“3 Body Problem” Production Designer Deborah Riley on Melding Sci-Fi & Period Perfect History

Netflix’s adaption of the first book in Liu Cixin’s hit Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, 3 Body Problem, is more than science fiction. Facing a slew of inexplicable suicides, a group of scientists and friends begin to uncover the future arrival of an alien race, the San-Ti, and learn of the Cultural Revolution-era events in China that set this gradual but hostile takeover in motion.

The series is primarily set in contemporary London and the English countryside, with the goings-on of today explained through period flashbacks to Beijing and rural China in the 1960s. With Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with Alexander Woo (True Blood, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks) at the helm, 3 Body Problem is as visually arresting as it is plot-driven, with particular attention paid to the show’s period elements as well as the immersive, virtual reality game the San-Ti use to communicate with their chosen earthlings.

The show opens during a struggle session in Beijing in which a young scientist, Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng), sees her professor’s father murdered. “I think that’s something people underestimate—how difficult that was,” said production designer Deborah Riley (Riley previously worked with Benioff and Weiss on Game of Thrones). Visual images from the Cultural Revolution, particularly in color, are rare. “We were very fortunate because we had Derek Tsang, who was our director for those first two episodes, and he was our guiding light through all of that,” Riley said. She also worked with art director Chapman Kan and several graphic artists to ensure the show’s scenes of this side of history were authentic. At the same time, it was important “that they be something horrifying enough for Ye Wenjie to then tell the aliens to come,” she said.

After her father’s death, Ye Wenjie is arrested and consigned to hard labor. An astrophysicist, she’s taken to a secret facility where the military is trying to contact extraterrestrial life. “That’s actually my favorite set of the whole season,” Riley said of the location, which was built on a mountain range in Spain. The huge dish the lab used to signal the universe was created by visual effects, but the base and interior were built.

“We were very careful to make sure the facility looked like it worked,” the production designer said, to the extent that she and the art director created a user guide and floor plan of the set and set decorator Andrew McCarthy traveled to Budapest to find Cold War-era buttons, lights, and oscilloscopes. The trickiest aspect wasn’t the rooms full of machines but the small output device with which Ye Wenjie responds to alien contact. “In the dark corners of the internet somewhere, I actually found a keyboard that was similar to our QWERTY keyboard, which was based on stroke order. It was really embarrassing, because the Chinese guys just laughed at it and said, we’ll never be allowed back in China if you use that, that is terrible,” Riley said. They went around and around, finally landing on a numeral keypad with an accompanying manual that Ye Wenjie uses to convert numbers to characters. “And it’s now become a kind of iconic scene, I guess, of her pressing send,” Riley said.

In 2024, thanks to the San-Ti, the technology at hand advances considerably. Looking for help with their mission on Earth, select scientists receive a personalized headset, their entry to an immersive game where they must solve the conundrum the alien race faces. The showrunners wanted the headset to be completely seamless. “When you pick it up and look at it, to us in 2024, we would have absolutely no idea how it works. There’s no power source, no cables, no jacks, no nothing,” Riley said. “To book readers, the mirror finish is something you understand later. But it caused an awful lot of trouble to VFX, as you can imagine, because the mirror was reflecting the crew and the lights and everything else. So every time you see a headset, just think of the work that those guys had to do.”

Once inside the game, whether Jin (Jess Hong) and Jack (John Bradley) are in Shang Dynasty China, Kublai Khan’s palace, or Pope Gregory VIII’s cathedral, the sets needed to be grounded in reality. Riley and her team built the intricate balcony at Kublai Khan’s palace and shot it at Wells Cathedral in Somerset to represent the papal era. “I felt very sacrilegious, I have to say, asking the person responsible for the cathedral if we could remove all of the stations of the cross,” the production designer joked. The canopy the pope sits under was a build, which the crew brought back to Shepperton Studios to singe and burn later. “Obviously, all the fire sequences were visual effects, and there was no horse. No part of the building was harmed in the process,” Riley said.

Outside major locations like the virtual reality game, Cultural Revolution-era China, and Judgment Day, the massive ship where the San-Ti’s followers await their arrival (which Riley referred to as an achievement of all the series’ departments coming together), no set is too small to be overlooked, seen best in MI6 officer Wade’s (Liam Cunningham) stark offices. “The showrunners were very particular in wanting Wade to have a very clean, simple, Steve Jobs-like environment where there’s no clutter whatsoever. Andrew, the set decorator, and I tried putting in various other pieces of furniture, but it was all taken out,” Riley said.

In Wade’s first windowless, creepily modern space, he and Clarence “Da” Shi (Benedict Wong) make decisions that will change the course of human history. When the project to save Earth moves to a secret location (shot at the 17th-century mansion Bramshill House), Wade’s office vibe repeats, only now surrounded by moulding and tapestries. “He still had the same setup of a big room, single desk, and him, waiting. And Liam’s the kind of actor who knows how to use those kinds of spaces, so it was actually quite fun to see,” Riley said.

As a counterpoint, the spaces where Jin, Saul (Jovan Adepo), Will (Alex Sharp), and Auggie (Eiza González), drink, live, and hang out are deliberately low-key and relatable. In particular, Jin’s apartment is warm and modest, unlike any other space on the show. “For the storylines and for us to invest in these people, it seemed important to tell the truth of them,” Riley said. “She’s a regular person who’s caught up in this mess.”

Featured image: 3 Body Problem. Eiza González as Auggie Salazar in episode 103 of 3 Body Problem. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024