How Verity Turned a Jens Quistgaard-Designed Gem into a Dream Home

“This is my design fantasy. I can’t not do this movie,” production designer Amy Williams recalls thinking when she was first slipped a photo of the secluded Armonk, New York estate that would serve as the marquee location in the new Anne Hathaway thriller Verity. The midcentury stunner, known as Beckoning Path, was designed in the 1960s by Jens Quistgaard, a founder of the Scandinavian Modern style who spent decades as the chief designer for Dansk (the tea mug costar Dakota Johnson drops dramatically in the film’s trailer is one of his). More recently, the home was reimagined as a private wellness retreat by New York-based firm BarlisWedlick.

“It has this monastic quality. The rooftop looks like teeth or claws. It’s very scary and imposing,” Williams says, noting that V shapes are a recurring motif in the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller in honor of Hathaway’s Verity, a bedridden novelist whose darkest secrets unravel when a struggling writer (played by Johnson) arrives to ghostwrite her series. “But Beckoning Path also has these lush gardens and a beautiful lake, so there’s peace and balance to the space as well,” she adds. “It’s a perfect character for the story.”

To design the home’s interiors, which were mostly constructed on soundstages, Williams took inspiration from both expected and unexpected places. She studied Frank Lloyd Wright homes and decided that Verity’s pink office, reached through a labyrinth of hallways, needed a conversation pit with a custom-built-in sofa positioned under a sculptural octagonal skylight.

“We wanted to create this womb-like atmosphere that also had a bit of glam to it because of her status and her supposed reputation,” she explains.

An Eero Saarinen Womb Chair and ottoman was an obvious choice for Williams and set decorator Kendall Anderson. Furnishings for other vignettes in the space not so much: Verity’s vintage 1970s large Mezzaluna steel desk by Leon Rosen for The Pace Collection has its marble top replaced with pale pink leather. Surrounding the desk are mirrors (“There’s a lot of voyeurism,” Williams hints). Behind it, a window climbs the wall and onto the ceiling.

“I hadn’t seen that before, so I just kept describing it as a folded taco,” Williams says of the unique shape. “From the profile, it looks like a Pac-Man. There’s definitely a bit of ’80s sensibility. Brian De Palma films [like Dressed to Kill] were a big influence for us.”  

Beckoning Path’s materials and surroundings drove the décor for other rooms. Around the dining table are 1980s angular wooden chairs by Søren Nissen & Ebbe Gehl, as well as seats from a French convent that date back to the 1860s.

The living room’s custom sofa, inspired by a Harvey Probber Cubo sectional, was upholstered in Schumacher’s Rocky Performance velvet in Moss to echo the trees outside. (“That’s the one thing I wish I could have taken from the set,” Williams says, before admitting she did leave with a Brutalist pendant light.) The coffee and side tables are from organic designer Andrianna Shamaris; the 1940s cherry floor lamps are attributed to Pierre Guariche; and the mahogany piano is a rare “Tilting Wing” by Nico Rippen for Lindner.

“There was an afternoon where there was a break in the action, and I look over, and Anne Hathaway’s playing a Britney Spears song on the piano,” Williams reports, “like, the most beautiful Anne Hathaway version of it.”

Rock formations on the property were another instrumental muse for Williams and art director Joseph Fernandez. “I’ve always loved homes that are built around cliffs or rock sides, so you see nature encroaching in on the spaces,” she says. She’d long dreamt of carving a bathroom out of stone. “Luckily, I had these incredible scenic artists who were constantly carving away at foam, and they made me a beautiful V-shaped bathtub. We have a very sexy scene in it,” she teases.

Faux stone is also exposed on the walls of other sets. For the artwork that hangs amongst it, the production designer had a specific request: “There’s no two-dimensional pieces. Everything has dimension,” she says. Browsing Williams’s wormhole-worthy 1^st Dibs selects reveals Verity’s affinity for Brutalism. The character’s taste in lighting is also impeccable. In her office, you’ll spy a C. Jeré skyscraper floor lamp and a slanted tubular polished aluminum desk lamp by Paul Mayén for Habitat. A pendant light in Fortuny’s Scudo Saraceno silk illuminates her closet.

That attention to detail is the hallmark of great design. Williams and her crew went above and beyond to recreate memorable moments from Hoover’s Verity novel, including some intimate ones that involve headboard biting. Director Michael Showalter was staying at New York’s Greenwich Hotel when he sent Williams a photo of his room’s headboard. “There was a lot of thought going into the ergonomics of it,” she says delicately of the fabrication process. Then came the tests for bite-mark depth and taste.

“We had to essentially create an edible ledge of a headboard,” Williams says, noting the stain on the balsa wood is food coloring. “The edge of the headboard was something we could take off and reset, so it was sanitary. Anne’s biting it in one scene. Dakota’s biting it in another scene. And then we had this insert shot that was scheduled very last minute, and I actually had to go in and bite it.”