‘No Good Deed’ Had to Have a Killer House to Work — It Got One

The house central to the plot of Liz Feldman’s Netflix series “No Good Deed” should make you drool — and then question just how much stock you put in where you live. A gorgeous Spanish revival house in the Los Feliz neighborhood of L.A. might seem like a quick fix to a lot of problems, but as production designer Nina Ruscio told IndieWire, “Wherever you go, there you are.”

But good luck finding the house Lydia (Lisa Kudrow) and Paul Morgan (Ray Romano) are trying to sell; the exterior is real, but the Architectural Digest-ready interior is pure fabrication.

“ The driving force is that everybody wants to have this home,” Ruscio said. “So how could I create an experience for people seeing it that made it aspirational enough to cross a lot of different character types?”

As usual, the answer was in the details. The Spanish-style house is an immediately recognizable staple of L.A., one that incites house lust in almost everyone — except, possibly, Linda Carellini’s neighbor, Margo. And by focusing on creating a home that preserves the coveted period details while also updating it to reflect comfort and a certain taste level in the Morgans, Ruscio crafted a home that is as appealing to young professionals Leslie (Abbi Jacobson) and Sarah (Poppy Liu) as it is to architect Carla (Teyonah Paris) and TV star JD (Luke Wilson).

 ”It feels like the house has integrity and history, and on an emotional level, it has all of the life and the layers of the life of Paul and Lydia,” Ruscio said. “But on a seductive level, it wanted to be a house that could satisfy everyone’s dreams of the perfect lifestyle and the perfect way to curate your life.”

Interior of the Morgan house in ‘No Good Deed‘SAEED ADYANI/Netflix

There’s no such thing, of course, as everyone in “No Good Deed” discovers over the course of its eight episodes. And for Paul and Lydia, the house is a perpetual reminder of the death of their son, a loss that time hasn’t begun to heal. Paul is willing to sell the house and leave the memories behind; for Lydia, losing the house feels like compounding the loss of her son. For everyone else, they think the house will be a swift and easy way to slough off their own problems at the door. And the fastest way to signal a house is a home is, as Ruscio points out, a killer kitchen. (No pun intended.)

“People purchase houses for emotional reasons,” she said, “and the anchor of what is supposed to be a fabulous house right now is the hearth, and the hearth is the kitchen. A really big island, beautiful tile, beautiful art, exposing the beans, all beautiful cabinetry, a built-in banquette to eat in the kitchen. So that stuff needed to satisfy everybody’s dream concept of the perfect kitchen.”

The added layer of the house in “No Good Deed” is that it is not an exact representation of Paul and Lydia; this is a house for sale, so the decor is a pared-down version of their lives to appeal to the widest possible range of potential buyers.

 ”We were choosing at what level of denuding do you lose the essence of what the person is? And do you lose the kind of cues and Easter eggs that teach [audiences] who these people are?” Ruscio said. “So we chose to have this half-breed of a curated, cleaned-up version of their actual home. Matt Callahan is a set decorator I’ve had the pleasure of working with for decades. He’s incredible. Rode this line between those two facts. There’s historical furnishings within the living room, within the dining room. But for me, what I felt was really important was to bejewel the house in such a way that the architectural elements themselves, without embellishment, could make the home seductive.”

For Ruscio, that meant a focus on beamed ceilings, stained glass, woodwork — and a truly desirable fireplace. “It’s a practical fireplace,” she said. “And the tile surround is all custom-made, peppered with Easter eggs about the [plot]. There are pictures of the mandarin orange tree that Lydia’s so attached to that she planted when her children were little. There’s a peacock, which can be both fortune and bad luck.”

Interior of the Morgan house in ‘No Good Deed’SAEED ADYANI/Netflix

Compare the Morgan’s house and all the details that make it a home to the chilly expanse of open-concept rooms across the street, where J.D. and Margo live. That one Ruscio spotted in March 2023, shortly before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes shut down production. At the time, the house (which Ruscio described as “like a UFO had landed in the neighborhood”) was under construction; by the time filming resumed, it was not only complete, but the owners were amenable to letting “No Good Deed” film in it.

“ That space worked really well for the emotional, static nature of Margo and JD,” Ruscio said. “But it’s really Margo’s house. And Margo is soulless. So what would be Margo’s aspirational showiness? It would be the modern reduction of emotional family space and a garish aesthetic, the pink piano, the white couches, the mirrors everywhere, the marble floor. To present ostentatious excess to show the world that she’s made it, right? So that part of the character drove the search.”

TV magic out the two houses across the street from one another, but it was Ruscio’s skills that made the Morgans’ house into a home (almost) worth lying for.

“No Good Deed” is now streaming on Netflix.