Production Designer Jonah Markowitz on Matching the Visual to the Emotional for ‘George and Tammy’ on Showtime

George & Tammy Production Designer Jonah Markowitz had the sizable task of recreating the American south over three decades to tell the sweeping, star crossed love story of George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Markowitz had to dive into a great deal of research to not only get the look right of each decade, but also to make a world that the characters could easily inhabit and feel authentic.

Being from the rural south myself, I can say from my perspective, Jonah and his team got it very, very right. In our conversation, Jonah and I discuss the challenges of setting the stage both physically and emotionally for one of the finest limited series released during this TV season.

Awards Daily: You had to cover the rural south for a three-decade period. A sizable undertaking, when you have to also include the Grand Ole Opry and fame too. How did you prepare for this project and its demands? 

Jonah Markowitz: I do a lot of period work, so I think that was probably why Abe and some of the team first sought me out. As far as the region, I was really attracted to the characters in this incredible love story and how they wanted to tell it. I think the most important thing when you’re hiring somebody that’s a creative, that’s part of the visual team, is really that they understand the story and that they understand the scenes and what the character arcs are. Most designers haven’t been to space when they design a spaceship or haven’t been in the Civil War. (Laughs). A lot of that research and creating the realness of a place, you can do, and it really just comes down to the characters and the story. So, I think I’m really prepared to take on any film I get as long as I understand what the story is and how I can visually help tell that story.

Awards Daily: I was born in Kentucky and I still have family and friends there. When I was watching the show, it felt like home to me, the area, the locations, hair, costumes, everything. Can you talk about the challenges of finding the right look that was not too modern?

Jonah Markowitz: That gets harder and harder as you do sixties and seventies films and depending on where you do them, to find places that are really right. We shot in North Carolina and some in Nashville, but I have to say the southern part of the United States is actually a lot easier to shoot a period film in than, say, New York. I’ve done seventies films in New York as well. You get street level in New York now and it’s city bikes and COVID shelters, and it’s almost impossible to recreate that and you actually have to go somewhere else. But when you’re in the South, there are still a lot of places that just haven’t been touched. Your question highlights the dance we do with the locations department and production design when you’re on a period film, trying to find things that are appropriate but always keeping in mind that they have to be period accurate. The other thing is this balance that you’re always trying to maintain as a production designer doing a period piece, but also doing a piece like this where the locations are known to people. The Grand Ole Opry, people watch that in their living rooms every day. As a designer doing these kinds of projects, you’re always walking this fine line between verisimilitude and stylization—deciding when you need to get something exactly right to what it was, whether it’s the Grand Ole Opry or First Lady Acres, and when it’s more important to step in with your designer brain and say I don’t need to recreate the wallpaper that was in her bedroom. What’s the scene about? What was the scene before? What’s the scene after this? How can I help the director and the showrunner and the actors create this scene by what I bring visually? 

Awards Daily: You mentioned the Grand Ole Opry, and that was one thing I was thinking about when I was watching this show. There are scenes that take place in grungy hotels and not the nicest nightclubs in the world, to mansions, and then huge auditoriums and lush hotels. When you’re looking for those seedier spots, were they easier to find and to dress or were those more complicated?

Jonah Markowitz: Specifically bars have become the hardest thing to do well, for some reason. I don’t know why. Bars are actually always about fighting things that are modern, because we have so many televisions in bars now and things that weren’t there before. Creating a “grungy” or sort of edgy set is a very different thing in a seventies set than it would be in a nineties set or in a contemporary set. To be honest, those can be some of the most challenging. People think you walk into a dive bar and it works, but you’re always doing the process of peeling the lemon on a location to get to what it would’ve been 40 or 50 years ago. 

Awards Daily: So now speak on the other end of it. Talk to me about the mansion.

Jonah Markowitz: The country mansion, I think is what it was slugged as in the script. The homes that they lived in were such an important and distinctive part of the design language of this show. We go to George Jones’ first home. We meet him when Tammy meets him and then they transitioned to the country mansion and then transitioned to First Lady Acres. We really wanted to do more than just making a replica of those places. There was plenty of documentation of these characters’ lives. More than making a facsimile, we wanted to separate them. This is a sweeping love story. In a very metaphoric way, it’s like a country song. It’s real poetry and it’s not just about the good times in a relationship or the bad times in the relationship, it’s about the connective tissue of all that. We wanted the homes to each say something different. They each have a different color palette and they each have a different style. They each kind of show the power dynamic, the struggle, how love changed between the two. Opposed to just one character, we always wanted to be showing where the relationship was. Your home that you build together is such a huge part of that. Those were huge ways of showing where George and Tammy were in their relationship throughout the series. 

