The Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Manderley in Rebecca. Saltburn in Saltburn. There’s something about setting tales of suspense in a grand (and ideally old) building that makes them even more enthralling. That isn’t lost on Sirens, the new limited series streaming now on Netflix.
While the setting of the series, which follows a young woman attempts to come between her estranged sister and the billionaire boss whose world she’s disappearing into, is never explicitly defined—it could be Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, or any summer destination where hydrangeas mask the misdeeds—it’s undeniable that the sprawling, fictional Kell family compound isn’t entirely what it seems. That’s because production designer John Paino knew what he was doing.
While the outside of the house was filmed on location in Northport, Long Island, it needed a bit of movie magic to fit the bill for Sirens. “We found a house that was on a great location, and literally on a cliff, but it certainly wasn’t big enough,” Paino says. “So, we built facades, we put pergolas outside, we extended it, and we built the bottom of a lighthouse. We did all these volume extensions on an existing house in a very postmodern way, in a very simplified classical architectural way.”
The exteriors of the Kell family house seen in the new Netflix limited series Sirens was filmed in Northport, Long Island.
As series star Meghann Fahy tells T&C, “In terms of the sheer size of those spaces, there’s just so much that you can’t see, and in that unknown, anything can happen. That’s what sparks fear, when you can’t truly see people or what they’re doing. Your imagination can run to a much scarier place than what reality might be.”
He and his team also attempted to hint at the family’s history on the series’ fictional island though the design of the house and its grounds. “One of the backstories for the Kell family’s wealth is that it comes from whaling days,” Paino says. “So, we also built a 40-foot-long anchor that we put on the property. When you walk on a property like this and you see a giant anchor, it could be from a whaling ship or could be so beautifully created that it could be a work of art.”
According to Sirens production designer John Paino, the columns depicted in the Kell house are meant to call back to the Oracle of Delphi.
For all the beautiful spaces that Sirens depicts, however, none are without a hidden meaning. Paino says that when he first signed on to the job, showrunner Molly Smith Metzler already had a clear vision. “This is oligarch money on an island like Nantucket,” Paino recalls, “But there also the mythological aspect of sirens, and so we had to call back to Greek mythology and its oracles and temptresses.” To do so, Paino took inspiration from ancient temples as well as the Oracle of Delphi, using columns throughout the house that reference theirs; “it’s a show that actually uses the architecture of the sets,” he says. “It’s not just decoration; it has structural means.”
When it came to building the world of Sirens, Paino says, everything you see on screen has a meaning: “It’s not just decoration.”
Ancient Greece wasn’t his only inspiration. “Another thing that I tried to reference is a place called the Winchester House,” he explains. “The widow who inherited the Winchester rifle money, a psychic kind of latched onto her and she became very worried that the ghosts of all the Native Americans that were killed by Winchester rifles would cause her grief or haunt her. And a psychic convinced her that if she just kept building rooms in her mansion and the Indians would go to those rooms and they wouldn’t follow her.” What came next was the construction of a house with hundreds of rooms as well as hallways with doors that went nowhere, creating a maze to confuse any spirits.
Overall, Paino says, “the big theme is that things are not what they seem. We wanted the kind of house that would go in your magazine, but there’s a bit too much of it. We always wanted things to be uncanny and slightly off.”
Adam Rathe is Town & Country’s Deputy Features Director, covering film, theater, books, travel, art, philanthropy, and a range of other subjects.
