Toni Barton on the set of Dolphin Club for "Fight Night", courtesy of Toni Barton

Continuing the ongoing series of interviews with creative artists working on various aspects of movie and TV productions, it is my pleasure to welcome Toni Barton. In this interview, she talks about what she sees as the biggest change in this industry in the last 25 years, her approach to creating the worlds for her stories, building layered sets that reflect the history of the place and the characters, how she sees generative AI, and what keeps her going. Between all these and more, Toni dives deep into her work on “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist”.

Kirill: Please tell us about yourself and the path that took you to where you are today.

Toni: From a very young age I had a fascination with architecture – and was very excited when my cousin introduced me to her youngest brother in law, Julius Haley, who was the first architect I would meet. A few years later while on summer break, my mother directed a children’s theater production of the musical “The Boy Friend”. She enlisted my sister and I to paint all the sets. I did not know what I was doing, but this experience planted a seed. That seed grew in high school, where I took many drafting classes and eventually interned at an architecture firm.

With the sole purpose of becoming an architect I attended the University of Southern California, but that singular focus broadened quickly. Songfest was an annual fundraiser held by students at the Shrine Auditorium. While practicing with the Black Student Union, someone asked if I could design our backdrop. So, in the middle of the night I was painting a large backdrop on top of the parking structure. Once again, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was having fun. Over those years I learned more about architecture, designed more plays and musicals, worked in the scene shop, and designed several short films. After graduation, I moved to New York and studied scenery for stage and film at NYU. For a few years I assisted several Broadway set designers and worked at a couple of industrial set design firms – and once I was accepted into the union, I started working in film.

I was an assistant art director for many years, drafting, learning while crying and trying to figure it out [laughs]. I worked with some amazing people, including art director Patricia Woodbridge. She brought me on “Mona Lisa Smile”, “Hitch”, “Freedomland”, “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Bounty Hunter”. She taught me what to do as an assistant art director and put me in places to learn. Patricia was my film mom, and I will forever be grateful for her. Later, I started art directing on a lot of different TV shows, and eventually collaborated with the production designer Loren Weeks. He was hired to design the first seasons of the Marvel Netflix series “Daredevil”, “Jessica Jones”, “Luke Cage”, “Iron Fist”, and “The Defenders”. After that, as a good boss does, he pushed me out of the nest, saying “Now go fly and design”, which was scary, but wonderful. All of this thankfully lead to production designing “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist”.

Toni Barton and the art department of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Looking back at the first 25 years of your career, what do you see as the biggest changes in this field?

Toni: The biggest change for me is how we consume media. When I was growing up, the entire family would sit down and watch a show, whatever was on. There were 4 or 5 channels, and everybody would want to have that water cooler moment the next day. You didn’t want to come in the next morning without seeing what happened on your show the night before, because everybody would want to talk about it together.

Now, everybody is in their private space – watching it live or for the fiftieth time on their phones or three seconds after it’s left the movie theater and is streaming.

My preference for episodic shows is to drop weekly – giving the audience a chance to breath with the story and to anticipate what’s going to happen the next week. I like that much more than digesting content all at once.

Toni Barton and Lance Totten, the set decorator of “Fight Night”, on the set. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: From design perspective, did you start designing on paper, or was it already in the world of digital devices and tools?

Toni: When I was in architecture school I mainly drew by hand, not learning much on the computer until later when my studio professor told us “I don’t want anybody to think of AutoCAD as the designer. It is merely a tool. It is no different than using a pencil on vellum or ink on mylar”. Realistically, when I was an assistant art director drafting sets, I drafted only on the computer. But as a designer, I think with my hand. When I’m designing a set, a lot of times I’m on my drafting table. I’m figuring it out with a pencil, trace paper and a scale ruler. I’m constantly moving the pencil, sketching through ideas, or tearing off a piece of trace and taping it on top of another to develop my ideas from concept to reality.

At a certain point, I may hand off a sketch to my set designer. And sometimes they give it back digitally so I can modify my ideas in AutoCAD, thinking through the details. Designers use all sorts of tools today for 2D and 3D modeling. These tools might be on a computer or iPad. It might be the set designer or the illustrator making a 3D model or fly-through animation. It’s just the tools that we utilize to tell the story, but they’re not designing it. They are simply how we communicate our ideas.