Awards Daily: And the chandelier. I mean… 

Jonah Markowitz: And then there was the chandelier. I mean, the Christmas moment. We used color and palette

in a big way to separate the homes. For instance, we knew the big scene that was going to take place in that house was the Christmas scene. Instead of doing a red and green Christmas, we wanted to do a red and blue Christmas. It was originally written that you see the police lights, the red and blue lights, in the dollhouse. I don’t think that’s what made it into the cut. I kind of keyed off of that and said well, what if we do this house blue? It’s an unusual color for the seventies to use for one, but also what if we make it red and blue to mirror where everything turns. That chandelier is where the whole story turns. So we use these really loud colors, which then shifted after that. 

Awards Daily: You can get great performances out of Shannon and Chastain, which probably seemed in the bag going in because they’re so good, but if you don’t get the look right of what surrounds them, it will take you out of the story. 

Jonah Markowitz: Design-wise, I was always very aware of that. This is, on the surface, a huge sweeping love story. When I met with Abe and John and we really started to decide how we were going to tell this story, it became very apparent that everyone wanted to make this not a big glitzy biopic but really a story about these two characters. It’s very, very personal and it’s very close. And if you notice the camera work, Igor our cinematographer is a genius, there was never a crane on set. It was just not that kind of a show. It’s very close, all the shots. So yes, we wanted to get the settings right, but again it was always what’s the scene about and how can I help convey that as opposed to let’s make this this big glitzy over the top moment. It was interesting uncovering that history in George & Tammy. Mitchell Travers (the costume designer), the cinematographer, the director, and I were all just piling through so many photographs of George and Tammy. There were so many photographs out there in the world of these two people. What we came to find out is that most of those photographs were staged and they were dressed for professionally. We realized we had to uncover another whole story to really get to what this love story was. In the end, it became about always focusing on them and always making the scenes about what they were feeling; not how they were being represented to the public or what their persona was, but really what it was like to be living your life out in this country song. 

Awards Daily: I agree completely that this is not a glitzy telling of George and Tammy by any means, but there is a little glitz in it. Something that occurred to me while I was watching it is that there is a portion of country music, especially during that seventies period, that isn’t so different from glam rock. When you were thinking about making the characters look right, especially for their performances, between the big hair and the frills and the studs, was it challenging shifting gears for the scenes that showcase the depth of their celebrity?

Jonah Markowitz: They were celebrities, so there is definitely that level to it. I don’t know why America is so binary between country and rock. We’ve become so binary about so many things. I think it’s changing a little bit and people are seeing country now and discovering country, people that weren’t before. There was definitely a level of glamor, a different sort of glamor—Nashville glamor, that is just as showy and beautiful but a little more humble. I know it’s a contradiction, but it just sort of felt that way. One place we really leaned into glamor and glitz and sparkle and shine was in Vegas. And again, that wasn’t just because they were in Vegas. It was because in that scene, Tammy shows up there…she’s at the height of her career, and he doesn’t show up. He abandons her. So we played with scale a lot there. We made that set of her hotel room absolutely enormous. I just wanted her to feel so small in that moment. For this larger than life, big personality with big hair, on stage with lights, with stadiums full of people to be in front of Vegas in the biggest penthouse imaginable–much bigger than they would’ve been in in reality as we learned–to just show her as tiny among these forces that were so much bigger than her. We leaned into that glitz and glamor, but really that’s not what was in their hearts, so it was interesting to play with the differential between those two things. 

Awards Daily: I know at one point, when this show was in development, that there was discussion about having Josh Brolin play George Jones, and I know he retains a producer’s credit on the show. Then you got the Take Shelter reunion between Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain. How did the two of them play into you building the design? 

Jonah Markowitz: As a production designer, you don’t usually have a lot of contact with actors. This was different. I developed a relationship with the actors, with Jessica. It’s a limited series, so it’s a little different than episodic TV. We had a little more prep time. They had both been on the project much longer than me, but as far as production I was there before they were. So I was down the road with how I wanted to design it conceptually when they started. I remember one of the first days they were actually in North Carolina, they came in to do some sort of sound test. You know, they sing everything live. I was there watching, we were doing a camera test on the same day. It was the first day I met them both. I watched them walk in and I watched them sing a song together and then I watched them interact and then I watched them leave. And I had this complete realization that this story was so much bigger than it was on the page and that they were going to bring that to it. I actually was able to change my design based on what I saw in their performances. As I said, we come on early as production designers, but I think Jessica’s been on this project for 12 years before it happened, practicing those songs and listening to those songs. When she sings them, you see the meaning in the song differently in the way that she interprets those songs and also the way that Abe so brilliantly incorporated those songs into the narrative. So I feel like we were in sync, the actors and the design team. Seeing the rehearsals informed me of what the scene was really about. It was a really unique experience in that way. 

