“The Studio” Has Tons of A-List Cameos—Including Some of the Best Midcentury-Modern Architecture in LA

Production designer Julie Berghoff and her team brought this vision of a Frank Lloyd Wright–built office building to life on the Warner Bros lot, creating an 8,000-square-foot, two-story structure inside Stage 23 for the interior and creating a new façade on an existing structure for the exterior. Like Wright, she used prefabricated blocks to construct her masterpiece, only these were built out of plaster instead of concrete and were made by a combination of casting, lasering, and CNC routing (a computerized cutting machine). “If I wanted to shift anything, it was a big deal because everything was built on the 18-inch blocks,” she recalls. “It was a very technical, difficult building, and we built it in six weeks.” Also taking a page out of Wright’s book, set decorator Claire Kaufman created custom furniture pieces for the space.

The Harvey House and the Foster Carling Residence

Rogen and O’Hara in the yard of the Harvey House, which looks out over Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Apple

Matt Remick (Rogen) works with a stacked lineup of actors and directors, all played by themselves. Just a few of the cameos in The Studio include Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Charlize Theron, Greta Lee, Steve Buscemi, and Olivia Wilde. His role on the business side of things means he is constantly the bad guy, having to crush dreams, let down his idols, and sometimes make a fool of himself. But it’s clear that both he and his former boss Patty (O’Hara) love movies and have a deep admiration for creativity. The show creators wanted to convey this in their homes, so Berghoff, location scout Stacey B. Brashear, and their team set out in search of standout architecturally significant dwellings fit for movie executives. “For some of these homes, we were just putting letters on their door and hoping they would answer,” Berghoff says. “Stacey was very persistent.” It paid off in the form of three striking and historic midcentury-modern dwellings built by innovative American architect (and student of Frank Lloyd Wright) John Lautner.

In episode one, we see Matt visit Patty at her hilltop residence, where she welcomes him into a massive rounded entryway with stone floors and floor-to-ceiling glass windows all around. It is the Harvey House, built by Lautner in 1950 for aluminum producer Leo M. Harvey. One of the architect’s early commissions, it fell into disrepair in the 1980s, and in 1998 Charlie’s Angels actor Kelly Lynch and her husband, writer and producer Mitch Glazer, outbid Leonardo DiCaprio to purchase it. They lovingly restored it with help from Lautner Associates principal Helena Arahuete and still own it today.