Floor plan and materials for the Hyatt Regency set of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Do you find that viewers today have higher expectations from episodic productions than it used to be 15-20 years ago?

Toni: As an artist and a designer, I’m translating the written word to build a world visually for the audience. On “Fight Night”, my task was to build Atlanta in the year 1970. I do not want the audience to think about what I am doing, if that makes sense. I want them to think about the story. The audience will hopefully believe in the created world, in which these actors are wearing the costumes, hair and makeup. The director and the cinematographer are telling that written story in this world. With more money and time, one can build a lot more, but it still needs to tell the showrunner’s story.

Floor plan for the Chicken Man party house set of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Isn’t it a bit disappointing when you spend all these long months on a show, and the audiences only talk about the characters and the story?

Toni: That’s OK with me. A couple years ago I designed Netflix’s “Archive 81” .We built a lot of sets, because we could not shoot safely on many locations in 2020 due to the pandemic. One of the sets that I designed was a massive two-story, Brutalist concrete compound for the main character Dan. Everybody that watches it assumes it’s a location. Honestly, I take this as a compliment because they don’t believe it’s a set on a soundstage. That’s a testament to the design, to the lighting, and to how the cinematographer and director are filming the sets. I want people to feel that they’re real. And if this means they focus on the story – then great.

On “Fight Night” I filled four soundstages with scenery, and even more scenery was built on location. There are no aspects of current day Atlanta that we can shoot as is without making major changes to fulfill the needs of the script. One of the many settings in the script was the Hyatt Regency Hotel, originally built in 1967. We filmed inside the lobby at the real location, recreating its original design, but had to build its iconic rotating rooftop, Polaris Bar and penthouse suite on the stages. When you look out the windows the skyline is nothing like it was in 1970, so a VFX set extension was also added to match that time. I hope the audience believes it’s real, but I don’t want them to dwell on it. I want them to get engaged and engrossed in the story. Of course if they love it, that’s awesome too.

The police department on “Fight Night”.

Kirill: The ’60s and the ’70s are two of the more formative decades in our recent history, and there are quite a few stories set up in those periods. How do you find the balance between what the audience expects, so to speak, of the look of that time and carving out your own visual space for this story?

Toni: Here’s where it gets interesting. “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” mainly takes place in October and November of 1970, but that really means most of the architectural spaces are from the ’40s, the ’50s, and the ’60s. This story is based on the 10-episode podcast with the same name by Jeff Keating. He interviewed many of our characters before they passed. One of the interviews was with Detective J.D. Hudson’s daughter, who said that his favorite color was blue. Detective J.D. Hudson, played by Don Cheadle, integrated the Atlanta Police Department in the late ’40s. I didn’t have any photos of his police station, but that timeline was my starting point, to start building the architecture that goes back to his early days. I designed blue linear glazed tiles with grout lines for the police station walls with various blue colored VCT floor tiles. When I was designing that set, I asked the set decorator for schoolhouse pendant lamps to hang down from the ceiling. The gaffer requested a dropped ceiling instead, since that would be so much easier to control the light. But knowing that drop ceiling retrofits would have probably been added to our building a few years later, it was important to stay true to this time period.

Continuing with JD Hudson’s house we added the blue palette throughout his house. It’s in the wallpaper textures that were prevalent in the late ’50s, and in the textiles and dressing throughout. It’s a tight palette, but it’s not necessarily so methodical. It feels real for the ’50s and the ’60s. This family didn’t just redecorate their entire house the previous year, and it’s a family that is a little older compared to Chicken Man.

J.D. Hudson’s living room set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Chicken Man, played by Kevin Hart, was a hustler with a fourth-grade education. He is a guy that is taking care of the entire neighborhood. He’s taking care of his church-going family, and he knows how to connect anyone in his hometown. Chicken Man drives a gold Cadillac. So, to push this, we created a red and gold palette in all his settings: the party house where the heist occurs, his family home with muted pinks and ochres, and even the Clermont Lounge.

