Tamara Deverell: Building Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein – Ship, Tower, and Monster Lab

Nov 18, 2025

Tamara Deverell, an award-winning production designer known for long collaborations with Guillermo del Toro, talks set-building for del Toro’s Frankenstein. She discusses a 135-foot ship on a gimbal surrounded by hand-sculpted ice, a towering Medusa-watched lab with massive battery columns, a mossy vaulted crypt, Victor’s crooked Edinburgh flat, and scouting Arctic doubles in Canada and Scotland.

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INSIGHT

Design For Practical Film Use

Large practical set elements (15-ft battery columns) demand integrated solutions across art, SFX, lighting and VFX.
Making pieces mobile on hidden casters allowed camera blocking without losing the visual heft of the towers.

ADVICE

Align Miniatures With Full-Size Scenic Work

When planning miniatures, share blueprints and scenic treatments so the scale model matches the full-size set.
Schedule miniature photography late so teams can copy real scenic aging and textures.

ANECDOTE

Scouting Led To Real Architectural Details

Tamara photographed church scrolls in New Edinburgh that Guillermo loved and upscaled them into the tower's façade.
She and Guy Davis used those scout photos directly as references rather than inventing new motifs.

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Award winning Production Designer Tamara Deverell joins me to unpack the production design of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein with Oscar Isaac as Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as the creature for Netflix—from an Arctic ship frozen in ice to a vaulted tiled crypt and a towering Medusa-watched lab.

Tamara has been collaborating with Guillermo for more than two decades, starting with Mimic and continuing through The Strain, Star Trek: Discovery, Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, and Priscilla. In 2023 she won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Production Design for Cabinet of Curiosities, and her latest work on Frankenstein pushes that world-building even further. (tamaradeverell.com)

In this episode we talk about:

Designing 119 sets across Canada and the UK
Building a 135-foot ship on a gimbal and surrounding it with a hand-sculpted ice field
Creating the tower lab with its Medusa wall, circular window, and massive battery columns
Victor’s crooked Edinburgh apartment and the influence of Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein art
The white, vaulted, moss-covered crypt where the creature is held
Scouting Scotland, turning Lake Nipissing into the Arctic, and balancing practical builds with VFX

If you love production design, set decoration, and deep dives into how films are built from the ground up, this episode is for you.

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