On Creating A World That Lets Us Believe In “The Chair Company”

There’s a scene early in The Chair Company, when we see Ron Trosper, portrayed by actor and series co-creator Tom Robinson, sitting by himself listening to Elliott Smith while wearing some truly horrible saggy pants. They desperately need tailoring and it’s one of many moments that set us up to not expect much from our protagonist. We’re supposed to assume that because Ron is so busy undermining himself, it is unlikely he’ll be effective should any stressful events unfold, while also knowing that all sorts of bizarre, potentially traumatic plot points are likely to begin at any moment.

But truth in this show is rarely what is obvious and this very well written story is filled to the brim with complex twists and turns throughout every episode. Every episode sticks to the landing.

I was able to meet with the show’s costume designer, Nicky Smith, and its director of photography, Ashley Connor, and I was indulged with a fascinating conversation about the requirements for plausible worldbuilding, underscored by the fact mutual respect amongst departments and consistent clear communication are necessary for storytelling on film to be effective. The people who made this show had quite a lot of fun making it, and I very much believe that is an important reason why the final product is so good.

We started at the beginning, with the pilot, but Lovely Reader, as ever, please do not worry about spoilers if you haven’t been watching. There is plenty to examine without giving anything away, and the end is something you should truly see for yourself.

“I think the pilot sets up the rest of the show,” director of photography Ashley Connor explained. “When director Andrew DeYoung and I first started working on the pilot, the theory behind the aesthetics was always for everything to take itself very seriously. We have to take ourselves very seriously in Ron’s world to be able to depict his descent into more obsessive behaviors really seriously.”

“The production designer who did the pilot episode,” costume designer Nicky Smith told me, “Rosaria Jimenez, she’s super, super talented. It was one of those things where we sat down and talked about the office a lot, but for the rest of the world, we were all on the same page. Once I saw Ashley’s boards, I understood that we were all speaking the same language: I’m going to do them in regular clothes. We’re not going to give away anything, to who the characters are outside, of their socioeconomic status, who they are as people. No jokes. We’re not going to give away anyone’s secret feelings on anything. We really played it straight so that we could all create this world that surprises you when the laughs come in. It surprises you when you cringe. It keeps the audience guessing what’s going to happen next.”

“I think Episode Five is the best example, it’s shot like a thriller chase,” Smith continued. “They’re running. They’re doing this. This person’s running in here. And Ashley did a beautiful job of shooting it, in that when they’re running down the stairs, the camera’s jumping down the stairs. You feel like Ron and the drug dealer are running with you. I think that’s the beauty of collaborative environments; when everyone’s all focused on the same goal. As long as we continue to remind ourselves that we’re all we’re telling the same story. And it’s the story of a man who, when he understands there is this huge conspiracy, his eyes kind of open up to the world.”

While doing my research before this conversation, I read in a few places comparisons between this series and Twin Peaks. I wanted to know what Conner thought about that.

“I’m a huge Lynch head, like, I’m a huge Twin Peaks fan,” the director of photography told me. “But, Lynchian to me, it’s not photographed strangely. It’s very middle of the road. And that gives the characters within Twin Peaks the space to exist and to be real people. But Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin have created a world where all these men, all these very unique characters, audiences can believe that they exist in the world, even if ‘the world’ feels like a portal next door. That Tamblay’s shop scene is such a perfect example.”

“He owns that shop with his dad, they met him on the scout, you know, and just loved his thing. And I think Tim and Zach are so good at casting. They’re so good at seeing the potential of people. Andrew is so good working with actors, and non actors, that they created a space for him to succeed. And he showed up and did an amazing job. It’s really Tim’s presence, I think, in a lot of ways he exists as an actor playing Ron, and takes it very seriously. He’s not showing up and treating people like this is a joke scene. I think that sincerity makes audiences really want to understand Ron more, and aim for the journey.”

