Inside the Making of the Battlefields of HBO’s Divorce Drama War

Some things are worth fighting for, and one of them is a flat with a balcony that overlooks Kensington Gardens.

The first season of HBO’s legal anthology War, starring Sienna Miller and Dominic West, follows the deliciously contentious divorce proceedings of a famous film star and her tech billionaire husband in London. Miller’s Carla wages her campaign largely from her effortlessly chic living room, staged in an event space in The Columbia, a hotel set across five Victorian townhouses in Lancaster Gate.

“It was that architecture that was really important,” production designer Debbie Burton says, “to get a sense of history so that we feel like it isn’t just a transient space. I wanted it to feel very much designed by Carla, because she’s the style icon of the show. She’s knowledgeable about design, and she’s well-traveled. She has influences from all over.”

Burton and set decorator Adrian Anscombe didn’t have to venture too far themselves to fill the blank canvas. The Sunbury Antiques Market in Kempton was a popular source, and their hero piece, a vintage 1970s Barbican sofa designed by John Home for Howard Keith, was discovered even closer. “That was hidden away in a room in The Columbia,” Burton says. “It was an amazing find.”

Another couch, reupholstered in red to serve as a reminder that Carla is out for blood, packs a visual punch in front of panels of Chinoiserie-inspired wall covering designed by graphic designer Christian Ashton. Flanking it are a pair of striking red floor lamps with bold cone bases and sideboards from Nicky Cornell that marry black-and-white stripes with a curved silhouette.

“Sometimes the thought process is like, ‘F–k, that looks amazing. Let’s go with them,’” Burton says of the latter. “What I thought was successful about that [vignette] was, there’s clearly a curation going on there, but they’re not accent colors or all smoothly working together. There’s quite a lot of stuff fighting, but it ultimately works.”

On the last day of dressing the set before filming, Burton and her team felt they were missing a final touch. “We needed something a little less perfect, a little more worn, a bit more like she’s found it in a bazaar somewhere and brought it home with her,” the production designer says.

They took a walk to Graham and Green and fell in love with a pink Norville pouffe that Carla could’ve brought home from a shoot in Morocco (in reality, it’s handmade with New Zealand wool).  

West’s philandering Morgan, meanwhile, rallies his troops in a two-story hotel suite that Burton was forced to build after scouting London’s finest establishments proved disappointing. “Their penthouses and suites were just tiny and unimpressive,” she says. “What you see to the eye and what you need to see onscreen are very different things. We need that cinematic quality—the height, the ability to move around to create something of scale and status.”

A staircase leading to the bedroom and open-plan bath was a must: “I’m slightly known for not having both handrails, so Health and Safety come in and go, ‘What are you doing?!’” Burton says with a laugh. “But it just looks so much nicer with one piece of glass.”

There’s an intentional coldness and hardness to the design. “As much as you’re switching sides between Carla and Morgan—and they’re both fairly unlikable at times—there’s a darkness to Morgan that hides behind his charisma,” she says. Amber light from an array of sconces softens it. “There needs to be a beauty to it, doesn’t there?” Burton concedes. “A consideration of what these worlds are and how much people pay to be in these spaces.”

The bar area, where Morgan strategizes with his legal team, achieves an intimacy and intensity backed by a wall painted in Farrow & Ball’s Eating Room Red. Abstract artwork was commissioned to make a statement but not say anything specific, Burton explains: “Having literally no connection to him, it’s just something that, like him, is big and impactful and doesn’t have an awful lot of depth.”  

The series is also an opportunity to show parts of London not often seen onscreen. Episode 2’s mediation negotiations were filmed entirely on location in Skinners’ Hall, a Grade I Listed building that recently received a $26.5 million makeover from 6a Architects and design firm Carter Owers Studio. The moment the show’s location manager showed Burton its Outer Hall, anchored by a bespoke radial-patterned stunner from The Rug Company, she decided Morgan and Carla had to feign civility there.

Season 2 of War will continue to follow rival law firms Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne as they find themselves on opposing sides of a new defamation case. Establishing their identities through their offices was key for Burton. Cathcarts’s exterior is doubled by a neo-classical building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the heart of the London legal world. Burton’s team built the offices within. “I always knew I wanted an Art Deco interior in order to showcase wealth and history without ending up with just mahogany-paneled rooms,” she says. “The richness and architectural play of Art Deco meant we could customize our own features, such as the spiral staircase in the lobby and the internal lightwell for the communal corridors. It’s a warm and rich palette displaying their status and established success.”

Upstart Taylor & Byrne, on the other hand, occupies one floor in a skyscraper with an open-plan environment designed by Burton. “The steel, glass, and concrete materials make up the extensive floor and bullring for the associates and paralegals. It signifies a new way of practicing law: open, transparent, nothing cloistered or covered up here,” she says. “And yet ultimately, both firms play the same game… They have to win.”