Watch Props Supervisor Buist Bickley Make Death Becomes Her Look Drop-Dead Fabulous

Props supervisor Buist Bickley helps bring the outrageous world of Death Becomes Her to life eight times a week. “To have an illusion is often to have a broken illusion, so you need to know how to make the best that it can be,” he tells The Broadway Show with Tamsen Fadal correspondent Perry Sook. “All departments need to get it all on the same page. We have to be in constant communication making sure that everything sings together.”

That collaboration is key for Bickley, who previously worked on Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and learned that “much of illusion is just making things you don’t want to see disappear.” He’s especially proud of the show’s shimmering vials that contain the mythic immortality elixir at the heart of the plot. “That’s not really an illusion, it’s more of a trick,” he says. “It’s the iconic thing from the movie. Figuring out people’s expectations from the film of what it’s supposed to look like and figuring out how that should be different for the stage because we’re not doing the movie—it would be boring just to see the movie on stage.”

Watch as Sook goes backstage for a closer look at Bickley’s killer creations, including singing spray cans, dancing liquor bottles and an estate-approved Farrah Fawcett poster that makes its own kind of magic.

Watch the video below.

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