Tamblay’s, for the uninitiated, is a low-mid pricepoint menswear store, and it enters our story when Ron finds a shirt important enough to track down. It’s a brief first introduction that still manages to delve into the forensic science of men’s shirts with a character behind the counter designed to push exactly as many buttons as Ron is currently in possession of.

This scene was shot at a real store, a much nicer store, Suit Man in Mount Vernon, New York, which the production redecorated to suit their hyper specific needs. The clerk in the scene I’m talking about was played by Jared Linder, a co-owner of Suit Man, who so impressed Tim Robinson that he was cast in the series.

“With a lot of the characters on the show, we had them come in for the fitting,” Smith explained. “But with Jared especially, we had him bring his own clothes. There’s something authentic, as a costume designer, about incorporating what we have with what other people have. Even if it’s just some worn shoes or some really sad cargo shorts, it helps to create a full flesh person in a way that there are textures, to have a variety of clothes in different states of care. I think that’s a really big thing. And for him, he had so many thoughts about what he should wear. I was like, actually, just wear what you normally wear, like a shirt and a blazer and simple chinos and just keep it very simple. And again, it’s like the character speaks for itself, because of the way it was written and the way that they do casting. And I think that’s the heavy lifting. Then, for the rest of us, on the aesthetic side of it, it’s just bringing it to life.”

As though enkindling a 360° character from the ether was nothing, I thought to myself.

“I always feel like whenever I try to describe the show, to anyone,” Conner said, “whenever I have tried to describe it, I sound like a third grader writing a book report. It just has this energy. We talked so much about how we have to be on Ron’s side. What Ron is willing to risk is his family, like, we’re presenting a character that’s willing to risk his family, who he clearly loves. He is willing to risk his life, his safety, everything, in order to follow this obsession. And the season, the arc, does such a good job of really being on Ron’s team, helping to watch him go through this process.”

If watching, we didn’t feel like we were on Ron’s team, some of his choices would be extremely hard to watch. But when not saturated with his selfish obsession, Ron cares very deeply. And he tries really hard. There’s a scene I knew I had to ask about.

Ron’s daughter, Natalie Trosper (Sophia Lillis) is getting married, and she and her fiance have decided to change the venue. What makes this hard is that her fiance’s family is not going to like or approve of their choice, and Natalie has asked her dad to speak to her new father-in-law, Terry (Torrey Hanson) for the couple.

“You know, the crew doesn’t necessarily have all the scripts,” Connor told me. “And a lot of times, they’re reading them on the day. And so there were so many questions with this one, like, ‘wait, where are we going?’”

Connor, the type of person who is completely capable of reading a room, knew that this was a time and place when she needed to step in, to communicate and to help the members of her team, or those in any department, to see the world she and the creators and director saw, the very world the crew was working so hard to make real.

“I’d be like, here’s where we’re going. Here’s where we’ve been. But that scene in particular, him on the deck with the fiance’s dad, a bunch of my crew came up to me, they’re like, that was really good. Dramatic, good, well acted.”

Lovely Reader, if you have not seen that scene for yourself, it is all of that and more. It was a scene written with compassion and beautifully shot. And the costumes each actor wore performed exactly as intended, supporting the creation of character without ever calling out for attention. I love elegantly executed work so much.

“They cast actors that could really act,” Smith said. “They cast actors who understood comedy,” the costume designer continued, “but who also understood drama and emotion and human interaction. I think a lot of the moments that people are going to resonate with, they kind of tell the line between both of those worlds, where it’s funny because of what just happened. But there’s this beautiful moment of human recognition that grounds you into the world that you’re taking a journey through.”

“There was this definite build out of Ron’s two worlds,” Conner added, “like the safety of home and the thrill of the chase. And we really liked the office being almost a neutral space. But we were speaking in different languages for these spaces. It wasn’t like ‘home bad, office bad, this good.’ We always wanted the family to be a safe, good space. we wanted home to feel nice. We wanted anytime he’s there, like with his kids, he loves that. There was like this constant of safety that needed to ground Ron’s journey. And Lake Bell is just amazing.”