Awards Daily: With how great Jones and Wynette are in the pantheon of country music, were you stunned by the courage that Shannon and Chastain had to sing those songs?

Jonah Markowitz: Without a doubt. Absolutely. I have worked with so many incredible actors, but being on set with those two was a completely new experience watching them sing. Here’s an example of a song where their performance really influenced the design: in the final episode, He sings “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and he’s in the studio and he’s looking at her and she comes in. She’s in her sunglasses the whole time. The Quonset hut was a set that we really did want to get right. We had a lot of reference, not a lot of color reference but just about everything else, of the layout—what it was like, what it looked like, how they recorded. What we added to it is that we built these panels that were at 45 degrees, these pieces of glass on these panels. So whenever you’re in the Quonset hut, when one of them is singing you can see the other one in a reflection. That was the concept behind that set, so that all of these songs were actually part of both of them. Even something like “Stand By Your Man,” something she recorded before they met. That scene plays out on both sides of this window, which was such a metaphor for the design as well as where they’re at in their lives. It was just an example of when everyone’s working together, production as well as the actors, to create an environment in a way to express a scene symbiotically. 

Awards Daily: That’s a stunning scene, the recording of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” because it’s that “so close but so far away” kind of thing. They’re just on the other side of a pane of glass, but in a way they’re a million miles apart and he’s pouring his heart out into this song. For him, he’s performing the song. For her, she’s just sitting there responding to this song and just giving you these little facial impressions and not doing too much. I imagine when you saw that back, you thought we got this right in every way. 

Jonah Markowitz: That scene was really magical to watch, like so many of the musical numbers in this series. Michael actually asked that Jessica not hear him sing his final version of it until she sat there. The whole crew is sitting there with their hearts in their throats, and it’s just so touching and incredible. We’ve been on that set for six days and of course as the designer, like you said, it’s all about this window. As the designer, I’m like is that the right angle or is it reflecting? Are the lights up there right? Is the trim around it right? And yes, it all works perfectly. You always feel great as a designer when you help the actors feel comfortable or feel meaningful or feel that they’re in the right place. That was definitely one of those moments. 

Awards Daily: As Tammy’s health starts to decline and her drug abuse becomes more constant, the show kept getting not just darker in tone, but I think darker in look too. 

Jonah Markowitz: I always design the palette first on my projects. I don’t know why. I don’t really have a reason, it’s just my process. Some palettes develop where different decades have a different palette. Some palettes develop where different characters have a different palette. This palette developed because I wanted to show where the relationship was. I wanted to show what was in between the two characters as we traveled through time. So the colors in the seventies are really bright, really unusual colors for a seventies film. We didn’t want to use the greens and oranges and browns that have come to represent the seventies, which are colors I’m not using for period films anymore. We’ve come to represent the seventies in a way that isn’t actually very true. We threw those colors out and did these really saturated and bright colors. And then you’re right, it does get darker, but also it gets less saturated and there’s just less colors as we move forward. Especially landing in the nineties where it was sort of a beige moment in America. (Laughs). We sort of drain the color out. She’s getting sick. The color is literally draining out of her so it kind of drains out of the series. That was an intentional progression.

Awards Daily: The show came out at a time that it could potentially have gotten lost. Were you a little bit worried that it could have been missed? 

Jonah Markowitz: I think I’m always worried about that now working in television. I worked in features for so many years and still do, but I do a lot of television as well. There’s just so much content out there, and I think we’re all aware of how innovative you have to be to set yourself apart, whether it’s the storytelling, the writing, the design, whatever it is. It’s always a fear you have when you give so much time to a project, that it could be great and could still never find a big audience. But everything came together so well, and it’s just such a beautiful story that people really relate to, and I think that’s always what bubbles to the top. Luckily it’s found a really good audience. 

Awards Daily: It has to feel good, not just that it was seen, but that it got both things: it got an audience and it got a claim. 

Jonah Markowitz: Absolutely. I know it’s so cliche to say “When I got the script, I couldn’t believe it, it was the best thing I’d read” but I really fell in love with Abe Sylvia’s writing. It’s just so brilliant. That is the start. You get a script that’s incredible, that’s unlike anything you’ve read. I knew that it was going to get recognition because of how spectacular that was. And his collaboration with Jessica and bringing her on. Obviously she’s such a phenomenal talent and brought so much to the project as a visionary, as a producer, as a leader in the process. So, I think it got the respect that it deserved.