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Peacock’s series LAID, which premiered on December 19th, offers a darkly comedic twist on the 30-something dating scene. Cinematographer Judd Overton, known for his work on Ghosts (US), Dead to Me, and Killing It, brought his expertise to this unique tale starring Stephanie Hsu. Through careful selection of cameras and lenses—like the Alexa Mini LF with Zeiss Supreme Primes for warm skin tones and Cooke Full Frame Anamorphic for rom-com-inspired reveries—Overton created a visually stunning world for Ruby (Hsu) as she navigates a bizarre chain of events. From a gripping death montage in Episode 4 to retracing a drunken night in Episode 7, Overton’s artistry immersed viewers in Ruby’s perspective, blending humor and suspense into every frame.
PH: LAID presents a very unique and intriguing premise with Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) navigating a series of relationships while dealing with the surreal realization that her exes are dying in the order she slept with them. How did you approach the visual style of the show to capture both the comedy and the surreal, somewhat dark elements of Ruby’s story?
Judd Overton: At its heart LAID is a Rom-Com, “the F@$%ed Up Rom-Com we’ve been waiting for”. I knew that Director Nahnatchka Khan wanted to ground the show firmly in that Romance world, warm and comforting, to tug at the heartstrings of our emotional recall like in classics such as When Harry Met Sally or Notting Hill. We understood the language and played to the tropes but LAID is a very contemporary take on the Genre. A lot has changed in the dating game and while the audience can identify with the romantic dreamer side of Ruby coupled with it is her ever-present razor-sharp 2025 attitude. When in the classic Rom-Com style things start to go wrong, it all goes really wrong!
To ground the dark moments, and the deaths, we didn’t pull any punches. We get graphic and use jump scares and plenty of blood. Of course, all these moments need to live together in the world of the show so we decided not to play a big look change. Instead, we view the deaths, the stunts, and the humor through Ruby’s perspective. Her reactions are what really sell it and tie it all together. Often to achieve this we would go with a single camera, seeing from Ruby’s perspective.
PH: Your extensive experience in half-hour television, including working on Ghosts, Dead to Me, and Killing It, seems to have given you a solid foundation for shooting in this format. How did you draw from those experiences to shape the world of LAID, especially in terms of balancing intimacy with comedy?
Judd Overton: I do seem to have a lot of morbid titles, ‘Killing’ and ‘Death’ in my filmography but it’s really the quality of the scripts and the people involved that draws me to a project. Television audiences these days have big expectations. This is not simply a half hour comedy.
I always sit down with a director in pre-production and create some rules for the look of a new show. I create a visual language, establishing a mood or tone with the showrunners and director, something that really sets the show apart from everything else on TV.
PH: One of the notable aspects of your cinematography in LAID is the use of different cameras and lenses to evoke different moods. You chose the Alexa Mini LF with Zeiss Supreme Primes lenses for a warm, flattering treatment of skin tones. How did you use this setup to create a visual language that is both intimate and vibrant, especially in the fast-paced, emotionally charged dating scenes?
Judd Overton: For LAID, we decided never to have the Ruby center frame. She, Like her life, is always off balance so we frame her awkwardly off center, close to the edge of frame or looking out the short side.
This all changes when we shift to Ruby’s Romantice Perspective, when Ruby finds herself in a moment, the Meet-Cute or a perceived Rom-Com beat which is often undermined by a slap of reality. This is when we change to our anamorphic glass, center the frame on Ruby and wait for the magic…
PH: For moments when the show drifts into a rom-com reverie, you opted for the Cooke Full Frame Anamorphic lenses. How do you feel this choice enhances the audience’s experience of Ruby’s internal world, and what kind of emotional shift were you hoping to achieve with this lens choice?
Judd Overton: Shifting to the Cooke Anamorphic lenses for the drifts into rom-com reverie was a decision that took a lot of trial and error. I wanted to draw the audience into Ruby’s mind, to feel the moments as if through her eyes, but I did not want the shift to be so dramatic that it broke the spell, like a filter effect or heavy-handed LUT.
After trying a number of contemporary and classic anamorphic, I presented my tests to Natch and we agreed there was too much flare and aberration. We even explored things with spherical lenses like de-tuning, foreground glass elements, front vignette donuts, and rear diffusion. Nothing was quite right.
When I put up the Full Frame Cooke lenses I knew we had it. The center of the image stayed sharp and the warmth and contrast were comparable to our Zeiss Supreme Primes. The real ‘look’ we fell in love with comes from the drop-off and distortion around the edges. We framed for 2:1 and our favorite lens for Ruby’s special shots was the 75mm. We achieved great isolation of Ruby with the Anamorphic lens as well as beautiful oval bokeh in the background. I often worked with our On-Set Mary Stuart to place candles, glasses, and anything to create a spectral highlight. Gaffer Dave McClung even built a special eye-light rig with a hundred strings of Christmas lights to sparkle in Ruby’s eyes as she waits for a swooning kiss.
PH: LAID explores some unconventional and darkly comedic sequences. One that stands out is Episode 4, with the death montage of Ruby’s “sex cluster.” What was your approach to shooting this sequence, and how did you balance the emotional weight of the moment with the show’s signature comedic tone?
Judd Overton: The montage is such a classic Rom-Com device and we play with the Juxtaposition of the ‘Sex Cluster’ montage in Episode 3 with a pay-off ‘Death Cluster’ sequence in Episode 4.
The dark comedy is on point as we match-cut between the variety of graphic to ridiculous deaths as Ruby’s sidekick/ roommate AJ (Zosia Mamet) as she X’s out the dead exes, maybe a little too excitedly. We explore Ruby’s Sex Timeline like a True Crime podcast, trying to get to the bottom of the mystery and stop the deaths. I wanted to make each death specific and memorable but most important is the comedy. Even when you see someone smashing through a windshield or being hit in the head by a Fastball the graphic, grounded deaths are punctuated by the comedy.
