Yes, ‘Only Murders in the Building’ Created a Bespoke Meryl Streep Doll for Episode 7

“There’s a lot of a lot PTSD around those dolls for a lot of cast and crew,” “Only Murders in the Building” production designer Patrick Howe told IndieWire. “One of our ADs of the episode kept telling everyone they were going to get a doll as a wrap gift, and that frightened everybody.”

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Who could blame them? In the seventh episode of Season 4, Charles, Mabel, and Oliver seek refuge from a possible assassin at the Long Island home of Charles’ sister, played by guest star Melissa McCarthy. And the overriding aesthetic of her home is the dolls that litter every possible surface.

“I knew that episode was going to require a house in Long Island,” Howe said. “So I immediately grilled [co-creator] John [Hoffman]: ‘Stop rehearsing this scene. We need to talk about this Episode 7 Long Island house immediately!'”

Though they used a real location for the exteriors, Howe constructed a Long Island sprawl in the studio. And then he and his team began filling it with more dolls than Neely O’Hara’s purse during a bender.

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“It was an infinite number. It was hundreds and hundreds of them,” Howe said. “The easiest way was to have that many instead of moving them around or multiplying them in visual effects.”

Howe’s team put in the legwork and found the dolls — but they also found a company where they could place custom requests. “You gave them a lookbook of the vibe you wanted for the dolls, and then they would make clothes and create them,” Howe said. “We were doing a likeness of one doll for Melissa and one doll for Meryl Streep that looked like Loretta. The rest didn’t matter as much, but we had those two that we wanted to tailor, and this company built them all to order.”