t have the time or budget that would be knockout on camera. We concentrated instead on finding the locations around Los Angeles that would be appropriate. Thankfully, this is a movie town, and we’ve got an arid country in some areas, so that was advantageous. But the tower in particular was a really great find from our location manager Dan Milner—shout-out to him, he’s awesome. I love working with him. And he found this mausoleum in South LA that had this Middle Eastern design inspiration in it. It pulled from a lot of cultures in that area, but also ancient Egyptian motif in the architecture. And it had this tower. It felt like such an Indiana Jones moment, discovering places that were new to us. It was so cool. It ended up being a perfect location for that set piece. And with the digital map we had made, it’s pretty seamless. We worked really hard on it for it to all come together. I’m really proud of it.

AD: There’s so much detail that’s important. Because if you don’t put those details in, it takes us out of the moment and reminds us that it’s a reenactment. I was thinking about the cylinders of ice cream when Typhoid Mary’s in the kitchen, that reminds us of the ice cream she serves people and infects them with. What other details do you have to consider to be so specific? It’s really important what you do.

MS: Thank you. I think we consider everything. The design process for this show is really straightforward. It’s really just historical research. With every piece of video, microfiche, whatever, if we can absorb all that, we can have a pretty good instinct for these people in this story. Our creators and our producers are really good at pointing out what signage we can show or historical fact or joke. The shows aren’t really written; we have a transcription of the drunk narration with some stage directions. Each direction that they write is towards costumes and art department.

AD: That’s so interesting. I was wondering how that would work, since it’s a different kind of script. 

MS: That format is the manual to any film direction. But the dialogue is direct narration that we already captured. It’s up to our producing and creative team to decide to mention a newspaper that has a headline because the narrator said something hilarious. I’m fortunate to be on a show that’s so conscious of the design of it all, that being costumes, props, and art. They’re so considerate. That’s just a benefit of working on a period piece.

Episodes of Drunk History are streaming on Hulu and CC.com.