If you’ve been following the 2024 Christmas movie schedule, chances are you’ve tuned into Sabrina Carpenter’s cheeky holiday special, which she announced back in September with a perfect Mariah Carey reference. After seeing the hilarious and very fun Netflix release, I had a chance to speak to A Nonsense Christmas With Sabrina Carpenter’s production designer, Jason Sherwood, and he shared some great insights about the making of it.
During our interview, we of course talked about Carpenter’s “Last Christmas” duet with Chappell Roan, but additionally, he got into just how the singer fit the special into her schedule between releasing a No. 1 album and going on the road for the Short n’ Sweet tour. As Sherwood shared with me, he was approached about the opportunity in late July just a month before the project was set to shoot in late August. In his words:
Sabrina was excited about the idea of also creating a sitcom sort of interior home kind of set that we hadn't been thinking about yet. And so, then I went off and started designing very quickly. It was a really very collaborative, very communicative, and really quick process. But, it was a ton of fun. We were making a holiday show in the dead of summer, so we had a really interesting relationship to time.
Short n’ Sweet was released on August 23 after Sabrina Carpenter had already topped herself on the charts with her two lead singles. While the singer could have certainly taken a break to get ready for tour, she took three days to film A Nonsense Christmas, which came together “very, very quickly,” per Sherwood.
The production designer calls his experience “a big exchange of ideas” between himself and the whole team. While the 50-minute special had the team moving quickly, he told me that he actually ended up working in their favor. As he continued:
The biggest challenge on a project like this is the schedule. Because, ultimately as a production designer coming up with a good idea or coming up with the right idea that's going to be beautiful takes some time. But, then the thing that really takes time is making something like that big tiered stage that she's standing and on the top of in the opening number. That's two to three weeks of custom welding metal work from scene shops and fabricators. And so on a project like this, there wasn't very much time to sort of sit around with our pencils and talk and try to come up with the right idea.
Sherwood was behind the amazing tiered stage where Sabrina Carpenter channels Marilyn Monroe in the special’s opening number. He also brought to life the sitcom-inspired pink living room, which was inspired by Friends and Sabrina the Teenage Witch
The special juggles a lot, between some fun Christmas song renditions with special guests like Shania Twain to Tyla along with giving off SNL energy with its few comedy sketches featuring Quinta Brunson and Kyle Mooney among other talents. Hearing about how the production went behind the scenes definitely gives me an even bigger appreciation for the show. Sherwood also said this:
The order of operations was that when in pre-production for this before Sabrina's album was officially released, and then it was released, and I think on our first day of shooting was the day it was announced as the No. 1 album. And the tour didn't start until after we'd wrapped. So Sabrina, Sabrina shot A Nonsense Christmas, and then she did her performance at the VMAs just a couple days later, and then the tour launched shortly after that.
Sabrina Carpenter was unstoppable this year! Must have been all that espresso! A Nonsense Christmas is now streaming for those with a Netflix subscription. Check it out again to pay attention to more of the production design details from Jason Sherwood.