These are not necessarily ’70s colors, because I’m building a world of ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s leading up to it. The showrunner, Shaye Ogbonna, said Chicken Man purchased the Party House in 1968, only two years before the heist. We used several colorful reflective mylar wallpapers in the living room and kitchen, and a created a shag carpet with oranges and yellows and browns. And the same colors were used to build the linoleum flooring in the kitchen and hallways. This tight palette works in the time period. Not only using the color palette to define each character but also building an arc to tell the entire story.

Model and materials for the Chicken Man house party set of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

During the penultimate episode, the robbers travel to Jekyll Island, about a five hour drive from Atlanta, close to the Florida border. In the early ’60s it was a beach destination where the southern portion of the island was the segregated St. Andrew’s Beach. That’s where the chitlin’ circuit Dolphin Club was located where Black artists could perform for Black patrons. In our timeline, this venue has been boarded up and abandoned since integration closed many of the clubs. It is also a point in our story where JD Hudson and Chicken Man are working together so I mixed blues with reds and golds in this club.

Kirill: What about the Hyatt Hotel? Did you want to have it a little bit more modern to 1970?

Toni: We shot on the first floor in the Hyatt Regency’s lobby and replicated the space to its original John Portman 1967 design. Currently, there are chrome railings and glass walls all over the lobby floor, all high-end and very different from before. We built low plastered walls to cover the existing, built tree structures, added red carpets, and white and gray modern furniture. Above the main escalators, there was a beautiful glass and metal sculptural Parasol Bar, which was removed a while ago. We made a 3D model of this sculptural bar structure for a VFX set extension. When we filmed the lobby, there were some Hyatt Regency employees that had been there for over 40 years, and said it is just how they remembered it.

The set and materials for the Hyatt Regency penthouse set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Then we go upstairs to the Penthouse and the Polaris Bar where the architectural structure is the same as the existing hotel: doors, terrace balcony, elevators and windows. But we had freedom to play with everything else – creating a sunken living room with zigzag carpet with red, gold and black wallpapered walls, terrazzo floors and a burl wood and black marble bar. Sometimes you just have to play, because it’s fun and an interesting way to tell a story. When I read the first drafts of the scripts, to determine what to build, there were only two scenes in the penthouse, in only two episodes – that was it. But once the showrunner saw the set, he added more scenes in later episodes.

The same thing happened with the Polaris Bar. Initially it was in the first three scripts, and it was more of a restaurant. You came up out of the elevator, and the carpeted area closer to the windows rotated. I designed the main bar in the center near the elevator so that the backdrop of the skyline would be in most shots. It doesn’t mimic John Portman’s original design, but it plays with it well.

The Hyatt Regency Polaris bar set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: I’m not sure what’s the right term for it, but it’s these heavy mahogany panels that you see inside old houses all throughout. When did we lose them? When did they go out of fashion?

Toni: You see them throughout architecture in the ’50s and the ’60s, and they span a little bit into the ’70s. I refer to them as peekaboo panels.I started on the “Fight Night” in early December of 2023. During Christmas, I flew to Los Angeles to visit my family. My grandparents moved into their house in the early ’60s, and up until my sister moved in about 15 years ago, the house had panels with the circle cutouts between the living room and the kitchen. I referenced these panels for Chicken Man’s Party House, passing along photos to Justin Jordan, assistant art director, who then translated them into our world. He also designed decorative panels for the Hyatt Regency in Frank’s Penthouse, Lola Falana’s Suite and in the Polaris Bar which I painted iridescent black.

The floor plan for the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: What went into making the venue for the boxing match?

Toni: The Municipal Auditorium was the venue for the fight, which still exists in downtown Atlanta. It was built in 1909, and resurfaced I believe in the late ’40s. About 45 years ago Georgia State University purchased and built inside the large interior, breaking up the massive arena, only allowing our production to film the exterior location. When Muhammad Ali fought Jerry Quarry, there were hardwood floors and simple wooden chairs, with two tiers of balconies above low walls that lead into dressing rooms.

Most sport venues today have fixed seating and ballroom spaces required major building on location, so we opted to build this on the soundstage. We couldn’t find the blueprints with the true dimensions of the arena at that time, so we had to guestimate based on the exterior and the many photos and videos from the fight. My proposal to the director, showrunner and cinematographer was to build the first balcony, two entrances, and about 120 degrees of wall between the entrances. Almost all of the floor seats surrounding the boxing ring would exist and the rest was bluescreened for VFX set extension. Then, during the shooting, our director Craig Brewer rotated the audience and kept shooting mainly into the built scenery walls.

