Production designer Felicity Abbott returned to Australia after nine years working overseas to create the world of Netflix's My Brilliant Career, a new adaptation of Miles Franklin's iconic novel. 

In this episode of The Edit, Felicity tells Home Beautiful Editor-in-Chief Elle Lovelock how her team transformed historic South Australian properties, built entire homes from scratch and used everything from architecture and landscaping to furniture, colour and the smallest objects in a room to tell the story of the characters who live there. 

Plus, Felicity reveals the surprising Victorian status symbol she discovered during her research, and the painstaking tricks used to make heritage locations and studio-built interiors appear completely seamless on screen. 

This episode covers: 

• Why My Brilliant Career brought Felicity back to Australia after nine years overseas 
• How she begins designing a world from the script and its characters 
• Finding the historic South Australian homes used in the series 
• Building entire houses and interiors from scratch 
• Making the architecture feel distinctly Australian 
• Why colour is the foundation of Felicity's production design 
• Sourcing and creating Victorian furniture, antiques and homewares 
• How tiny household objects reveal a character's backstory 
• Recreating Victorian gas, candle and tallow lighting 
• The magic - and sadness - of watching a film set come to life and eventually disappear 

Check out Felicity’s work here 

You can watch My Brilliant Career now on Netflix 

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Credits: 

Host: Elle Lovelock 

Guest: Felicity Abbott 

Edited by: Leah Porges 

Head of Vodcasting: Rachel Fountain 

With thanks to our wonderful Home Beautiful team. 

The Edit is a production of Home Beautiful and Are Media.