Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be dazzled as we pull back the curtain on the captivating third season of Only Murders in the Building costumes. In this thrilling conversation, we delve into the meticulous artistry of costume designer Dana Covarrubias, the mastermind behind the spellbinding costumes that bring this hit series to life. Join us on a journey through the glitz and glamour of Broadway as we uncover the secrets behind the stunning ensembles worn by the iconic characters of the Only Murders in the Building. From Oliver’s daring fashion statements to Charles’ understated elegance, each costume is a masterpiece in its own right, meticulously crafted to reflect the essence of the characters and the vibrant energy of New York City. And let’s not forget Mabel, whose Broadway-inspired costumes add a touch of theatrical magic to every scene, seamlessly blending style and storytelling in a way that only Broadway can.
Spencer Williams: I’m just so excited to finally make this happen because the readers and I have been dying for this talk. I’m thrilled.
Dana Covarrubias: That’s so good to hear. We are in the midst of season four right now, so I’m trying to remember everything from season three! I’m excited to talk with you.
Spencer Williams: Well that’s good to hear. Dana, this show is so successful. You’ve picked up two Emmy nominations so far in this series. What has that been like? That must be a huge whirlwind.
Dana Covarrubias: Oh yeah, I mean, I kind of knew when I started the job that it would get a lot of attention because of our unbelievable cast and the writing. I knew the story was going to be appealing to people—people love murder mysteries and crime dramas, and obviously comedy. Having Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, it’s like, how can you go wrong? I knew it would get a lot of attention, but when you’re costume designing, you go from the script, have your meetings, do your mood boards, and think about your inspiration. You’re focused on character. When it gets the attention that it’s been getting, it’s just very exciting and I’m very grateful. But it’s not something you expect; you’re just kind of head down doing the work. It’s been a whirlwind, and I feel very lucky.
Spencer Williams: I’m excited to get into the Only Murders in the Building costumes and season three. There is a lot of great stuff going on, especially as this season heavily revolves around Broadway musicals. Before we get into the specifics, I have to imagine that having this experience living in New York City must have been quite exciting to bring Broadway into the series.
Dana Covarrubias: Yeah, absolutely. It was very exciting when I found out that this season’s main arc was going to be about Broadway. Growing up, I did musicals. I think I did a production of Stone Soup when I was like four or five, and then I did Annie Get Your Gun in sixth grade. I had the theater bug my whole childhood and was a total theater nerd throughout high school and college. I went to school for performance and got interested in costume design while I was in college.
Spencer Williams: It’s like the most obvious transition, honestly.
Dana Covarrubias: Exactly. I realized after years of doing it that I actually hated being in front of people. The part of theater I really enjoyed was creating the character. I love the camaraderie of the crew, being part of a crew, and creating character through research. When I got more into costume design, I realized this is perfect. Yes, I love musicals. My whole childhood was listening to Rent probably five thousand times and annoying my parents endlessly. So, I was very excited to use that as inspiration for this season and pick and choose which musicals would be fun to use as inspiration for the costumes.
Spencer Williams: That’s so exciting. It’s like the costume designer’s dream. Season after season, everyone has been talking about Selena Gomez’s character, Mabel, and her brilliant costumes. In this season, Mabel’s looks appear to be heavily influenced by Broadway musicals. How did this come to be and how much have you collaborated with Selena in creating her Only Murders in the Building costumes ?
Dana Covarrubias: Every season, I like to pick a central influence based on what we’re doing with the writing and the main plotline. In season one, it was very Hardy Boys-inspired. In season two, we had a Hitchcockian theme. This season, the inspiration is musicals. After season one, someone asked me if the costumes had any mystery elements or Easter eggs. I didn’t have that in season one, but I thought it would be cool to incorporate into the costume design—a mystery within our mystery for our audience to figure out. In season two, we used Hitchcock as an inspiration and challenged the audience to identify which Hitchcock movies inspired the looks. In season three, we’re doing the same with musicals. Almost every costume Mabel wears in season three is inspired by a specific musical. One of the looks she wears in the beginning is a sweater vest inspired by Little Shop of Horrors and Gypsy.
Spencer Williams: I also caught The Phantom of the Opera rose on one of them.
