Joe Stewart tells MTV News that Sunday night's festivities will look 'beautiful.'
By Mawuse Ziegbe, with reporting by Kelly Marino
Joe Stewart
Photo: MTV News
At Sunday night's SAG Awards, Hollywood's best and brightest will be lauded by their peers. And it's up to the show's production designer, Joe Stewart, to make sure that this year's winners collect their hardware in a venue that is as spiffy as humanly possible.
Stewart spoke to MTV News on Friday while preparations at the Shrine were well underway, and broke down the glamorous atmosphere of the production.
"This year, what we wanted to do was have a beautiful, elegant environment," he said. "The vibe of this show is always pretty elegant — because first of all, I mean, you're at an awards show; the attendees and the recipients are always wearing gowns and tuxedos. It's a black-tie event, so you always have to have a set that ... people can settle into and look good. So this set is supposed to be a sort of swell interior where ladies in gowns can look at home."
Setting up a venue worthy of a televised, A-list trophy handout takes planning, and Stewart said that putting the look of the event together took months.
"We prepare for this show in advance quite a while. I think that we started working on this in October, maybe even September with the preliminary conceptual ideas to get us going," he said. "It's a committee, we all have to get together, find time and meet and sooner or later we come to a consensus and start the work."
Outfitting the legendary event space with a glitzy look appropriate enough for SAG nominees like Natalie Portman and Nicole Kidman to sashay into is no easy task. However, Stewart pointed out that the space not only has to appear super glam, but the room also has to be transformed into a top-tier set able to accommodate a live coast-to-coast broadcast of the ceremony.
"Always, the challenging part of this is the space," he said. "There's a transformation that happens in this space. We completely black it out and then rig it, and the rigging you can see above head is how we hang everything up. And we basically take a room that isn't supposed to be a television studio or a theater and turn it into a glamorous event. But it has to function and have all the whistles and bells that a television studio would have and catering an event."
After months of planning, Stewart's job will finally wrap up Sunday when the show airs. While he admitted that handing over his handiwork to the stage managers makes him "pace backstage," Stewart revealed the special way he gets to indulge in the excitement of the evening.
"I get a little place backstage and I can see and congratulate winners, and I really enjoy doing that," he smiled. "When they come off the stage it's fabulous."
Stick with MTV News for SAG Awards coverage throughout the weekend and from the red carpet on Sunday night!
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
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