Production Designer Richard Toyon Talks 'Silicon Valley' Season 2 Emmy Nominations! EXCLUSIVE

Though the Season 2 finale of Silicon Valley previously aired, the HBO comedy continues to be praised by critics In an exclusive interview with MStars News, Production Designer Richard Toyon discusses working with Mike Judge, the comedic genius behind Office Space, and being nominated for the 2015 Emmy Awards.

The second season began with Erlich (T.J. Miller) and Richard (Thomas Middleditch) dealing with the sudden death of their investor Peter Gregory (the late Christopher Evan Welch). With Monica (Amanda Crew)'s Boss contemplating of pulling out their funding, Richard can to think fast and look for other venues. By the end of the episode, problems start to mount for Richard as Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) sued Pied Piper for supposedly "stealing his algorithm."

Known for his work on Hung and United States of Tara, Toyon discusses getting the right look for Silicon Valley, what made the episode Sand Hill Shuffle stand out, and his thoughts on being Emmy nominated.

MStars News: How did you become involved with the show?

Richard Toyon: I've done a lot of work for HBO before and there was this project coming up that I kept hearing about. So my agent made the connection for me. And then, I went in with sort of a complete vision I think of what the show could be and I got hired.

MS: The HBO comedy draws viewers into the tech world. On the show, Hooli is a stand-in for Google.

RT: Hooli had gone through a number of different renditions and different names before we worked on the pilot. But the whole time, the thought was that it's a Google-esque kind of company; in other words, it has the same size. It has the same global reach, the same technical prowess, the same financial backing; it has everything at its behest. So in other words, it can do a lot of different things at once.

Because of that, we needed to find something that related to it in terms of its scale. So when you go to Google in Silicon Valley, one of the first things that's notable about it is that it's not just the Google-plex. That's there but many other buildings around it are also Google. And so Google, it's very large and that is only the Silicon Valley offices. There's Google here, that's opening up soon near Los Angeles and there's Googles all over the world.

MS: Was putting that type of scale a challenge on a half-hour comedy?

RT: The scale of it was really important because a lot of these tech companies have a common quad in the middle where there's no cars, there's no parking. All the parking is on the perimeter. It's the idea that you can see your cohorts, your co workers from another department and you can have a discussion. You can sit down, you can talk about your projects and the interaction produces results. We were looking for that kind of location. In Southern California, those office environments don't really exist; they're starting to become a little bit more into focus now.

MS: Was it difficult to find a location for the sets?

RT: Because they didn't exist and we're going to shoot it in Los Angeles, the thing that I pitched Mike Judge was that we find it at a college campus. And so we looked at many college campuses throughout Southern California and the one we settled on was Cal State Los Angeles for the exterior because it had a new portion of the campus. Their main quad had never been shot before because it had just opened the year before.

We shot all of our exteriors and then the interiors was a larger advertising company and it's called Chiat Day. We used their interior and we made modifications to their interior and then we shot all of that there, because it had a very large scale to it. It had kind of a fun quality to it, there was a real kind of an excitement to work there. So that's the idea we wanted to bring to it.

MS: Tell me about the look of Gavin Belson (Ross), who's the antagonist of the show.

RT: Gavin was at another university in their library. We chose that particular spot because it was important for Gavin to always be elevated. And we tried very hard to keep Gavin elevated. So whenever you see Gavin, he's almost always looking down, or he's on a stage, or he's on something looking down because he is of the stature of Hooli.

He is the man in charge. He is their main person, he is the CEO. So we always wanted to give him that visual impact. Combining all of those things and many other things, including who the XYZ and Hooli nucleus - all of those things combined to make Hooli.

MS: Because Mike Judge is from the animation world, such as King of the Hill and Beavis and Butt-head, did that ever come into play?

RT: His sensibilities come into play. Sometimes you feel some of the sensibilities in Silicon Valley that come from Mike's other work. Mike is really well known in those arenas and he has a big following in those arenas. He certainly brings with him his wit and his genius, because he's really, really insightful. And he knows what's funny.

When you meet him, and you talk to him on a day to day basis, he's a regular guy and he's a super nice guy too; really nice and caring. But he just has a really acerbic wit about him. Those animation qualities do come into Silicon Valley but only when you know what you're looking for. If you know his comedy, you can recognize it. But that's where it stops I think.

MS: Congratulations on the Emmy nomination! What was that like when they told you your name was nominated?

RT: It was really gratifying and because the show is a lot of work! I often call it the biggest little show I've ever been on because it's so involved! There's so many facets to it to bring it all together to portray on the screen. So when we got the nomination, it was very satisfying to know that all of your hard work has been recognized!

MS: You're nominated for the episode of Sand Hill Shuffle. Do you have any behind the scenes trivia?

RT: When we were planning for that, we went to visit a number of offices that do the same kind of work and the VCs, the venture capitalists. We visited a number of their offices. What we tried to do was bring the sensibility that they have to their offices. They're not a real showy group of people and their offices often times are not Hollywood, that's for sure. They have a certain quality that you know when you walk in, that they would be the people backing you.

But in large part, what they try to do is like any job, they're vetting you to see if they can be in business with you. "Can we be in business with these guys? Do we see ourselves 2-3 months, 2 or 3 years down the road in bed with these guys? Our money that we're putting forth on these guys, is it a sure bet? Is it going to be an investment?"

And so, that's kind of what we tried to bring into it. So we went to a number of VC firms and saw a lot of the things that they had in their offices. What you see onscreen is very much taken directly from a lot of different offices. I won't name any names, but there are some really specific things. It's very enlightening; they're very smart people, very very smart.

MS: Are you excited for the start of Season 3?

RT: I am! I'm really excited for it! I can't wait to start it! I'm currently doing a show right now for ABC and it's completely different, 180 degrees! It's a hospital story called Code Black and it's about emergency medicine. It's great! It's a terrific one hour drama but going from that to something like a half hour comedy is like night and day.

But I really enjoy working on Silicon Valley! We've got a really great group of people there! And it's just non-stop creativity!

A large part of my job is not to bring the comedy to the screen because the comedy comes in the dialogue and the actors. So my job in essence is to create as much truth as possible to that world, with some license of course. Most of the comedy, 99.9%, is the actors and the dialogue. What I bring to it is the truth, and I try to bring as much truth as possible.

I try not to poke too much fun at Silicon Valley because I think that they're terrifically brilliant people. They have their own culture and sometimes it's fun to poke a little fun at the culture. Just like Hollywood gets poked fun at!

MS: What other projects are you working on now?

RT: Currently doing Code Black, I just finished American Crime for ABC. I did Code Black the pilot and then I'm doing Code Black the series. I'll be leaving this, then I go back to Silicon Valley and then there's a couple more projects for HBO that they have me looking at. It's been busy these last couple years.

MS: Of the past two seasons, do you have a favorite episode?

JT: One of my favorite episodes was I think it was the one with Russ Hanneman and he hands off his tickets to Erlich and then goes to the benefit with Jin Yang. That was one of my favorites, it was really fun to do. Really really fun.

Andy Samberg (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) will host the Emmy Awards on September 20, 2015.

Silicon Valley Season 2 is now available for download on Digital HD

© 2024 Mstars News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.