For ‘The Residence,’ a recent Netflix series created by Paul William Davies and produced by Shondaland, costume designer Lyn Paolo costumed an ensemble cast of excellent performers. Detective Cordelia Cupp, in all her bird-watching, type-A, detail-obsessed glory, is the sort of character who redefines an archetype for an era.

“This show was a real jigsaw puzzle,” Lyn Paolo told me. We’d met on Zoom to talk about her work on The Residence, a Shondaland murder mystery you can stream in its entirety on Netflix right now. The eight-episode limited series is a variation on more than a few classic tropes from the detective genre, but I cannot quite figure out how to explain exactly how stylish the whole thing is. Every frame is impeccable, especially when the show aims for high camp.

“I keep rewatching it, I don't often do that, rewatch and rewatch, because I'm so disparaging of my own work,” the designer explained. “But this show, because I love the actors so much, and because the whole team, from production design to props, hair, makeup, all did such an unbelievable job. You know, sometimes you work on a show and things aren't quite getting right. Everyone's not on the same page. But Paul Davies, who created the series, was there every day and spoke to all of us. I think it built a bigger, stronger community. So the work is better and that's what you want on a production.”

This Netflix series (PLEASE give us a second season) is a bit meta, it is about archetypes, a story about storytelling told by an expert cruciverbalist. And even though this is a murder mystery, one which takes place in the living quarters of the White House during a fictional American president’s term, it is delightful at every opportunity. Whenever a series or film feels effortless, it reminds me of the naked makeup look; the simplicity is deceptive and actually achieving it requires an insane amount of work.

The puzzle Paolo was talking about, it was creating a detective who could hold her ground against the greats, the names that we already know and love. A private eye whose costumes might nod to or reference literary conventions, but who remained entirely herself, a complete and flushed-out individual. “The goal was to create what we hope will become an iconic image of a detective,” the designer told me, “like Matlock, Columbo, Sherlock Holmes. It was a fun challenge.”

The result was Cordelia Cupp, portrayed by the brilliant Uzo Aduba, an actor who can say more with her eyes than many of her contemporaries can with the totality of their professional tools.

The first thing you need to understand about Lyn Paolo is that she loves her work a lot, that it feeds her mind and probably her soul. While this series was in production, she was simultaneously designing the costumes for The Pitt (HBO Max.) The designer enjoyed the contrast and the challenge, the way it forced her brain to stretch in new ways to accommodate the needs of both productions. (A quick aside: If you think costumes for medical shows are easy because they are mostly scrubs and white jackets, please know that a great deal of work goes into them.)

“As a costume designer,” Paolo told me, I've always enjoyed making my brain jump from one world to another at the same time, because I think that makes me stronger. In costume design, you end up doing the same thing over and over again, I mean, the process is the process. I like to have a range. I want to be challenged. When you've done this job as long as I have, when something like The Residence comes along, which is so different from Queen Charlotte, which was the last show I did, you have to take your brain and compartmentalize everything that you did and rethink everything.”

The Residence is dedicated to

Andre Braugher, an extraordinary actor you will undoubtedly remember for his roles in productions like Glory (1989), Primal Fear (1989), The Tuskegee Airmen (1995), or Salt (2010). This writer’s favorite was his brilliant portrayal of Captain Raymond Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Braugher was originally tapped to play White House Chief Usher, A. B. Wynter on The Residence. Filming had begun, at least four of Braugher’s key scenes had been completed, when the actor unexpectedly and tragically died of cancer in December of 2023. Production was faced with a dilemma about how to proceed, eventually replacing him with Giancarlo Esposito.

“In my world, I seem to work with the same people constantly,” Paolo told me. “Even Andre I had worked with before. I was so happy to be back with him and so sad to lose him halfway through the project. But Giancarlo, wow, what a trooper came in and he is so dapper, so smart. He just delivered A. B. to us, which was for the crew. We were all so sad, I'm going to cry, but he rescued us.”

It is unsurprising that Paolo continues to work with the same people, her CV reads like a fantasy of a streaming service queue. In addition to the shows I’ve mentioned above, she also designed the costumes for Inventing Anna, Shameless, Little Fires Everywhere. She’s worked with Paul Davies before too, on both Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder. But before this show, Paolo had never designed and made the costumes for a traditional, classic murder mystery à la BritBox or Masterpiece Theater. Mystery is her favorite genre. If we’re talking about personal consumption of stories, Lyn Paolo has read or watched all of them.

“This was like coming home for me,” the designer said to me with a grin. “I love a murder mystery. I'm a Midsomer Murders fan, anything from PBS, I'm there. I'm just a huge fan of anything related to murder mysteries. I've read all of Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell… I mean, I’ve read them all.” As someone currently working my way through P.D. James blacklist (and who is currently waiting for physical DVDs of The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries to arrive since it cannot be streamed), talking with Paolo about our mutual appreciation of the genre, I felt like I’d met a kindred spirit. And learning about the show, the way things worked behind the scenes, it was quickly clear that those in the cast and crew had similar feelings about this project, and working together to bring the story to life.

“Paul Davies really understands my crazy brain and the process I go through,” Paolo told me. But she’s not crazy; it’s self-deprecation honestly acquired. After all, costume designers are artists and craftspeople, and they do not always clearly see the magnitude of what they have accomplished. But let us start with Cordelia Cupp, before I get carried away with one fantastic detail or another, there are so many hidden in this story that are worth getting lost in.

