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Rian Johnson was clearly looking for a change of pace when he finished Star Wars; The Last Jedi as the writer/director went from this massive budgeted blockbuster to a much more modest whodunit story with a small collection of actors working in a much smaller scope. Knives Out certainly wasn't a movie with a Star Wars like budget, and so every penny was important, though it appears the film wasted some of that budget on something then ended up being unnecessary, the actors' trailers.
Trailers are of course, pretty standard on any movie set. The actors all need a place to hang out, rest, study lines, or whatever else while on set. And yet, it seems that the ones on the set of Knives Out were basically never used. As Knives Out producer Ram Bergman explains on the Blu-ray release of Knives Out, the house where the majority of the film's action takes place was liked so much by the cast and crew, that nobody ever left. According to the producer...
Nobody really went to their trailers. It was such a waste of money. You have to provide it but it was so great to see people just like each other and just like to hang with the crew, with the cast, and just keep talking. It was just a great energy.
The mansion at the center of Knives Out is located in the Boston, MA area and it's the reason the rest of production took place there. Most of the interior shots in the movie are in the exact same house, though the library seen in the movie was actually in a different house all together.
With nearly the entire movie taking place in the house, the cast and crew were already spending a lot of time there, and it seems that everybody in Knives Out loved both the house, and each other, so much that even when they weren't actively shooting, everybody just sort of hung out. Riki Lindhome explained that, because both the interior and exterior of the house were needed for filming, the trailers were simply too far away to make them convenient, and there just wasn't enough reason to go back between takes...
We’re filming it at this gorgeous old estate in New England. It’s this beautiful field and a lake but because of that, the trailers are far away from the house. So we are all in the house together all day. So we’ll get ready in the morning and get makeup and hair done but then we bus up to the house and we’re all in the same room and the whole cast hangs out all day.
Jamie Lee Curtis apparently held court in the kitchen and got to know the owners of the house well. It seems like everybody really enjoyed the production, which likely aided the film overall since all the actors got to know each other well. They were all playing family, even if they were playing family that largely hated each other.
With a sequel to Knives Out already confirmed, one can only hope that in addition to finding another "killer" cast, that cast is able to come together in the same way. Probably still spend money on trailers though, just in case.
Knives Out is out on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital now.
