Grace and Frankie ending: Crew member explains ‘favourite shot’ of Lily Tomlin | TV & Radio | Showbiz & TV
The highly successful Netflix comedy series has come to a bittersweet conclusion, and Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin’s iconic Grace Hanson and Frankie Bergstein have wrapped up their story after seven years on screens. Thankfully, this is by no means the end of their legendary careers, but key crew member Luke Miller has opened up to Express.co.uk about the challenges of bringing an end to the beloved sitcom.
Cinematographer Luke has revealed a contemplative moment in the penultimate episode of Grace and Frankie was his favourite scene in the whole series.
In episode 15, The Fake Funeral, Frankie (Tomlin) throws herself a memorial service after receiving a deadly premonition from a psychic.
Throughout the series, she has explored her love of painting after discovering her husband Sol (Sam Waterston) had been having an affair with Grace’s (Fonda) husband, Robert (Martin Sheen).
As she tries to come to terms with her impending demise and yet another falling out with her best friend, she takes to her artist’s studio for a break from the chaos downstairs.
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“There was a scene that I did in a past episode that I really liked,” he recalled.
“And [Alex] referenced a scene, I think it was from season three or four, it was just a shot of Lily painting in the studio. It was at night, it was really beautiful.
“He said, ‘I want to go with kind of that idea’. But our scene was day, it was kind of a different feeling. We used our own show as reference but took a little different twist on it.”
To give this scene a more bright and hopeful feel, Luke went to great lengths to ensure the lighting was just right for Frankie’s swan song.
“It was day, so we had lots of light streaming through the windows, as opposed to the other scene, it was night so no light coming in,” he explained.
“I drove the gaffer a little bit mad on that shot because I said ‘this scene needs to be really special, we’re going to put a lot of light outside the windows.’
“I think we had, like, 100,000 watts of power… every light we had basically.
“We just took our time, and that, to me, that scene is just… it still looks like the show. It doesn’t look out of place, but we really spent our time on that. And I think it paid off.”
Having become friends in front of and behind the camera on the set of 9-5 way back in 1980, Jane and Lily have already banked two more feature films together for fans to look forward to after seven full seasons working side-by-side in the Netflix hit.
Grace and Frankie seasons 1-7 are available to stream on Netflix.