“On many modern, contemporary shows, you don't get to build the costumes,” Paolo explained. “I'm really proud of the show and it's very rare for me to say that. You'll see other interviews where I say I only see the things that I wish I had done differently. But on this show, I think because Paul Davies and I worked so well together, he made me a better costume designer because we put so much thought into every tiny little detail. And he gave me the time, he helped me to be able to do it. Sometimes with the schedule, you're rushing. Paul was like, no, no, let's sit and talk about this. He would come up to my office and sit on the couch. We spent many, many hours together looking at fabrics, looking at swatches, looking at sketches. Many, many hours.”

As for our leading lady, “Uzo completely got it,” Paolo told me. “She was onboard and really a team player. We spent so much time, as we should, trying to reflect who Cordelia was through her costume. There were tiny little details, which I don't think the camera picks up, like on some of her shirting, which we made with tiny little birds on it. Her shoes had the little tassels, very 1930s tassels. And we like a brogue, that was harkening back to 1930s Basil Rathbone. We couldn't do the deerstalker hat, that would never have worked for Cordelia. And we talked about capes, we talked about capes a lot for a long time. But we decided that her jacket would become her cape.”

To do all of this takes time, probably more time than the average viewer might suspect. A job takes as long as it takes to do it correctly and in The Residence, there is neither a scene nor a garment that was thrown together at the last minute. The audience feels this, even if it is not so overt as to be obviously and consciously noticeable.

To dress Cordelia Cupp the way a real person would dress herself, Paolo spent a lot of time on birding research; the clothes, the gear, what birders actually need to be able to do, the ways specific to the hobby that require participants to move. “Me being a Brit, I showed Paul all these images of the royal family from the 1930s,” the designer told me about starting the process.. “You know, near Balmoral trumping around, going deer stalking. They all had these amazing tweed belted jackets, they were very sort-of military feeling, which we didn't want. So we came up with this idea of crossing the 1930s vibe, what would you wear if you went out looking for birds. Then we just kept recreating that look in different tweeds.”

“Uzo even went birding,” she laughed, “which I absolutely love. It was a melding of all these elements, who Cordelia was, that she was very precise. She had to be very dynamic in her movements, bending down, crawling on the floor, looking at A. B.'s shirt, going outside a lot. She had to be able to move and do and be. You can't really do that in a cape, so the cape idea went away.”

Instead, the silhouette became more modern, or at least felt rooted in the literary figures who appeared later in the 20th century. “Poor Uzo tried on a plethora of looks,” Paolo told me. “We sketched and sketched and made jackets and jackets and I'm really happy with where we ended up. I like that sort of British hunting jacket, tweed 1930s, Katherine-Hepburn-pant element that we got for Uzo. It worked on her, it worked for the story, and she was able to move and be dynamic. I think it stands out alone for her character, for Cordelia. I love it.”

“I am an avid reader,” Paolo said. “My kids make so much fun of me because I keep building bookshelves in my house. I have them everywhere in every room. They're in bed, they're everywhere. Paul is also an avid reader, and that's how we approached this. I went back and reread Sherlock Holmes, Hound of the Baskervilles. I went back and read a whole slew of Agatha Christie. I went back to Ruth Rendell, Martha Grimes. I went back swirling through all the detectives in my head, all the Midsomer Murders. As I said, I'm a huge fan of these shows. I mean, it's been going on for years. I think all that literature, I don't know, it becomes part of your skin. You've absorbed yourself in all these stories for so long. When Paul called me and said, ‘I've written a murder mystery,’I sort of heard angels singing above, just the thought that I would get to do a murder mystery. The idea of getting to work on a murder mystery, and one that was so quirky and had so many actual limitations as a costume designer. I mean, there was a whole palette of color that I could not use in my costumes.”

The well-known, color-themed White House rooms offered one challenge, the bedrooms, the private spaces, of all the characters who make up our cast of suspects, offered different ones. The physical space an actor is in affects how they look on camera, how what they wear looks on camera, so it was never a question of simply picking or building an outfit that designer and actor both liked. The clothes had to fit into their space, just like in any other production. “Just take away all the prime colors, why don't you, Paul,” the designer said to me with a laugh. I could easily imagine how much fun she must have had while drowning in work on this particular set.

“François Audouy was amazing,” the costume designer said of the production designer on The Residence. “I just think those sets were phenomenal. They were beautiful. I'm going to tell you, that prop department, the fact that Uzo had to keep pulling things out of that bag, it's like that rabbit out of a top hat, that Bed Stu bag.”

Before we left our Zoom, I asked the designer to tell me a story about Easter Eggs, something I could tell my readers without giving away who the killer was.

“One of my personal favorites,” Paolo said, “because I've worked with Jane Curtin before, but in her bedroom, she's so truculent and amazing in this and so open to not being glamorous in any way. I mean, she was watching a show about birds and there were birds in the wallpaper in her bedroom. Then we had slippers that had little birds on the toe and bird socks underneath her pajamas. Throughout the whole show, if you can really look at it, there's a layering in of birds everywhere, there'll be a statue on a mantelpiece that has a bird.”

These little details are not always noticed by viewers, but when they are? They are so gratifying to find, like you are being winked at from behind the camera. We all enjoy watching a clever story unspool on screen, knowing the makers were fixated on the details only makes the experience more enjoyable. Do we deserve Cordelia Cup? The answer is unclear, but it is a fact that we are very, very lucky to have her here with us in 2025. Hopefully the Gods of Netflix will give us a second season, this writer very much needs to know what happens next.

All episodes from season one of The Residence are currently available to stream on Netflix.

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