Designing The Stylish Spy Spaces of Black Bag

In Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, Michael Fassbender plays George Woodhouse, the counterintelligence agent tasked with finding a mole inside the offices of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the intelligence department dedicated to new technology. To find the traitor, George focuses on the most likely suspects. Four of them are fellow intelligence agents—Colonel James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), and Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke). The fifth is his wife, Kathryn (Cate Blanchett), a top operational agent at the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). From hosting a dinner party to observing them at the office, George slowly draws tight his trap, hoping to save both his nation and his marriage.

To create the stylish trappings of world-class spies, Soderbergh tapped his longtime collaborator, production designer Philip Messina. Having created the high-class glitz of the Ocean’s films and the fantastical spaces of The Hunger Games, Messina knew how to use every decorative detail to his advantage. To get the spy world right, Messina and his team were invited by the GCHQ to tour their offices to see what real intelligence work looks like. Messina kept the style elegant, subtle, and sexy to capture the luxurious home of George and Kathryn.

We spoke with Messina about creating both the reality and fantasy of the spy world.

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What does George and Kathryn’s house say about them?

First, they have a great eye. They're both very exacting and elegant people. From the beginning, Steven said, “I want to make a sexy, stylish thriller.” Like with the Ocean’s movies where we created a heightened Las Vegas, we wanted to create something similar here. Not necessarily realistic, but it's right for them. When Naomi says, “Oh, what a beautiful home,” Kathryn responds, “It's amazing what you can afford if you don't have children.” Cate ad-libbed the line, but the comment justified the design of the house for me. The style is very aspirational and fastidious. There is no clutter and everything is in its right place.

What was your biggest creative challenge for the home?

That’s easy. Designing the space for the dinner scene. It was incumbent on me to give Steven a dynamic environment in which to shoot the scene. In many ways, I designed the space from the dining table out. I wanted to create a set where each person sitting there would form an axis that revealed a different aspect of the house. One angle gave us a view of the staircase. Another looked into the living room. And another gave you a view of the street outside.

How did you create the house?

We constructed a two-story house on a sound stage in Pinewood. We actually replicated a piece of the street from the real location. When you look out the front windows, you can see people arriving. For the exterior, however, we picked a house in Islington, which happened to be next to where Keira Knightley used to live. For George and Kathryn’s home, we didn’t want to build a stand-alone house. We wanted something in the center of London, but something that blended into the neighborhood. The house from the outside looks slightly modest, except that it is in a very posh London neighborhood.

What is the style of the décor?

I did the front of the house with classical elements, like the staircase, the crown moldings, and the Adam-style marble fireplace. We blew out part of the house to give it a large kitchen because it needed to reflect their personalities and the kitchen would be important in the first scenes. In fact, we gave George sightlines from the kitchen to see guests arriving.

You create a contrast between the design of their home and their offices.

Early on, we got permission to visit the offices of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), although we could not photograph any of them. Interestingly, they just looked like offices. They have hot desks. The one thing I did notice is that there is a lack of personal things out on the desks.

How did you designate Kathryn and George’s departments?

I like the idea of using black and white because they are opposites. There are no real shades of grey. George is on the black floor, and Kathryn is on the white floor. Although the offices are supposed to be in the same building, we shot in two locations separated by miles. There were empty floors that we built into. The one thing that Steven and I noticed when we toured the GCHQ offices was the windows. There were windows everywhere. We didn’t need to create some underground bunker, like in Slow Horses. We could have open, light-filled spaces with lots of windows.

It’s interesting how the offices have a sort of blank, illegibility to them.

A hundred percent. They all have clean lines. If you take the story out of it, you can't tell what people do there. That was actually one of my takeaways from visiting the GCHQ offices. They look like WeWork spaces. When our technical advisor, Gavin, saw the office spaces we designed, he said, “You nailed it. It’s just a better version of ourselves.”

How does the film set differ from the actual GCHQ space?

First off, the space we visited didn’t have a satellite room like we have in the film. There were other more secretive spaces that we were not allowed to visit. The GCHQ office we visited was by the Globe Theater. I was struck by how when you go in the lobby, you see that floors six and seven are “GCHQ.” Of course, you can’t get up there with authorization, but you can see the name in the lobby. And other businesses are operating in the building and a Shake Shack on the ground floor.

It seems that spies have impeccable taste.

Just look at the amount of money George and Catherine wear on their person with their hand-made clothing. We knew we were making a stylish thriller. From the beginning, Steven said, “I want it to be sexy.” We used lavish materials, from lush fabrics to the jewel tones in the paint. The black-and-white of their offices is the day job. At night, the space is luxurious and sensual.

In the house, everything is lit by practical lights.

We had film lights on outside in the street and in the backyard, but everything else was built into the house. The lighting board operator told me that she had control over 156 practical lights on the set. One of the elements that we had to solve very early on was the lighting on the table. I've done tables with light coming out of them in other movies, but I wanted a sexier version of that here. Steven showed me a picture of his house where they had taken some hanging globes and put them on a coffee table. For the film, we got an artisan who blew glass to create these beautiful little fixtures which became the centerpiece on the dining table. I found someone else in Notting Hill off Portobello Road to fabricate the chandelier over the dining table with this woven wire glass in diamond shapes. And we put in lit-cove moldings around the ceiling to give more light.

What do you want people to take away from the film?

I want them to enjoy their time in the movie. I want them to get sucked into the plot. If after the film, they think to themselves, “That house was beautiful,” then fantastic.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.