“Oh my gosh, she is the best,” Smith grinned. “When we first spoke, she had so many ideas, which she sent me. And I was like, girl, you’re gonna look too good in all of this. I’m so sorry to tell you like, we’re gonna have to make you look like a suburban mom that’s only focused on practicality. She has to drop off the kids, she has a meeting. It’s less about how to tell a story that’s fashionably appropriate. It’s really focusing on, how does this woman move through the world? How does she start to see her husband, as he’s becoming a different person? a lot of the clothes that we chose to tell that story were like UNIQLO. There’s a lot of vintage, a lot of secondhand, some high end blouses, just because the patterns felt very apropos for the character. But working with Lake is easy. It’s fun and it’s joyous.”

“I think that’s what I was so impressed with about the cast,” Conner said thoughtfully, thinking about how to explain what she wanted to say. “Because I feel like Lou Diamond Phillips and Lake Bell, and Will Price and Sophia Lillis and Joseph Tudisco, like there’s a version of this, which is really cheesy, and really trying to like, hat on hat, winky to people. And it’s the earnestness that they bring to it, like Barb Trosper, as a character, Lake was so good, because I felt like she was Ron’s anchor. Literally, sometimes, in a world where Ron could have felt like someone you don’t care about, Lake brings you back, really grounds that relationship and makes the stakes feel really real. I was so impressed by her. And I texted her the other day, she’d posted herself in some premiere outfit just looking amazing.”

“Yes!” Conner said with another giant smile, “I literally was like, Oh my god, I’m only praying at your church. She’s so beautiful. She would come in and I’d be like, girl, I am so sorry, we’re taking you down.”

Jeff Levjman, Lou Diamond Phillips, everyone’s boss at Fisher Robay where Ron works, which builds malls, is the most traditionally stylish character in this story. Jeff is definitely the one with the most money, though for someone with so many advantages, he comes across as rather angsty, which really speaks to the quality of the acting and all the invisible work going on on the other side of the camera’s lens.

“With Jeff’s character,” the costume designer explained, “immediately I wanted to make sure that in the office, there are levels of status. It’s done in a way where Tim’s character wears a blazer, tie and pants, and you really don’t see that silhouette on anyone else. And then, to top Tim, you have Brenda who wears suits and beautiful blouses and dresses. It’s very much a business appropriate, managerial type. Then to top Brenda, you have Jeff Levjman, and he wears tailored, high-end suits without the tie. And because he’s a cool boss, a pocket square. Because it brings you into this kind of charming, enigmatic, exciting guy. And then you’re like, what is he doing at this office? And then in turn, as you go down the layers to like the office crew, like Monica, Alexis, Ben, Cal, Louis, Doris, all of those people, you have different levels of age and seniority. where Douglas should dress like a man his age, in that he’s not trying to dress like Ben or Cal or one of the younger employees, that maybe wear sneakers to work. It’s like, how do you define levels of authority?

“Then on top of it, there is a huge age gap, where you have Doris and Douglas that are in their late seventies. Then, you have people like Alexis and Monica that are in their early thirties, that’s a 40-year-plus age gap. There should be a difference in the way that they approach work wear. We have some of the older characters landing on silhouettes that really fit them in like the late 1990s, early 2000s. They’re like, this is great. I’m just going to keep wearing the same blouse because it’s my work blouse.”

“We’ve got to talk about Glo Tavarez,” Conner interjected, “because Jamie is the icon.”

“Yes! Thank you, Ashley,” Smith said. “Every time Glo would come to set, I’d be like, that’s a cute outfit and such a bright light on set. But her looks were always so fun and playful. And she’s a younger assistant in the office.

“I loved how you dressed Jamie,” Connor told the costume designer.

