Eddie Murphy’s return as Prince Akeem Joffer in “Coming 2 America” (now broadcast on Prime Video) brings the comedy franchise back to the fictional Zamunda, home to the royal family and its future heir.
Much of Zamunda’s setting was recreated in Georgia, with the palace palace brought to life courtesy of rapper Rick Ross, who opened the doors of his estate outside Atlanta to the film’s production team.
Production designer Jefferson Sage says: “Our big problem was, where did we find a house that had the scale of the possibilities of a very luxurious palace?”
Sage and his team explored several locations before focusing on Ross’s estate, which would serve as the bones of the lush royal palace.
The 45,000-square-foot mansion in Fayetteville, Georgia sits on 235 acres and was previously owned by boxer Evander Holyfield. With 12 rooms and a 100-seat dining room, it had the scale that director Craig Brewer and Sage were looking for.
“That entrance foyer with the large two-story interior and double spiral staircase was perfect,” says Sage. “Outside of that, there were two beautiful large rooms with giant windows and 5.5 meter ceilings. We used five key spaces that we transformed into Zamunda. “
These spaces were converted to the main sets of the film, including the king’s bedroom and the dining room. The palace’s master bedroom was Ross’s. The rapper says that “Coming to America” from 1988 may be his favorite movie of all time and that he was delighted to see Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall walking through his property.
“They changed the wallpaper in the dining room, so I asked them to keep it there,” laughs Ross. “They also created that huge dining table for a dinner scene with a capacity for 50 to 60 people and left it to me as a gift. It’s gigantic. “
Decorator Douglas A. Mowat deserves credit for improving Ross’s rooms in real life. To transform the master bedroom, he opted for the existing color – warm white – but brought blues and silver to “make the room stand out and give it more dimension”. Mowat took the lead by adding silver sheets to the canopy above the bed.
Sage made a point of honoring the original film, maintaining a similar color palette, “but we changed it a bit,” he says. “We took the bones from the original set with the idea that they would renew and update regularly.”
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Elsewhere, Sage built the ballroom and throne room in outside sound studios, but the mansion’s architecture served as the basis for the design. “We did this so that it always looked like the same building,” adds Sage.
The Ross mansion had a white interior with gold trim on the ceiling, so when it came to outdoor settings, Sage accentuated and embellished the gold leaves everywhere. “We use so much gold leafing through that we buy the country’s supply for at least two months,” he says.
He had visual effects to enhance the silhouette of the film. During a sequence, a belfry bell rings, and although the actual setting was small, Brewer and Sage inserted the photo into a panoramic view of the Zamundan palace and residence. “This was our moment to sell the place as a little fantasy and show them where they live and bring out the fairytale quality of it all,” says Sage.
Creating the iconic My-T-Sharp barbershop for a sequel was Sage’s favorite. He sought all the information from the original set created by Richard Macdonald. He researched and studied the photos on the wall, focusing on the autographed photos of baseball stars and boxers. Sage adds: “We made a great effort to find as much as we could and achieved almost everything. The feeling of returning to that set is a connection with the original and unites the two films. “
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