How ‘The Invite’ Created an Apartment That Only Instagram Can Love

Unless you’re mired in the billionaire sociopathy of a “Succession,” all living spaces say something about the people who live in them. But for production designer Jade Healy, creating the interiors for director-star Olivia Wilde‘s latest film, “The Invite,” required a massive high-dive into character psychology. “I became a version of Angela [Wilde], designing and decorating this apartment,” Healy told IndieWire about the pre-war San Francisco apartment that serves as the primary setting for Wilde’s charming sex comedy.

Built entirely on a set and inspired by a scouting trip to San Francisco, as well as many hours exploring vintage apartment listings on Zillow, Healy’s task was to make the apartment shared by Angela, an artist who gave up her career to be a stay-at-home mom, and her one-time punk musician husband Joe (Seth Rogen), now a burned out music teacher, reveal aspects of the characters’ inner and outer turmoil. Healy’s sets don’t just feel expansive or exude a kind of fraying millennial comfort; they are a direct look into the current (crumbling) state of Angela and Joe’s marriage.

It’s in no small part because Angela has poured so much of her frustrated creative energy into the apartment. We meet the couple on a hectic Friday night, just as they’ve opened up their home, after months of renovations, to the seductive couple upstairs, Pína (Penélope Cruz), a therapist, and Hawk (Edward Norton), a firefighter, for an impromptu dinner party. Angela’s grip on her vast (for San Francisco) vintage kingdom is tight, perhaps to the detriment of her relationship, and maybe even herself. Healy wanted to visually portray that tension. 

“It was really fun to think, ‘Who is she? What did it look like before? What is she constantly redoing in her house? Pillows, curtains?'” Healy pondered. Most of the items in the home would have been curated with care by Angela, and on a single-income budget. This led Healy to look for inspiration in places like Instagram, where ordinary women share their own maximalist interior design projects, rather than traditional interior design magazines. “I was really more interested in people who design with a personal touch,” Healy said. 

‘The Invite‘ Courtesy Everett Collection

These carefully curated household items, like a vintage toilet, were found on Facebook Marketplace. “It was important when we were decorating,” Healy said, “that the stuff was all affordable.” Facebook Marketplace, Healy felt, would be where Angela would spend her time scouring for the right lamp or the perfect couch cushion. “She’s going to flea markets, she’s making curtains,” Healy said.  

That character logic is important to the production designer because Healy isn’t just designing to evoke an emotion in the viewer, but also in the actor playing the role. “The actor will see the whole room,” Healy said. “It needs to feel like the story we’re telling, so the actor can get lost in the space. It’s the last piece of information you’re giving the actors about their character when they show up on set.”

But while most of the apartment has been blessed by the magic of Angela’s personal touch, two rooms remain in limbo. First, there’s Joe’s study, where all his music — and failed ambitions — are jammed in a tiny, cramped space. And then there is their bedroom, where Healy said, “No magic is happening.” 

‘The Invite’ Courtesy Everett Collection

The only minimalist room in the apartment, with paint samples languishing on one wall, Healy envisioned the bedroom as a space where Angela hasn’t spent much time because her and Joe’s sex life is null. “I just wanted that feeling when you go into the bedroom that she’s worked on every other aspect of the apartment, but the bedroom is just kind of bleh,” Healy said. This became the one room in the apartment with negative space, because, as Healy put it, “A wall with nothing on it says something.” 

Along with her intense attention to detail with the set decoration, Healy also worked closely with Wilde on the set’s floor plan. “We talked about how we wanted to make sure the film never felt stuck in this apartment,” Healy said, “We wanted it to feel like we’re actually in so many different places.” This included jettisoning the original idea of an open floor plan for the kitchen and living room. This change from the script gave an even greater sense of separation between Angela and Joe when they began filming.

As she worked on each room, Healy imagined how the director of photography, Adam Newport-Berra, would use the space. “I really wanted frames within frames,” Healy said, “because I knew that allowed him to separate the characters and move from one room to the other, dividing Joe and Angela by doorways, dividing them by rooms, even dividing them through the reflections in mirrors.”

‘The Invite’ Courtesy Everett Collection

Healy was amazed watching Newport-Berra, who recently won an Emmy for his work on the streaming series “The Studio,” on set as he found new angles through which to film the emotional divide between the couple. “I think I’m pretty savvy,” Healy said, “I had thought of all the angles, but I would still think ‘What is this shot?’ He’s so talented. He’s so intuitive about how shots reveal character.”

“The Invite” was shot in 23 days in chronological order, and Healy told IndieWire that Wilde fought hard to shoot the film on 35mm, adding that, “I don’t think that the relationship between set design and shooting on film is discussed enough.” When you’re shooting on film, she says you are “trying to make everything feel real,” and that film stock gives the set a lived-in quality that is not often achieved when shooting digitally. 

Although she’s worked on dozens of films, Healy has only worked with a handful of female directors. Healy said working with Wilde was a treat, adding that, “She was so confident. She’d go from Angela and then put on her directing hat. She knew exactly what she wanted; she knew exactly what she was doing.” Collaborating with Wilde was a “really great mirroring of the minds,” Healy said.

Healy’s hope with any director is that once she’s delivered her lookbook and her model, they can “spend their time and energy shot listing and rehearsing with the actors, and not stressing about the sets. That’s always what I want to deliver,” Healy said.  

“The Invite” opens in limited theaters on June 26 and wide on July 10.