Written by Malin Evita Ditlefsen.
“The heart of any design is getting to know who the characters are and who they were. Even before the story started. Outside the story.”
Production Designer Amy Wheeler
Cucu is on the bridge between unyielding childhood imagination and growing teenage self-awareness. She’s a furiously hilarious and utterly charming dreamer. And now, when her dad gets a job in Miami and her family has to move from the Dominican Republic, a whole new world in front of her.
Inspired by creator Claudia Forestieri’s own becoming midst immigration, culture shock, and a hearty family, Gordita Chronicles (HBO) is a beautiful and unrelentingly funny story that oozes with love. And it could be easy to go cheesy in the aesthetics, but instead, truth and familiarity is weaved into every shot.
Designed by Amy Wheeler and originally conceived in a small hotel room in Puerto Rico during the peak of the pandemic, it was no easy task to bring to life a home that was both miles and decades away. Wheeler’s resources were limited, not just by Covid, but by extreme weather conditions and lack of local materials.
Glass was tempered in Miami and shipped all the way down, American vintage decor was virtually selected, and plasterers spent hours and then some searching the island for rocks and doing experiments with saws to create the right window sills.
Ponderous consideration and strenuous commitment went into every layer of every room – the choice of wallpaper, pendants, mismatched woods. And with that, the world of Gordita Chronicles was born. Cucu’s world was born.
Curated so organically that you don’t even look at it twice. It is not a fetishised image of the 80s, it is not sharply symmetrical or straight from a home improvement catalogue. It is outrageously real. Almost as if someone walked into your mother’s childhood home and pressed Record.
“I shared a room with my older sister in the 80s as well, and I was a little gordita as well. So I feel like I knew what it was like to have an older sister that was popular and pretty and different.”
In a sea of huge and stylised movie bedrooms with beds taller and fluffier than that from The Princess and The Pea, seeing a relatively small bedroom with faded yellow walls, frilly and flat sheets, and stains on the carpeting is wildly refreshing. “You just feel like it isn’t the first family that has lived in this place,” Amy adds.
Of course, it isn’t just how lived in this bedroom of our main character Cucu (Olivia Goncalves) and her older sister Emilia (Savannah Nicole Ruiz) looks that makes it honest. It is the subtle differences between them, their worlds and priorities. This isn’t a down-the-middle-black-and-white divide between two polar opposites but rather a visible timeline of ageing.
Cucu, with stuffed animals and Smurfs posters, a Snowman and an alarm clock. Emilia, with posters of music and boys and a full-length mirror.
Yet the similarities and lack of personality in the room also tell a story. The wicker trunks and beds were an affordable option for a family in the middle of a major move. The strange terrycloth bedspreads were a spark of something new and funky of the era but not something picked by the girls themselves. The striped butterscotch wall and dusty air conditioner were elements of an apartment that was not invested in or kept up by their landlord.
Everything tells a story, even if it is not part of the vocalised narrative. Even if it is just a silent memory, a dear kept trinket, a regrettable impulse shop. Much like writers, production designers like Amy create backstories that live in the shadows. That adds depth.
The familiar beach scene of wicker on wicker and plants and soft colours are ever-present, yet this is no Miami Vice copycat. That was the last thing Amy Wheeler and her team wanted to emulate.
Instead, Amy met up with Claudia, the showrunner, where she got to look through pictures from her upbringing. One thing that stood out to her was this heavy and traditional dining table set. It wasn’t pale and light, but clashingly ornate and dark. It doesn’t fit, and yet, it is perfect.
You have travelled all the way from the Dominican Republic to start your life anew. Some things you could bring with you; clothes, records, dolls, art and a few other precious keepsakes. Other things were there; seafoam carpeting, pastel pink kitchen tiles and wooden cabinet handles lit by chunky architectural fluorescents that have overlapped from the 60s and 70s.
And then, you one by one build your new home. Not in a day, not from IKEA, not magically appearing from a magazine. From thrift shops and yard sales and the occasional investment. You build it with inspiring modern touches and household staples like those wicker bar stools. You build it with trends and themes from the late 70s, because brand new furniture will burn through your wallet.
You build it with a mix of mass-produced materials and what, at that point, is considered dated mid-century pieces because that is what people are replacing in their own homes. (The Danish glass/tile coffee table from the 60s is to the 80s as the black plastic fridges of the early 2000s are to today’s eyes.)
That is the perfection in familiarity Amy Wheeler designed.
So, while this story does dance in the 80s, its lack of 80s iconography is perhaps what makes it all the more real.
“Part of our business is sort of psychology in a way. Getting under the story, the character.”
Amy Wheeler
Watch Gordita Chronicles now, available on HBO Max.
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