The floor plan for the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

In the boxing ring each fighter has their own corner. One corner has three red ropes on either side and the opposite corner has three dark blue ropes on either side. The set dressing team matched the research perfectly from the Everlast padding, exposed turnbuckles, draped electrical cords on the balcony walls, to the colors and placements of the rope. But due to the constant rotation of the audience, we had to make sure the ropes were the same on all sides. It worked well, and it allowed us to have what was necessary to film the fight.

The plans for the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Which set took the longest chunk of your time?

Toni: From the very beginning we had about two months to build around fifty sets for the first two episodes. I don’t know that I was breathing at all during that time. The set that I spent the longest on was the set that I had the most time to do design and breath at the same time – the Dolphin Club for episode seven.

About two months out, I went to Jekyll Island with writer Erika Johnson and line producer Dianne Ashford to gather as much research as possible since the venue was torn down more than fifty years ago and very few photographs remain. We walked the beaches where these buildings used to stand, to understand how big they were, understand the culturally context and the climate of this beach community. Of course, at this same time I was prepping and shooting episodes three through six designing new smaller sets, but the Dolphin Club was by the far the largest set since all of the initial built sets created for the show were completed. I took those two months to make sure that my research was correct, that I was telling the right story.

I designed the Dolphin Club ground plan and presented it along with the research to the team. The director Craig Brewer took my ground plan and digested it, calling me later stating all works perfectly for the script, with a few small additions. This process was wonderful, because we could really get to the gist of what was needed and make sure that it worked for every single aspect of the story.

The Hyatt Regency penthouse set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: You have this beautiful and immaculate penthouse set in Hyatt, and this abandoned club that lays in ruins. Is one more interesting to work on than the other?

Toni: Not at all – they are both just as exciting. From the beginning, the first assistant director said that he wanted the party house to be ready early. I designed and built the first floor and the basement on one of the sound stages, to meet the schedule. The next sets I designed were the Hyatt Regency Penthouse and the Polaris Bar, doing those at the same time. And the last set that I designed, because it was supposed to be the last set we were supposed to shoot during the first two episodes, was the Atlanta Police Department. Then I got a call saying that they were going to shoot the APD set in two weeks, and I had not even begun to design it. I drew it in one day, and the next day handed it off to my set designer, and then two weeks later, we were shooting on that set – which was absolutely crazy, but we made it happen.

The Penthouse was refreshingly fun. I was exploring some interesting patterns and shapes that I shared with Lance Totten, the set decorator. Justin Jordan, assistant art director found a zigzag patterned carpet, and Lance found a trapezoidal seating that were upholstered in a gorgeous, maze patterned fabric. This seating became the basis for the sunken living room. We mixed deep reds, golds, chromes, burl wood, zigzag carpet with the black iridescent peekaboo panels.

At one point we were standing there on the soundstage with all the white walls around us, looking at all the samples before anybody had started painting anything, and Lance turned to me and said “Toni, I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I’m down for the ride”.

I do wonder how different our Dolphin Club set would have been if it hadn’t been influenced by the Hyatt Regency Penthouse set. Truly many of the concepts and patterns inform one another.

Construction in progress on the Hyatt Regency sets on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Is there such a thing as the most challenging set that you’ve worked on for this production, or did they all have their own different aspects to it?

Toni: Everything in the beginning of production is challenging. The challenges are about building all of it and building it within a budget. When I start, I try to get as many scripts as written, so that I can read through them, break them down and I look at all the sets that the showrunner and the writers are requesting. A lot of times they may write more sets than we can realistically build or spaces that may be duplicated in one. Maybe, instead of building a bedroom in the penthouse, the scene could happen in the sunken living room. Those are the lovely discoveries of what we do. All those challenges are good challenges because then they hopefully lead to many more interesting solutions.

The Chicken Man party house set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Is it still painful to see these sets that you build get destroyed or dismantled after you are done with them?

Toni: Absolutely not. I love it, because that means that there’s something else that we have to do next. When I was in grad school, I designed the play “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean”. It was such a small production that the actors had to help me build, paint and wrap the set. They were young undergrads that put their heart and soul into this show.One of them asked me your exact same question through tears. And I told them that there’s another show that’s coming soon. There’s always new stories to tell, new worlds to build.

