When screenwriter Paul William Davies was given Kate Andersen Brower’s in-depth book The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House, he was instructed to create whatever kind of Shondaland show he fancied from the material.
‘It was super interesting, but I didn’t know what the story was,’ Davies tells . The 2015 book, by a former White House correspondent, had focused on the everyday lives of the building’s staff under US presidents from JFK to Barack Obama. ‘I didn’t quite know what I was going to do with it,’ says Davies. Then the penny dropped.
Netflix’s The Residence: Release date, plot and cast
What is The Residence about?
After briefly considering a farcical comedy based on stories from the book, Davies was struck by the idea of a murder-mystery set inside the White House. In The Residence, eccentric detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba, aka Crazy Eyes from Orange Is the New Black) sets about solving a murder that took place during a state dinner. During the investigation, rivalries and conflict emerge among the residence’s 157 staff.
The Residence cast
Those staffers include Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) as The White House’s chief usher A. B. Wynter; ambitious assistant usher Jasmine Haney (This Is Us’s Susan Kelechi Watson); butler Sheila Cannon (Edwina Findley); White House engineer Bruce Geller (Mel Rodriguez); Harry Hollinger (High Potential’s Ken Marino), the President’s trusted friend; the President’s mischievous younger brother Tripp (Jason Lee); First Gentleman Elliot Morgan (Barrett Foa); and the President himself, Perry Morgan (Veep’s Paul Fitzgerald). Yes, this is a LGBTQ+ POTUS.
Helping Cordelia Cupp solve the crime are Always Be My Maybe’s Randall Park as an FBI Special Agent and Isiah Whitlock Jr as the Chief of Police at the MPD. Looking for a cameo from a certain Aussie pop legend, too.
Netflix’s The Residence: The facts behind the fiction inside new White House drama
‘I read congressional testimony from one of the chief ushers talking about the different rooms in the White House: the game room, solarium, and library,’ says Davies of the show’s ‘eureka’ moment. ‘As soon as I read that I saw it as a Clue board.’ In reality, the White House is not a hotbed of homicide. In fact, the last person to die in the building was Margaret Wallace, the mother-in-law of the 33rd president Harry Truman, in 1952.
I saw the White House as a Clue board
The showrunner wanted The Residence to look as authentic as possible, which meant recreating the White House right down to its historic wallpaper. Here’s how 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue became a crime scene with history in every room of its set at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles.
The screenwriter’s first decision was whether to base the show’s White House on the real place. ‘We wondered whether to do a really stylised version of the White House – one that felt like the White House, but isn’t really the White House.’
Ultimately, it was decided to keep the layout as close to the real building as possible – deviating slightly where the plot required it. ‘We wanted it to be authentic, but also our own.’
With co-producer Eileen Hutchinson, Davies did an ‘extraordinary amount of research’. He visited the White House several times, touring the basement. ‘I never went to the second and third floors, where the President is,’ he says. ‘But our consultants had spent a lot of time there for various documentaries they’d shot. We ended up consolidating a lot of information.’
How accurate is The White House in The Residence?
Since it has such a rich and varied history, Davies had to decide which version of the White House to base The Residence on. ‘Different administrations have furnished it in different ways,’ he explains, ‘and done different things to the second and third floor.’
Some of the show’s designs hark back to Jackie Kennedy’s famous early 1960s restoration. The show also includes the fact that Jackie had the guest bedroom under renovation so that whenever people would ask to stay overnight she had an excuse to say no.
Another big influence was Ronald Reagan’s ‘distinctive bedroom wallpaper that had birds on it’. The design motif fits neatly with Cupp’s deep fascination with bird watching. ‘We didn’t use the exact Reagan version,’ says Davies, ‘but it was very influential to us. We incorporated as much bird imagery as we could in the house.’
Meanwhile, President Morgan’s obsession with the pressure of the shower is inspired by former president Lyndon B. Johnson. He too was fascinated by White House plumbing and insisted his water was at a certain temperature and pressure.
Look out for plenty of historic paintings and artworks, too. ‘A lot of those have stayed fairly consistent in the history of the White House, such as the famous Lincoln portrait in the State Dining Room. Others have moved around. We created all our art and it looks totally authentic.’
Showing the secrets of The White House
Finding a new side of the six-storey building to show is a tall order, considering how many movies and TV shows have been set there. Enter the building’s vast and rarely glimpsed basement, a key set in the show.
‘There’s two or three different levels to the White House basement,’ says Davies, ‘and it’s quite elaborate. I really loved all the details of the carpenter shop, electrical shop, and flower shop. There’s even a chocolate shop down there.’
When it came time to create their own version of the White House basement, Davies says they tried their best ‘to do it in a way that felt real and captured the essence of it’. Ultimately it was necessary to consolidate the levels to make the storytelling easier. ‘The basement is the one level we had to kind of cheat on the most.’
In the first episode, The Residence gives us a ‘dollhouse view’ of the opened-up White House. ‘I wanted to show the space in a way that most people don’t ever see. In the last scene of the first episode, we also use a game-board shot, to make it look like a Clue board, so you can really see everything. I liked using that because that’s how I first thought of the show.’
Does the Oval Office appear in the show?
One big decision was not to show the Oval Office – or even the West Wing. ‘We’re not over in the East or West Wing or Oval Office,’ says Davies. ‘It was really important to just show the residence,’ he adds, explaining that in reading the book, he’d most responded to the lives of the people who worked there. ‘Their work is really important. It’s often unheralded, but it’s fundamental to the country.’
His hope is that people who watch The Residence have a greater appreciation of the real people who work in the White House, from the chief ushers to the butlers to the hundreds of other employees. ‘They really mean a lot to the country,’ he says. ‘It was really important to me to tell their stories.’
When can I watch The Residence?
All eight episodes land on Netflix on Thursday, March 20.
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