The Business
AWARDS SEASON
2019THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 56 NOVEMBER 6, 2019
W
hen Mr. McFeely, the upbeat
mailman on Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood, hands Tom Hanks’
Fred Rogers a package in director Marielle
Heller’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,
the original Mr. McFeely was standing behind
the cameras, keeping a close eye on the scene.
The involvement of David Newell, who
played the character on the beloved children’s
TV series, and others from Rogers’ world, help
to up the authenticity of production designer
Jade Healy’s meticulous re-creation of the set.
Opening Nov. 22, Sony’s Beautiful Day, based
on a 1998 Esquire cover story,
dramatizes how an assignment
to profile Rogers changed the
perspective of a cynical journalist
(Matthew Rhys).
Re-creating the look and feel
of Rogers’ world in 1998 was a labor of love for
Healy and her team, assisted by Newell and
Rogers’ widow, Joanne.
Key scenes in the drama center on the
journalist’s visit to Rogers’ studio, watch-
ing him in action as he films his show. Healy
and her team rebuilt the set of Mister Rogers’
Neighborhood on the Fred Rogers Studio at
WQED in Pittsburgh, where the series was
actually filmed, carefully constructing
Rogers’ house, the miniature town and the
Neighborhood of Make-Believe — a fictional
kingdom with castles and hand puppets.
Research involved visiting The Fred Rogers
Center and Archive, where Healy and her team
Building a Neighborhood
Production designer Jade Healy expands on the whimsical world of Fred Rogers:
‘We wanted the childlike wonder [but] bigger and exaggerated’could see original set pieces up close. “The
tree, the couch, we weren’t allowed to borrow,
but we could go in and measure and photo-
graph,” she explains. “Color was tricky. We
watched the TV show through what they shot
on the Ikegami cameras. The colors were off,
and old photographs showed different colors.”
Healy — whose work this year also includes
the Netflix divorce drama Marriage Story —
enlisted a few original crewmembers from
Rogers’ series, several of whom helped build
miniature models of the film’s New York and
Pittsburgh locations, emulating the playful
nature of Rogers’ set.
“We wanted New York and Pittsburgh to
have that quality of Mister Rogers, but elevated
— that childlike wonder of how you see [a city]
— and make them bigger and exaggerated,”
Healy says.
The production also tracked down original
Ikegami broadcast cameras and period moni-
tors. Cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes not only
employed them to give authenticity to the
look, but she also used the cameras to photo-
graph the show within the movie.
Newell and others from Fred Rogers
Productions would stop in during filming,
and Joanne Rogers invited Healy to her home,
allowing her to use original family photos as
well as a painting of a banana bunch painted
by Rogers’ sister. Healy found Rogers’ qualities
of kindness and generosity in those who knew
him. “Fred had a way of surrounding himself
with magical people,” she says.BEHIND THE SCREEN | CAROLY N GIARDINA
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