Dana Covarrubias: Yeah, that was my favorite one. The Phantom of the Opera look she wears to a date night. It’s a beautiful rose velvet, very dark romance kind of dress. It was fun to choose all of that. Selena is just so game. She offers input typically during fittings, saying if something feels very Mabel or not. She’s so honed in on who Mabel is that sometimes I’ll see what Selena wears in real life and get inspired by that, trying to mix that in a little bit. But she’ll let me know if something is too Selena and not Mabel. She really lets me and my team do what we do and is great in that way.
Spencer Williams: Then we have these two legendary comedians that you’re working with—Martin Short and Steve Martin. In season three, Oliver—by the way, Oliver is a fashion icon. Oliver returns to Broadway. Tell me about designing costumes for Oliver and how that may or may not have evolved as we got into season three.
Dana Covarrubias: Yeah, Oliver is… It’s hard to pick from all your children, of course, but I have to say that Oliver is my favorite character.
Spencer Williams: You’re like, “I will choose, you didn’t ask, but I will choose.”
Dana Covarrubias: I will choose. It is Oliver. He’s just so fun, and there’s so much to work with character-wise. He’s scripted as this very tragic character who’s not afraid of fashion and wants to stand out. That’s very exciting to work with as a costume designer. In season one, we established that he’s a man who had his heyday back in the eighties and nineties directing for Broadway. He had a lot of money then, but blew it all and is now in serious credit card debt. He has these luxury items, but they’re all from the nineties. We do a lot of shopping on The RealReal for him because it’s perfect—secondhand luxury items that look a little more like the nineties or early 2000s.
His main goal is that he’s always playing a role, trying to be who the other person wants him to be in any given situation. He’s really loud with his wardrobe; we love to mix patterns and colors and have so much fun with him. Specifically, this season, he’s getting back into the director role. We focused more on a casual Oliver look—rolled-up sleeves, ready to get down to business, whipping the actors into shape. He’s in the theater all the time, rehearsing, so it’s a bit of a different look than his usual three-piece suits.
Spencer Williams: Then Steve Martin’s character, Charles—first of all, what an amazing actor. What was it like working with Steve Martin? How would you describe his character’s costumes in season three? He always has such great style, but he’s also getting into his role as well and a bit more laid back.
Dana Covarrubias: Yeah. Charles is kind of the opposite of Oliver. He doesn’t like to stand out and finds comfort in the day-to-day repetitiveness of things. He doesn’t love being around a lot of people. He’s one of those who wants to be home, wants to be alone, and is happy to have a uniform—twenty different blue shirts, five different blue sweaters, five pairs of jeans. He just rotates them. It makes it easy for him. He always looks good; he knows what looks good on him. He sticks to his color palette and silhouettes that he knows work.
Character-wise, what’s been fun with him is that anytime he deviates from his norm, it’s a big choice. In season one, we really only did blue, white, gray, maybe a little bit of green. As the seasons have gone on, he’s pushed himself more. With his new best friends, Mabel and Oliver, he’s constantly pushing himself out of his comfort zone. We reflect that with his costume by adding a bit more color and pattern, but very subtly. In season two, we started adding color in his hat bands—barely. Now in season three, we’ve tried to really push the color for him.
He’s acting in this play that Oliver’s directing, which is very different from the crime procedural he did back in the nineties. He’s very nervous about being in this musical and pulling off the song he has to do—a patter song, which is very difficult. We wanted to show that he’s pushing himself by adding more color. There are scenes where he goes to a “white room” during his freak-out moments, kind of like when you forget your lines on stage. In these scenes, all the color is sucked out, and he’s just head-to-toe in white—a white version of what he would normally wear. We had a lot of fun with that look for him, but he’s constantly pushing himself out of his comfort zone.
Spencer Williams: From what I’m gathering, Charles is just so relatable. Everything you’re saying about Charles, I’m like, “I feel this way plenty of times.”
Dana Covarrubias: I think that’s what’s fun about the show— we’re all a little bit of each of them. You know, we’re all a little Mabel, we’re all a little Charles.
Spencer Williams: I’m feeling very Charles today, but I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll be feeling pretty Oliver.
