Get down to business
Grazia speaks exclusively to The Get Down’s producer-designer Catherine Martin and leading lady Herizen Guardiola
‘EVERYONE WANTS TO KNOW
about the cake, not the recipe,’ says Oscar-winning costume and production designer Catherine Martin, of the origins of The Get Down, Netflix’s searing hot new binge watch about the burgeoning hip-hop scene in ’70s New York. It’s created by her husband, director Baz Luhrmann, who naturally became obsessed not with the cake, but the recipe, for the most successful genre of music of our time, giving it that injection of Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge magic along the way.
Because when you think of mid-’70s New York, you think glamorous clubs and dance competitions: basically Saturday Night Fever. But as the disco scene fizzled out, a new street-led movement was bubbling up amid the graffitied block parties and burning buildings of the multicultural Bronx. The Get Down tracks the kids who became the turntable pioneers, the breakdancers and the poets-turned-mcs, redefining a generation as they changed music.
‘The people at the epicentre of it are still alive,’ says Catherine. DJ Flare, Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa all contributed, with Flash and Herc becoming key characters.
As with any Luhrmann production, the aesthetic and sound are front and centre to the drama. There are scratch parties with the coolest scenesters in ’70s sportswear, through disco danceoffs resplendent with Halston-inspired wrap dresses, on to kung fu-imbued action sequences in heritage Puma.
There’s forbidden love for Baz’s R+J fans. Singer-turned-actor Herizen Guardiola plays Mylene Cruz, who defies her pastor father to get her audition tape to a music mogul, and gets swept off her feet by Ezekiel (Justice Smith), a schoolboy with a poetic way with words.
‘I’d never acted before,’ says Herizen. ‘Singing was my “thing” – but acting with a camera in your face? I had to get used to that. I can’t become Leonardo Dicaprio. He’s been doing this for years so I have to take it easy.’ Mylene has amazing outfits, courtesy of Catherine and costume designer Jeriana San Juan – and some consultation with Diane Von Furstenberg. ‘The silver wrap dress and matching knickers in the opening episode – even Mylene’s blue skirt – everything was custom-made.’ Meanwhile, the team pieced together the era, remaking period items and sourcing from the high street. ‘My dream growing up was that people would copy vintage clothes and make them. Well, they do now,’ says Catherine.