‚Candyman’s‘ Production Designer Cara Brower on gentrification, art, and how she honored the original horror film while telling a new story.
Production designer Cara Brower had several themes to keep in mind when building the art-centric world of Nia DaCosta’s “Candyman.” In the film, now playing in theaters, Yahya Abdul Mateen II plays artist Anthony McCoy, while his girlfriend Brianna Cartwright, played by “WandaVision” actor Teyonah Parris, is a gallery director steeped in Chicago’s art scene. Not only did Brower set out to find local Black artists in Chicago, she also wanted the sets to reflect the story of gentrification while still planting seeds of the original 1992 horror film. Brower talked about her research, location scouting in Chicago’s Cabrini Green and delivering DaCosta’s vision. We knew the film had to be in Chicago, and I wanted to find as much as possible in Cabrini. We also wanted to be truthful to the actual place. Nia felt the same way about gaining that authenticity. I read about the area and the history of the area before I got to Chicago, it helped inform a lot of ideas about how that area developed. When I was looking for Anthony and Brianna’s loft, I’d read in this book that a lot of people who had lived in the towers had worked in factories that were around that area.