Now what is sad is the amount of waste that can be created at wrap. I try to be as sustainable as possible, reusing materials, repurposing, or providing salvaged windows, doors, flats to another production or non-profit organization at wrap.

The Hyatt Regency penthouse set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Is there any artwork from the show that is still around? My personal favorite is the painting that hangs on the back side in the penthouse.

Toni: Oh, I will have to tell Lance, the set decorator. I believe his parents had a similar postmodern painting in his childhood home. This painting in Frank’s Penthouse was a rental from Omega Props in Los Angeles. Due to clearance issues, many of the artwork is either made by our scenics, graphic designers or rented.

Kirill: I love the aesthetic of the ’70s, the interior design, the graphic design, the fashion. You don’t see that anymore. The modern interior design is so boring. It feels like we lost that richness along the way.

Toni: There’s an interesting thing about the Hyatt. It was built in 1967, so it’s the most recent thing in our show. We are recreating John Portman’s work, and that’s where I spent the most money. I can’t necessarily do that in a detective’s house or a number runner’s party house, but I can do that at the Polaris Bar and in the Penthouse suite for the Hyatt Regency. But we also had fun in Cadillac Wheeler’s, NJ Warehouse. A deep purple shag carpet office filled with stolen goods with camel colored leather sofa and painting of Wheeler’s father which was a creation by the Shaq Simmons, graphic designer and Keenan Chapman, scenic meshing Terrance Howard’s look with an early 1960’s Adam Clayton Powell.

Cars of “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: There’s one more thing that I love about the ’60s and the ’70s, which is the cars. We don’t see those long bodies, those beautiful lines, the chrome highlights and the colors anymore. It’s all just the same raindrop shape, and the same grey or beige everywhere these days. What goes into getting all those cars from that period on the screen?

Toni: Jason Geigerman was our picture car coordinator and he’s lovely to work with. When we sat down to discuss options, the most essential thing for me was a clear color palette, but it was just as important to determine economically and culturally the correct options for each character.

In addition to Chicken Man’s 1966 gold Cadillac DeVille and JD Hudson’s blue Ford Galaxie 500, the robbers, as organized by McKinley, was in a green palette. The first time we see the two guys scoping out the party house, they are in a 1961 rusted green Chevrolet van. Jason searched for the right vehicle and painted it to match my original illustration of the Ext. Party House.

Exterior illustration of the Chicken Man party house (with the green van) on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Jason would carry 12 to 20 different cars and rotate the non-hero cars in and out between episodes. He had to increase his quantity to fill a drive-in movie theater in the early episodes, and for a nighttime street scene where Detective Hudson is walking with Muhammad Ali.

The nighttime street scene on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Do you feel that productions such as this become a visual reference of how, in this particular case, Atlanta looked like in 1970? Is there a certain responsibility to portray this period and this place in a way that becomes a reference for the next generation of artists that will be using you as their visual reference?

Toni: That’s an interesting question. The mantra that Lance and I kept repeating to ourselves was that we are not making a documentary, that we’re creating entertainment. Our Art Department had two long walls, about 100 feet long each filled with research. We had research on Ali’s fight, on the Hyatt Regency, on African American homes in Collier Heights, Pascals, chitlin’ circuit venues and everything else. We did as much research as we could on what was real of the time. We are doing entertainment, but our scenery is still real. We’re still building real worlds. I don’t think that people can watch this show and take it as a documentary. It’s entertainment.

Kirill: A week or so before this interview opportunity came along, I was watching “Dolemite” from 1975, and now I’m thinking about how do I know what the ’70s looked like. That is all from entertainment – the movies and TV shows that were either filmed back then or are portraying it, or from glamorous magazine covers. But I don’t really know how much of it is true, and how much of it is an elevated version of how it was.

Toni: Wow, “Dolemite” and one of my favorites, “Cleopatra Jones” are so rich with textures, but because they are filmed after our dates and the stories do not relate, I cannot use it as research. “Dolemite” was filmed and takes place in Los Angeles in the mid ’70s. It’s not that long after “Fight Night”, but architecture, art and fashion has changed during those few years, plus it has nothing to do with Atlanta and the world I need to create.

