How the strip was rebuilt for Last King of the Cross

EXCLUSIVE:

Standing idly in the car park of Raging Waters theme park in Prospect, western Sydney, I’m in awe of the construction going on for Paramount+ drama Last King of the Cross.

Production Designer Sam Hobbs (Danger Close, The Drover’s Wife, Les Norton, Gold) has been staggeringly and meticulously been building Darlinghurst Road King’s Cross of the 1980s.

It’s taken 14 weeks, 30 Construction & Staging workers, 3 Lighting Technicians, 2 Electricians, 2 Glaziers, 2 Art Directors overseeing an Art team and even 2 Kerbing Contractors.

Hanging behind the seedy Porky’s nightclub is a giant waterslide, but it will disappear from view by the time Director of Photography Bruce Young has finished framing the action.

The 10 part series starring Lincoln Younes, Claude Jabbour & Tim Roth inspired by the biography of John Ibrahim is massive in scale, with 350 Speaking Roles, 60 Vintage cars, 90 Stunt People, 300 Crew and 2353 different costume looks for the Extras and Stunts.

With 150 individual scenes on ‘the Strip’ Hobbs also knew he had no hope of filming on real Sydney streets, either in existing King’s Cross or, as Underbelly: Golden Mile did, Lane Cove.

“None of those options were possible and really our shows are much bigger than that. It’s simply impossible to control anywhere in Sydney for that long. So it wasn’t ever really an option to use a real space,” he said.

“I also wanted to be able to be inside and outside, on the strip. So it mattered to us that we had different systems for interior sets, that would look onto the strip. Because by doing that, it allowed us a lot more latitude to create a real world. If it was only skin deep, it would have been really inadequate for the way the show was designed.

“And I needed to build it to a height where we weren’t having to do a huge amount of digital set extension all the time. I wanted to set to stand up to being ‘in camera’ and not having to be worked on too much in post production.”

Hobbs constructed a ‘modular’ set recreating infamous locations from the Cross, following painstaking research.

“I read John’s memoir, I did a lot of research. I consulted with him about the the different clubs and how it functioned,” he explained.

“We read widely and we went to the real strip and did a lot of photographic study into the buildings and tried to bring that building vernacular into the design.

“John’s character’s world was around Porky’s and those spaces, so it had to satisfy the requirements with script in terms of the other players in the drama.

“Pinocchio’s and Cosmo which are two cafe-restaurants that were very important, there’s Stripperama, a tattoo shop, Lasers which was the gaming arcade where a lot of cocaine dealing was done.”

 

 

But there were also setbacks including an extended wet weather event and Hobbs is frank about what has been achieved on a limited budget.

“Big international productions occur in Sydney, but what’s different is that this is essentially a domestic production. It’s being made for Paramount+ internationally but it’s not Hollywood. It’s still an Australian TV production with those types of expectations on budgets,” said Hobbs.

The strip is also but 1 of 35 sets he designed, including hospitals, club interiors, house sets, police stations, undercover police stations -all of them period in style.

 

 

Despite the challenges Hobbs remains proud of the outcome and how his work has come to life thanks to the collaboration of departments including cinematography, lighting, costume, direction and cast.

“You can do the best job in the world. But sets do tend to look like sets. You can put as much detail and as much stuff into them as you can, but you need the other departments to help, really,” he added.

Last King of the Cross is now screening on Paramount+.