Murderbot with Production Designer Sue Chan

Murderbot with Production Designer Sue Chan

From Cinemapodgrapher by Lucas Tomoana SOC, Hannah Ariotti & Josh Calder

November 11, 2025 · 59 min · Episode 148

About this episode

Hannah Ariotti interviews production designer Sue Chan about her work on Murderbot and her approach to world-building.

This week on Cinemapodgrapher, one of our new hosts, Hannah, sits down with acclaimed production designer Sue Chan, whose work spans Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Where the Crawdads Sing, Colossal, and now the highly anticipated series Murderbot. Together they explore Sue's approach to world-building, the design of the AI-driven character at the heart of Murderbot, and how her background in architecture, theatre and art direction shaped her storytelling eye. Sue opens up about balancing practical and visual effects, creating entire alien languages, and grounding futuristic sci-fi worlds in human emotion and design history. A thoughtful, inspiring conversation about collaboration, imagination and the craft of building worlds we can believe in. This podcast is proudly brought to you by our technology partners Sony Produced by Deb Van Dieren Hosted and edited by Hannah Ariotti

People in this episode

Host: Hannah Ariotti

Guest: Sue Chan

Topics covered

  • production design
  • world-building
  • sci-fi
  • collaboration
  • storytelling

Keywords

  • Murderbot
  • Sue Chan
  • production design
  • world-building
  • sci-fi
  • Shang-Chi
  • collaboration

Sponsors

Sony

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Murderbot, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Where the Crawdads Sing, Colossal

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