Dana Covarrubias: Oliver is like a weekend personality.
Spencer Williams: Exactly. Let’s talk about “Death Rattle Dazzle.” She said the musical’s costumes, with their unique blend of fantasy and reality, were undeniably a standout feature of the season. I was particularly enamored with the crab people. So what was the creative process like when designing costumes for a show within a show?
Dana Covarrubias: It was a dream come true because, you know, I did theater in school, but as soon as I got out of school, I started working in film and TV and haven’t really gone back to theater. So it was very fun to design this version of theater for television. I’m a big sequins person. I love anything sparkly. I have racks of clothes in my costume stock that are just sequins.
Spencer Williams: In case of emergency, sequins.
Dana Covarrubias: I’ve always loved them. And I got excited because the straight play version of Oliver’s play at the beginning of the season is just called “Death Rattle.” Then he creates this redone version that’s the musical called “Death Rattle Dazzle.” When I just heard the title and knew that plot line-wise and character-wise, Oliver doesn’t have the money to remount the show. So what would they do? They would use the existing costumes they have and just cover them in rhinestones. You know, get as many sequins and rhinestones and crayon glitter as you can and cover them because they wouldn’t have the money to completely reproduce a costume. So that’s where we went with it.
We were also really inspired by “Little Shop of Horrors” and that kind of campy mix of camp and reality. We also wanted to poke a little fun at musical costume design—go really far with it, make everything sparkly and over the top. We spent I don’t know how many hours hand-stoning costumes.
Spencer Williams: When Oliver realizes what this production needs to become, there’s that fun little Fosse montage dream sequence that we get. I feel like it’s too short. I need a whole episode of it.
Dana Covarrubias: That was my only thing. When I watched this season back, I was like, “Oh, I just wish we could have almost like music videos of just the musical parts.” That was really fun. A lot of Mabel’s costumes this season were inspired by Fosse productions. That scene specifically was so fun to design and to see Steve and Selena in those looks—something we don’t ever get to do on the show. So that was really fun.
Spencer Williams: Yeah, that was one of my favorite parts. I was sitting on my couch, just thrilled, like, “Oh, this is fun.” So I’ve heard you talk before about how Clueless was very integral to your trajectory into costume design. Then comes Ben Glenroy, played by Paul Rudd, which I can imagine must have been quite exciting. He is a self-centered movie star, and you definitely get to know him this season as he goes through quite a lot. You also seem to see some of his films, such as “Girl Cop,” which I found hilarious. So what was it like working with this character?
Dana Covarrubias: It was so fun. This was my second time working with Paul. We did a movie together called They Came Together many years ago. It was great to work with him again. Actually, in that movie, he was playing an archetype of the everyman in a rom-com. I remember back when we did that movie, we had him in a button-down pattern shirt, a crew neck sweater, jeans, and boots. He was like, “This is basically the costume I wear in everything.” So when I read his character and who he was, I really wanted to do something different.
I wanted to give Paul a look he’s never done before. We went with this slightly rocker, John Varvatos-inspired look. He’s a self-centered actor who’s kind of mean to everyone around him. We wanted him to look… we were inspired by, not that he’s this way, but by off-duty Keanu Reeves. Have you ever studied him?
Spencer Williams: I wouldn’t say studied, but I get the reference.
Dana Covarrubias: They’re very fascinating. It’ll be like jeans and a beat-up kind of blazer that he’s probably had for a while and a t-shirt, but then paired with a hiking boot. It’s a very interesting combination of things. So that was one of our inspirations. And yeah, he wanted finger tattoos, and we were like, “Yeah, let’s give you a wallet chain.” We punk rocked him up a bit, and we just had a lot of fun with it. It was great.
Spencer Williams: Such a fun character. And then I remember at one point last year when I heard the news that Meryl Streep was going to be joining the cast. I was just—I thought about you immediately. I was like, “Okay, well, you know, here comes another great season.” Meryl Streep plays Loretta Durkin, a seasoned actress who has waited decades for her moment in the spotlight. So what did you want to convey about Loretta and her life through costumes? And I will say, I noticed that she also enjoys a scarf, much like our dear Oliver.