“Thanks girl,” she responded, “I appreciate that. I love to talk about Jamie and Glo. When she first came to the character, she said she had some earrings that she thought were interesting. And I was like, why don’t we do a different airing for the outfit? So if you look, when she’s kind of frustrated, she’ll wear bright, funny earrings, like a lemon wedge, something to make her feel better. I think a lot of times people do make those choices in life, like, I want to impress my boss so I’m going to be really cute today. And we try to make those choices with Jamie, and really being mindful of body positivity, making sure that everyone on set, no matter what their body type was, that they looked and felt really great. And with her, it’s like, as Ron starts to kind of see the world beyond himself, he starts to notice that Jamie’s actually this important person. So Ron’s POV activation opened everyone’s closet. The first two episodes, it’s very similar, but as he starts to expand his world, we start to see variety in people’s clothes and the way they dress because he’s becoming acutely aware of everything around him.”

I understood what I was hearing; there’s something about paranoia, even when it is justified, that makes a person or a character pay more attention to what is happening in the periphery. The look of that on screen, it’s not exactly genre specific, but furtive maintains a very specific appearance.

And since we were talking about the interiors of characters, I had to ask about Douglas, a character who definitely freaked me out, for at least 12 reasons. He is absolutely a character I was super glad I would never have to work with.

“He’s the only one who does sweater vests,” Smith said to me with a laugh. “And James Downey, first and foremost, is a comedic genius. We were so lucky to have Jim be a part of this and literally Tim and Zach would be like, ‘Hey Jim, we’re thinking of doing this.’ And he’d be down for whatever they wanted, costume wise.”

James Downey, this seems like a good place for me to remind you, is the writer with the most time spent working on Saturday Night Live; more than 30 years. He was also ‘Sandy Irvine’ in One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film which was also released this year. So when I mentioned him being creepy a little earlier, I hope it was clear that that was a compliment to the actor.

“He’s just so down to live in this character,” Smith explained. “I think with Jim, we really wanted to make sure that he felt that, if he wasn’t creepy himself, you would think he was a nice guy. We really played on the clothes being period appropriate for someone that age, someone who would have really loved a sweater vest. When Jim, as the actor, brings a creepiness to it, it’s even creepier because of the juxtaposition of this nice, sweet man saying things like, ‘let’s do a Mistakes Party.’ I think the beauty of the storytelling is that we present these characters as regular, normal people. And then the script and the action dictates how weird and wild it all gets.

“Jim is so legendary and so deadpan,” Conner said. “And every single time he would just show up and kill the delivery. And he’s a writer, so he understands the intention and understands Tim and Zach so well. It was such a pleasure to watch him become a part of their world because he just gets the joke and then he delivers on the joke. It’s really fun to watch.”

“I think that doing this as a comedy meant that the comedic beats could play stronger and louder because we approached it so earnestly, Our references are like William Friedkin and Sidney Lumet, we’re looking at all the guys from that time period. We’re looking at Network, we were really inspired by Zoom work. We were watching Punch Drunk Love and Seven, and watching these things that have just a propulsive energy behind them, because really we wanted the audience to ride along with Ron. Everybody walked away at the end of the job knowing this one was special. I was getting texts from people after like, I miss the work. But crew member after crew member after crew member just kept showing up and making this was just so much fun. I had such a great time and I think that you can feel that.”

“I think what you’re seeing is a really talented group of artists coming together to use the resources really well,” the director of photography told me, “It’s not the biggest budget show, so you have to think smarter. And I’ve been on shows where you get every piece of gear, when you have a huge budget and you have every single thing that you want. But really, I find limitations to be a generator of better creative choices, and that’s kind of where we all sat. It was like, you can’t have everything, so, how are we going to focus on what we do have and like, sharpen that axe.”

The final episode of Season One of ‘The Chair Company’, created by Tom Robinson and Zach Kanin, featuring the work of director of photography, Ashley Connor, and costumes designed by Nicky Smith, debuts on HBO Max on Sunday, November 30, 2025.

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