One favorite of mine is the Death of a Clown, where another of Ruby’s exes dies, this time from a Heart Attack. Key Grip Troy Sabotka came up with a mechanical rig that mounted to the dolly. It dropped with the actor and then fell sideways in sync with our Clown to capture the moment of impact! We had painted some high-density foam to look like the sidewalk which was painted out with a little help from VFX.
PH: Episode 7 features a particularly intriguing sequence, retracing Brad’s drunken night out through his eyes. Can you talk about how you approached that sequence visually, and what technical challenges you faced in creating such a disorienting and immersive point-of-view experience?
Judd Overton: For Episode 7 we went back to the drawing board, reviewing all the lens distortion test from pre-production and adding some more. The story is told by Ruby’s employee Brad (Ryan Pinkston) who we learn is a very unreliable narrator. We move between a tale of a few quiet drinks after work, Crash cut with the distorted visual meanderings of a drunken madman. It was a great opportunity to warp the world as we discover Brad’s journey. In the end, we loved the effect of the Module8 detuner which distorted the background highlights while managing to keep Brad sharp in the close foreground. We added it to our widest Prime lens and mounted it to the Steadicam. The whole sequence was by leading or following super close to Brad on the distorted wide lens. Often Andy would not know exactly where Brad was going or how he would get there as he spun around and around mimicking a drunken stagger.
PH: A key challenge in shows like Laid is ensuring that the visual style feels cohesive while also serving the needs of the narrative. How did you ensure that the cinematography stayed true to the tone of the show, especially when shifting between different types of scenes—from the everyday, grounded moments to the more fantastical or surreal elements?
Judd Overton: I strive to create a world that is consistent across the 8 episodes and shooting all the eps myself, as I did previously on my previous show ‘Killing It’ really allows me to monitor the visual language continuity. Also, having Nahnatchka directing 6 out of the 8 episodes in addition to her showrunner role makes the process much closer to that of a feature film.
PH: With your extensive background in shooting half-hour TV series, how did you approach the pacing of LAID from a cinematographic standpoint? Were there specific moments where you felt that the pacing of the shots was especially crucial to the storytelling?
Judd Overton: We were shooting 5-6 day episodes so I knew that we would need to shoot 3 cameras as much as possible. These days cross shooting on TV shows seems like it’s a big part of the job description. Like with my previous experience on Ghosts, Young Rock, and Killing It I knew that the only way to achieve the page count on our big ensemble was to bring in a third camera team.
Obviously, this can only work with a well-planned set design. Designer Liz Kay together with our rigging and construction team fabricated hinged ceilings on our major standing sets, Ruby and AJs apartment, and Richie’s. Behind the hinged ceiling sections, we mounted our DMX-controlled LED fixtures on flypipes so that we could lower in when needed or hide when we wanted to shoot a low angle to see the ceiling.
This said, some of my favorite blocking and coverage moments like the start of Episode 6 are the ones where we follow the action and dialogue around the living room and then land in our 3 camera coverage.
PH: Ruby’s journey is full of emotional highs and lows, but she also spends a lot of time in a very modern, somewhat chaotic dating world. How did you use framing, lighting, or camera movement to reflect her emotional state in those quieter, more intimate moments as well as the frenetic, chaotic ones?
Judd Overton: In this environment, I try to make my impact as small as possible. We have a plan and I have lit the sets to shift quickly between day and night as well as having dimmer board control of all the fixtures and where possible all the film lights as well. In prep, I take cues from the practical locations. I do light studies at the time of day we will shoot. If I don’t need to change something and what’s preexisting works for the scene it makes the whole production faster and less invasive.
This was my first time working with Stephanie Hsu and it was an absolute pleasure. She has such a strong work ethic and her understanding of the role really means we can rely on her to know where the character needs to be emotionally. She is tracking the emotional balance between the comedy and dramatic moments across multiple scenes we need to shoot in a day which could span a week (and many deaths) in real time. Stephanie’s ability to flow from a comedy kitchen scene in the morning to an all-out fight in the evening when it’s revealed she’s slept with her best friend’s Boyfriend was key. She is in almost every scene and is amazingly memorizing over 10 script pages a day plus Alts!
PH: You’ve had a chance to work on some notable projects that also blend humor with more emotional or dramatic moments. How did your work on LAID compare in terms of capturing those contrasts? Were there any visual techniques you found especially effective in threading together the comedy and drama inherent in Ruby’s story?
Judd Overton: I love pushing to find the subtext of the scene, often that starts with the script and a thorough breakdown and shortlisting with the director on the weekend. Then on set, we have the ability to throw that all out if it seems like the actors want to take it in a different direction. Quite often the blocking of scenes will change but the conceptual ideas of the framing and camera movement remain.
I feel like my experience of shooting heightened concept, high-quality shows drive me to constantly evolve my process. Each new project draws on past experience and throws me a bunch of new challenges. LAID was a continuation of this.
I was shooting in Vancouver again after 2023’s Feature ‘Totally Killer’ and once again shooting lots of night work over short summer nights. Often we would have only 5 hours of true night. Luckily I had a familiar crew with me, My Grips team led by Troy Sabotka as well as AC Mike Eubank. In addition, I was recommended Andy Capicik as A camera / steadicam operator and his AC Brian Shaw as well as B operator Chris Gibbins. Together this pro team got quickly on board with the way that Nahnatchka and I worked together and really created a safe space on set for the actors to improvise and play.
