Get a behind-the-scenes look at what went into creating those different death scenarios.
“I think initially what was interesting was that the staircase was a pivotal point in the story.
Depiction 1 posits that it was an accident, and she fell down the stairs.
Toni Collette and Colin Firth in ‘The Staircase’.HBO MAX
And depiction 3 is perhaps the one most heatedly debated among internet sleuths: An owl attacked her.
Each scenario is presented in painstaking detail and in such a way that it doesn’t feel sensationalized.
It’s both hard to watch and impossible to look away from.
Here, Cohn and creator and co-showrunner Antonio Campos take EW through exactly how they pulled this feat off.
“We took all the measurements, and the marching orders were, ‘Make us four identical staircases.’
Not one of them was constructed to specification,” Cohn says with a laugh.
“And I don’t say that because people were irresponsible.
I say that because I think it’s impossible to emulate or replicate anything truthfully.
There’s always going to be a degree of subjectivity incorporated into it.”
She continued, “And I think that’s what the representations and the depictions were about.
This is where the aforementioned green staircase comes into play, which Campos likens to a blank canvas.
The star
Campos shared the picture above with EW, which he took himself.
“She would go into a very quiet headspace, very quiet, sort of contemplative space.
And she would sit in the staircase, because she took those scenes very seriously.
She wanted to just give everything to it.”
Toni Collette contemplates her next scene on ‘The Staircase’.courtesy of Antonio Campos
Close-ups were avoided on purpose, say Campos and Cohn.
And thematically it was the only way to do it.”
And so I think it was a bit of an homage to that,” she says.
Says Cohn, “We didn’t know how it would turn out.
