The catch? Carson only had mere days to turn the sterile studio into something far cozier and conducive to the wide-ranging conversations Paltrow hoped to conduct during the show, which launches with Zoe Saldana as the first guest. “We started to decorate remotely and I looked at it and thought, ‘This is not the direction,’” Paltrow says of the space’s first iteration. “And so I called Marie and said, ‘We’re filming in like a week and I need you to come and fix this.’”
It wasn’t the tight timeline that initially gave Carson pause. “At first I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve never done a set! What does that mean?’” recalls the designer. “But when Gwyneth said she wanted it to feel like a beautiful room in her home, I thought, ‘Well, I can do that.’” Previously, the two had collaborated on a space at Paltrow’s Brentwood property, which meant there was already a creative shorthand between them—incredibly helpful when they had only days to outfit the space before shooting commenced. “Gwyneth has such a strong direction of what she wants and such excellent taste,” Carson says. “So I was able to take her notes and run with it.”
