Beachler reveals that the team built two juke joints: One in Braithwaite, Louisiana, at the Plaquemine Parish, used for the exterior and interior shots showcasing the overgrown foliage and nearby water (âWhich was filled with alligators, so there was already the feeling of something old and prehistoric in the environment,â she says); and anotherâonce a sawmill, located on a former golf course at St. Bernard Parishâbuilt onstage for other shots.
Beachler and construction coordinator Erik Van Haaren envisioned a gutted, abandoned feel for the juke joint, so its exterior was purposefully dilapidated, with carpenters and scenic artists on set transforming surrounding trees to look weathered and worn by torching, sanding, staining, painting, and even chemically distressing the wood.
A struggle with faith illustrated through subtle design details
âYou keep dancing with the devil, [and] one day, heâs gonna follow you home,â says Jedidiah (Saul Williams), preacher and father of protagonist Sammie Moore (Miles Caton) in the opening scene. Sammie, a young blues musician, is set to play at the grand opening of the juke joint hosted by Smoke and Stack, his cousins. But in doing so, he abandons his duties at his fatherâs church, signaling an act of defianceâat first glance, anyway. Beachler sought to convey Sammieâs complexities of faith through the churchâs architecture. The design brief for the church all came from âputting myself in Jedidiahâs head as he, in my mind, was the architect of the Church,â Beachler says. âI imagined that it was built by Jedidiah, the Pastor, and the men of the congregation.â
The church is based on Clarksdaleâs Sunflower Plantation. The set itself was built at the Laurel Valley Plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Beachlerâs team drew inspiration from vernacular clapboard praise houses established by African Americans throughout the Delta. The main factors she weighed for the church were its size and material, all to tell a story of the characterâs accessâor lack thereofâto certain resources. Its exteriors (double wood entry doors and a small louvered window at the peak, shaped into an exaggerated triangular silhouette) were made out of rough cuts of sawn wood, also used in the juke joint and Sammie and Annieâs (Wunmi Mosaku) homes. âAs the wood dried, it naturally added age to the paint and shrank a bit to leave small gaps in the walls and floors,â she says. Beams that supported the roof were shaped like âthe Wakanda crossed arm gesture,â Beachler adds, a nod to Black Panther, another blockbuster on which Coogler, Jordan, and Beachler collaborated. The set designer paid specific attention to âthe smallest of detailsâ in the church, including âthe distance of the studs being 33 inches apartâthe age Jesus died, a signifier of the end,â she notes.
