The Sets for Sabrina Carpenter’s Netflix Special Riff on Everything from ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ to ‘White Christmas’

Sabrina Carpenter spent 2024 giving fans exactly what they didn’t know they needed — high-octane singles fueled by a singular aesthetic between camp and erotic. Forget Madonna; Carpenter might well be the modern Mae West, serving bombshell attitude while sending up the image of a sexy blonde.

Is it any wonder that Jason Sherwood landed the job as production designer of her Netflix holiday special, “A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter,” based partly on a photo of Rosemary Clooney in a black gown against a hot pink backdrop in “White Christmas”?

“ It’s Easter egged to hell and back,” Sherwood told IndieWire over Zoom. “The tiered cake is a pretty direct reference to a Busby Berkeley number that’s pretty famous. ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ was on the mood boards. Almost everything has a reference to ‘White Christmas.'” Sherwood also looked to classic holiday specials from Judy Garland and Andy Williams to capture the flavor of what Carpenter was paying homage to and winking at.

In terms of filtering a certain mid-century sensibility for contemporary audiences, Carpenter may have met her match in Sherwood. The opening number, with Carpenter in a pink dress surrounded by dancers in tuxes, is also a sly tip of the top hat to “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” except the dancers are all women in tuxes a la Marlene Dietrich, another blonde playing with gender archetypes. And the internet-breaking “Last Christmas” duet with Chappell Roan is a glammed-up, trashed-out karaoke party, equal parts crushed red Solo cups, Studio 54, and Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” The hour-long special is a wide-ranging look through the last century of pop culture, from Judy Garland to “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”

 ”What’s exciting for me as a production designer and as a creative person in general is Sabrina is having sort of her continual big moment,” Sherwood said. “And so many people would want to sort of do pyro, video screen, 60 dancers, the whole thing. And the restraint and the attention to aesthetic, for that to make its way all the way through to the end and to commit to that and for that to feel dexterous and exciting on camera, it takes a lot of people buying in on the big idea. And it’s exciting to work with an artist who can commit and be disciplined about it. Because some people would be like, ‘Well, is it enough? Can it sustain three minutes?’ And the answer is yes, it can sustain three minutes, because these classic performances that we’re referencing would do this kind of thing. You just have to commit.”

Behind the scenes of ‘A Nonsense Christmas With Sabrina Carpenter’Courtesy of Jason Sherwood

Everyone involved had to commit and quickly; Sherwood and his team were designing the sets before a set list was even in place. But based on initial conversations about what might be likely — an espresso martini sketch, a Santa moment — he knew enough to begin with the broad strokes of what would become the house set where Carpenter and friends perform sketches before stepping into a full-blown musical fantasia within the seemingly conventional rooms.

“‘Chicago,’ the movie musical, was a reference,” Sherwood said. “And Sabrina references lots of musical theater in her music videos and in her imagery in general, there’s a theatricality. It gives the special a sense of cohesion that’s really nice, right? You’re like, ‘Oh, here’s the thing that we’ve seen before, but now we’re seeing it in a different way.’ And it makes the storytelling feel more cogent and of a piece.”

That extends even to the “Last Christmas” sequence, which is striking in the way it deviates from the cotton candy of the special for something that feels almost like a melancholy holiday detente between Linda Evans and Joan Collins on “Dynasty,” all furs and pantyhose and jewels — although both Roan and Carpenter were adamant about keeping their long-awaited duet one of camaraderie.

‘A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter’PARRISH LEWIS/NETFLIX

“ It’s probably my favorite moment of the special,” Sherwood said. “We wanted it to have that tongue-in-cheek kind of feel, and for them to take their shoes off and throw the furs down. The styling ended up being perfect because it’s the sort of high-low of the whole thing that really gives it that camp emotion. It had to come together really, really quickly, and it was fun. I mean, me and our set deck team literally grabbed a whole bunch of stuff and strewn it all over the room and then vacuumed some of it away so that the girls could stand in the middle of the space and sing.

“It’s been nice to see how the internet and even people in my own life have reacted to it because it was a really fun part of this special,” he continued. “It can’t be all studio audience laughs and big production numbers back to back to back. We had to have a real sense of movement and journey, even if it’s only an hour.”

“A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter” is now streaming on Netflix.