How Hollywood Costume Designer Whitney Anne Adams Styles Book Adaptations
About this episode
Costume designer Whitney Anne Adams discusses her work on book-to-screen adaptations and the intricacies of costume design in film.
This week, costume designer Whitney Anne Adams joins Sophie and Rudi to discuss how she approaches book-to-screen adaptations. Whitney, who hosts the “ Tales From a Costume Designer ” podcast, worked on Baz Luhrman’s 2013 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby” as well as “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat,” a 2024 film based on Edward Kelsey Moore’s 2013 novel. Before their chat, Sophie shares some recent beach read recommendations (00:01:18) and Rudi discusses two new movies that treat sex and romance very differently: Greg Arakki’s “I Want Your Sex” and Will Gluck’s “One Night Only” (00:07:01). Those films inspire a brief discussion about the current state of rom-coms in theaters and on streaming (00:15:13). Then Whitney joins the show to discuss how costume designers bring books to life on screen (00:22:00). Whitney details what it was like to work on a big-budget production like “The Great Gatsby” (00:25:24), including making a spreadsheet of every visual reference in the book and screenplay, designing a period piece for a modern audience, getting to attend the table read with stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, and playing a small part…
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