Dana Covarrubias: Yeah, they had to be scarf twinsies, which was very fun. Working with Meryl is a dream come true, as you can imagine.
Spencer Williams: I can’t imagine, actually.
Dana Covarrubias: It’s crazy, you know. You have to sort of disengage your brain and just do your job. But she’s so lovely, and I loved what we came up with for her character. John Hoffman, our showrunner, Meryl, and I had a Zoom early on to talk about what we thought her look might be. The original inspiration came from the idea that Loretta is kind of the sliding doors version of Meryl Streep’s life. It’s like, if she wouldn’t have made it—if Meryl didn’t make it and just loved acting so much, kept hitting the pavement, and never really made it big.
So we looked back at images of what Meryl was wearing in the 70s, late 60s, early 80s, and thought, “What if her style was just sort of arrested in that moment?” That was the original idea for her costume design—kind of these beautiful, autumnal but jewel-toned outfits. There was this image of her wearing a tall boot with a midi-length A-line skirt, a blazer, and a blouse. That was our first inspiration.
Spencer Williams: Wow, it’s kind of dark, and I love it.
Dana Covarrubias: Yeah. When Meryl and I talked about it, she loved that original idea. Then she and I came up with this other part: she’s given up everything in her life to dedicate herself fully to acting. So she’s the most hardcore when it comes to being an actor. In that sense, how she dresses is either completely a blank slate—like she’s wearing all black or something very simple, just jeans and a button-down shirt. That way, when she’s at a rehearsal or an audition, she can become anything. It’s like giving yourself a blank slate to take on any character.
Or her closet is made up of pieces she’s taken from different productions she’s been part of, and they’re very characterful. We were saying during fittings, “Oh, this is something you took from an Ibsen production you were in,” or “This is from a Chekhov production,” or “This is very Shakespearean.” All these plays she’s been in, all these roles she’s had, she’s taken pieces of those characters with her. It was an interesting combination of characterful pieces and very simple pieces. I think it turned out really cool.
Spencer Williams: It really shows that you and your crew put thought into every little piece, even though there’s, I have to say, a lot of characters in this series. It must be a lot to keep all these different storylines going and managing the Only Murders in the Building costumes?
Dana Covarrubias: It is. That’s something that I definitely need to talk about is that I have an amazing team and I’m one person and we have a seventeen person team or something like that. I lean on my assistant designers very heavily and they’re very talented and amazing and help me out so much. I can only focus my energies on so much—we have so many amazing people on the show. And so I focus on, you know, maybe five to ten actors and then they’re focusing on the rest. It’s a lot.
Spencer Williams: Gosh, well, a costume designer is only as good as their crew and you are amazing. So it’s a big shout out to them as well. Dana, this has been such a joy. And like I said, I’ve been looking forward to speaking to you for a while and it was well worth the wait. So just looking back at everything you and your crew have achieved on Only Murders in the Building, what has this series meant to you? I mean, you’re working on season four right now. Two Emmy nominations. It’s incredible. What has it meant to you?
Dana Covarrubias: I mean, it’s been everything. It’s been such a—again, I feel so, so, so grateful to have worked on this job and to keep working on it. I hope we get, you know, a million more seasons. You know, Marty always jokes that we’ll just keep doing it until Steve doesn’t want to do it anymore. And yeah, I mean, I can’t even—there are no words to describe how amazing it is to work on. I truly, truly love everyone. My crew, of course, given that they are all amazing and I love them. And then, you know, I’ve never before worked on a job where every single crew member is amazing, and the showrunners are amazing, the producers are amazing, and the actors are so kind, so wonderful, and so talented. You just really couldn’t ask for a better career job. It’s perfectly creative. You’re allowed to be a little silly because it’s a comedy, but it’s also very grounded in character. So yeah, as a costume designer, it’s a—I really think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime gig.
Spencer Williams: Yeah. It’s so exciting. And I’m just on the edge of my seat, getting ready to figure out what Mabel’s thing will be next season, or what the new theme is. So I’m excited. Dana Covarrubias, thank you so much. This has been such a joy. I’m so happy for you.
Dana Covarrubias: Thank you, Spencer.
