How the Set for Sabrina Carpenter’s Christmas Special Came to Be

Constructing the world for a Netflix Christmas special with the vibe of an “old school holiday variety” program fitting for a modern pop queen is no easy task. Jason Sherwood was sure he was the right person to take on the challenge.

Sherwood first heard Sabrina Carpenter was planning to do a holiday variety special in July, just weeks before it was set to shoot in August, as he recalls it. “It was a four-week thing. It was a total blitz,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom.

The designer says as soon as he heard the concept for the singer’s special, A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter, it was clear that he was a “natural fit” for the project as his background includes theater, music and TV. Sherwood notes that he understood what the singer’s vision for the special was quickly.

For A Nonsense Christmas – which gets its name from a song on the singer’s 2023 holiday EP, Fruitcake – Sherwood worked with Carpenter and the team to create two main sets. The Short ‘N Sweet singer has cultivated a distinctly recognizable brand for herself, which Sherwood says made the process design process easier. “It’s really nice when you are making a stage or an environment for an artist like that because it’s so clear what ideas will work and what ideas won’t work,” he explains.

“Obviously you want to stretch, and you want to expand, but it’s a really, really clear process because the person at the center of it, who you’re making this for, has such a clear identity and the audience has such a clear relationship to that identity,” he continues. “In the case of this [A Nonsense Christmas], it was super easy to feel out right off the bat what Sabrina was going to be excited about. She’s a really clear communicator and has a clear vision for what she wants a project to be.”

Sherwood says that unlike most projects, the team designed the entire show without knowing the setlist or which guests would be taking part in the special. “We really had to create a [visual] language that would be adaptable and something that would be kind of malleable in a way,” he says, adding that the team landed on a holiday home set and a fantasy performance set.

The holiday home set took inspiration from 90s sitcoms such as Friends. “She wanted that to feel really old school. Like an old school sitcom. To have a bit of Friends in it, to have a lot of holiday in it,” Sherwood says. The fantasy performance space incorporated elements of old Hollywood glamour – a tiered stage and grand staircase – to fit the vibe of the special.

“We had these ideas that we would sort of volley between them using this old retro TV set,” Sherwood says. “Sometimes you’d be in the living room, and then you’d zoom in on the TV and then we’d go into the fantasy version of it.”

A Nonsense Christmas features several duets – typical of the holiday variety show genre – with artists such as Tyla, Shania Twain and Kali Uchis. Sherwood says the team was able to get something special for each individual guest. The most anticipated performance, and the production designer’s favorite, was Carpenter’s duet with fellow pop star Chappell Roan. The pair sang a rendition of Wham!’s holiday classic “Last Christmas.”

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“As a team, we sort of came up with this idea of them doing karaoke and I was like, ‘Well, what if we take the house and trash it and make it look like you’ve just thrown a sort of eighties prom meets Christmas party meets house party while the parents are away?” Sherwood explains. He and the team decided to take the “pristine” house set and “totally trashed” it.

“We put bottles and cups and popcorn all over the floor, and we’ve got the two of them walking down the stairs in party dresses barefoot. They take these corded mics that are attached to the old retro TV and they sing like it’s the end of a party,” he says. Sherwood notes that the Roan scene was a moment where the team could take the design and “turn it on its head.”

“We get to serve up this kind of cheeky but also really sweet moment between these two burgeoning pop culture icons who get to be kind of playful and off the cuff together,” Sherwood says. “It’s a really, really nice moment.”

Sherwood seems to appreciate the special for allowing him to indulge in his love of old Hollywood and variety specials. “It’s [variety specials] a thing that I’ve always appreciated as an individual, and the reason why I love them is they transport you,” he says. “I think transporting people and inviting them into something that feels like an escape from the real world and into this little holiday jewel – this little jewel box of ours – that’s sort of what I want them to walk away with.”