However, since this is based on a true story and there were two films that referenced this time, I did take an initial look at them. At the fight, there were many Black celebrities, two of which were Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. Sidney Poitier wrote and directed “Uptown Saturday Night” in 1974 and “Let’s Do It Again” in 1975, both of which are a based on the facts surrounding the fight and casino night heist. But once again, this is 5 years after my story takes place. You must be very clear on where you’re getting your research, and make sure that the time period is correct.

The same goes for architecture. When I go to Atlanta now and I look at the wrought iron railings, many are painted black. But in 1970 it was all painted white. I need to recreate that look or bring in metal window awnings to return it to that time period to make the Collier Heights neighborhood in our story believable for 1970.

Dolphin Club green room set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: You mentioned that Covid caught you right after your work on “Invasion”. Looking back at these five years, do you feel that the industry is back to what it used to be and how it used to do things?

Toni: Well, not only did the pandemic change things, but the writer and actor strikes of 2023 had a major factor in the industry over the past five years. One of the things I mentioned earlier was how differently audiences digest media. The amount of content that is coming out has decreased. Where studios are filming now, including which cities and countries have changed significantly.

The location for Dolphin Club before work started on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: How do you see generative AI? Do you see it as an existential threat? Do you see it as yet another tool? Or is it too early to say?

Toni: I don’t think it’s too early to say. I do not currently use it because I have not seen proper regulation of it yet. I do want to see the precautions in place for all unions – not only artists working in film, but artists outside so that their work is not stolen. I must go back to that conversation that I had in architecture school with my professor. The key is that AI cannot be the designer. It must be a tool only. When we have regulations in place that protect the designer, then it becomes an extension that helps the designer, and not a replacement for the person doing the job. When that is in place, I see it being an asset. I don’t see it going away. It’s all in how it’s regulated.

Kirill: It’s all changing and evolving so fast, and I’m not sure if regulators, here in the States or abroad, will be able to match that pace and catch up to it.

Toni: It has to, without a doubt. On every single union project, it falls under a contract signed by a studio, the producers and the unions. Within that, there are rules and regulations that protect copyright and other legal matters. Every contract, every union project, no matter where it is, has a regulatory signature of whatever studio and whatever union that represents whoever is working on it. And that is there to protect the studio as well as the artist. So, yes, I think it needs to be there.

Dolphin Club floor plan and materials on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: Your job takes you to new places and new cultures, but it also takes you away from your family and friends for those long periods of time. What keeps you going? What makes you stay in this field?

Toni: I don’t know how to do anything else [laughs]. Do you ever love something so much? I remember walking down a street here in New York probably 25 years ago, and I passed this police officer who was talking about his retirement plans. He was about 45 years old and set to retire in a few years, and when I asked him why he would retire, he said that his job was for money, and then he wanted to open a business of his enjoyment later.

And here I am, sitting at my drafting table right now, and that’s where I want to be for as long as I can. I love what I do. Now, don’t get me wrong. I cry when it’s hard, when I’m not getting enough sleep because the hours are long. When I’m working, I’m waking up in the middle of the night, thinking about what we can do differently in that set or something. But when I’m not doing it, I don’t know what else to do.

During construction of the municipal auditorium set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

Kirill: If you were born 500 years ago and you could choose what to do, without restrictions, what would it be?

Toni: What a lovely question. I don’t think I want to be Da Vinci, but I’d love to be able to be a painter – someone working on a crew, to paint a mural or something else. I imagine that it would be a collaborative job, working to complete another artist’s vision. That would be quite interesting. I don’t know why that came to mind.

There’s another thing. I was a professor at NYU for many years, until I started production designing. I love seeing the next generation of designers. I don’t think there would be such thing as teaching design back then, but maybe as part of that crew I could also participate in the education process.

Visuals and materials of the Clermont Lounge set on “Fight Night”. Courtesy of Toni Barton.

And here I’d like to thank Toni Barton for taking the time to talk with me about the art and craft of production design. I also want to thank Marilyn Lintel and Sarah Meyer for making this interview happen. “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” is streaming on Peacock. Finally, if you want to know more about how films and TV shows are made, click here for additional in-depth interviews in this series.