Costume Designer Jenny Beavan on The Leopard

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

Costume designer Jenny Beavan joins hosts Andy Nelson and Pete Wright to discuss The Leopard, directed by Luchino Visconti—the landmark 1963 epic that showed her what period design could be.

A three-time Oscar winner whose career spans A Room with a View, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Cruella, Beavan traces The Leopard back to a Soho cinema in the late sixties and the influence of a mentor who kept returning to what Piero Tosi achieved there. "He was obsessive, Piero Tosi. I don't think he was happy because it was never perfect enough. But he was one of the most incredible costume designers ever." The conversation also moves through her recent Nicholas Hytner film The Choral and the challenge of building an authentic world on nearly nothing—which turns out to be its own kind of craft lesson.

Watch the conversation on YouTube

Watch & Stream The Leopard — Apple TV · Amazon · Letterboxd · Trailer

About Jenny Beavan IMDb · Instagram

Referenced in This Episode Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius — 1968 recording, Adrian Boult, Coventry Cathedral

Source Material The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa — Amazon

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