13 Reasons Why: Secrets Behind The Sets

Analy High School in Sebastapol, Calif., stood in for the series' Liberty High — but finding the right location was no easy task. "The problem was, we came to Northern California not understanding that schools there don't look like what we expect a high school to look like int he rest of the country, because they're made earthquake-safe," Lederman explains. "We wanted something more traditional."

"Each character in this story has a very particular looking room, and that was important, because you really wanted to understand what these characters are about from a one-second look at their bedroom," says production designer Diane Lederman. 

"There's a history that is felt, that this room didn't drop out of space in 2017 when the character was 17 years old," Lederman points out, adding that touches like photos and Jessica's teddy bear speak to "moments from their childhood that they're still holding on to."

When asked what a typical high school looks like, Lederman says with a laugh, most of us just "envision our own high school." For kicks, she says she snuck some secret images and in-jokes into things like murals and "certainly in all the graffiti in the bathroom. I definitely had my way with that, because I knew [the camera] wouldn't focus on all of it. So we had our fun."

"I modeled the administrative offices of Liberty High" — including Mr. Porter's guidance-counselor area — after my own high school," Lederman reveals.

Though exteriors were shot at Analy, the Liberty interiors were built on a sound stage on Mare Island, a former naval shipyard outside of San Francisco. "We converted a 100,000-square-foot warehouse for our stage sets, which included the school hallways and classrooms, the administrative offices... Hannah's bedroom, Clay's bedroom, Jessica's bedroom and upstairs of her house, and also the upstairs of Clay's house," Lederman says.

Action happening in the school hallways in the first two episodes were shot at Analy High; after that, scenes took place on a soundstage built to be an exact replica of the locker-lined passageways. Can't tell the difference? Don't worry — neither could one of the directors of photography. On the first day of shooting on the set, Lederman says she caught him walking out what would have been the front door of the school, then walking back in, looking confused. "He's like, 'You fooled me for half a second,'" she recalls, chuckling. "'I walked out the front door expecting to be outside, and I was just in the stage.'"

Lederman says Jessica's pink-and-purple room is very reflective of the character, whom she deems "the little princess, in many respects." She adds: "The truth about teenagers bedrooms — and I even remember this from when I was a teenager — is that it's at that point in your life when you start to have your own choices and influences... but there's still the remainder of childhood there."

She refers to the Episode 2 shot of Clay on his bed, looking at the ceiling. "It's an attic bedroom, and he's surrounded by all the influences in his life," she says. "It really told a story." 

"When I saw the big, storefront glass, I knew instantly I wanted to turn one of those into a Monet," Lederman says of the space that would eventually become the caffeine-infused hangout Monet's. So she and her team created the "Waterlillies"-inspired backdrop. "I just thought how beautiful it would be to have light pouring through. A lot of directors were able to use that as a centerpiece, and it served its purpose just perfectly."

Though pulling together sets like the Bakers' drugstore wasn't always easy, "we all felt it when we were working on this project, that there was a bit of a higher cause there," Lederman says of the drama's teen-suicide subject matter. "When I read the book and understood what the story was about, I immediately wanted to be involved and be a part of something that might have some kind of social impact," she adds. "Seeing the absolutely amazing response that people have had to this show, it's extremely gratifying. I'm really, really proud of the work."

All told, building the world of 13 Reasons Why took about 10 weeks. "We had an amazing crew," says Lederman, who attributes much of the success to construction coordinator Doug E. Williams and his team. "Those guys pretty much pulled off a miracle... I look back at it today still thinking, 'I don't know how we did it.' But we did it." 

Transforming a Vallejo, Calif., location into the movie theater where Hannah and Clay were employed required "a fantastic amount of work in a very short time," Lederman says. "I saw this main street with all its grand storefronts that are sitting vacant and thought, 'Let's just take this over. We can create our own coffee shop, our own movie theater.' Everyone thought I was crazy at first, but it turned out to be the right decision."