Research and authenticity were the driving forces behind creating FX's period miniseries about the lives of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon, which starts with Fosse's 1969 big-screen directorial debut, Sweet Charity, and wraps in the late '80s. "I had been a big fan of Fosse's work since seeing All That Jazz and read the biography [Fosse, by Sam Wasson] on which this is based, so I was pretty familiar with the story," says production designer Alex DiGerlando, adding that he rewatched the films and did an extensive amount of additional research. He even connected with Fosse and Verdon's daughter, Nicole Fosse, who shared stories and pictures to inform the design for sets including their home. Nicole "was adamant that when Bob moves out of his home, there would be a pair of binoculars in the apartment because he liked to look at the other apartments," he notes with a laugh. "She didn't sugarcoat anything."

Indeed, Nicole Fosse's desire to make an authentic version of her parents' story aligned perfectly with the filmmakers' own goals, according to DiGerlando, who says they "didn't want to make a glossy version — Bob did that with All the Jazz. We wanted to do something that felt very real and authentic. A lot of energy was put into capturing the process of the filmmaking and the choreography." The more recognizable sets included the iconic Kit Kat Klub from Fosse's 1972 film Cabaret, built at New York's Silvercup Studios, which was more complicated than it might seem. "The stage was clearly documented, but there were other parts of the set that you only see in motion blur," DiGerlando explains. "We freeze-framed every single shot to get as much information as we could. We were also able to dig up one architectural drawing of the set from the Library of Congress, but when we analyzed it we realized it must have been an early version. We did use the drawing, but we couldn't rely too heavily on it."

The team learned that the set was more colorful than it may have appeared. "We were [initially] talking about it as a black set, but it was anything but," he says. "The walls are red, purple — there's glitter surrounding the proscenium of the stage. There's painting on the piano and drum set. There are posters and graphics on the walls."

He adds that the stage was surprisingly high. "When we first built it, the stage felt really high, and we realized that must have been a choice because of the way it was shot. We figured out the height based on the height of the audience in the film."

As Fosse was filming his movie in these scenes, the production design team also had to track down production gear used in the period, including a Panavision film camera, lights and a dolly. This attention to detail carried onto the set of Fosse's editing rooms, for which DiGerlando even got some insight from his uncle, editor Jeffrey Wolf, and Fosse collaborator Alan Heim, who won an Oscar for editing 1979's All That Jazz. To create that set, he located period KEM and Moviola editing systems, as well as trim bins (where clipped outtakes were stored), reels and even a recognizable "yellow book" poster that was often found in editing rooms during that time.

In scenes where Cabaret was being edited, DiGerlando filed the trim bins with strips of 35mm film of George Burns' 18 Again, which he found, inexpensively, on eBay. For scenes when Fosse is cutting 1974's Lenny (also edited by Heim), he placed black-and-white film in the trim bin.