Eddie Murphy’s return as Prince Akeem Joffer in ‘Coming 2 America’ (now streaming on Prime Video) brings the comedy franchise back to the fictional Zamunda, the home of the royal family and his future heir.
Much of the Zamunda area has been recreated in Georgia, with the palace brought to life thanks to rapper Rick Ross, who opened the doors of his estate on the outskirts of Atlanta for the film production team.
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Production designer Jefferson Sage says, “Our biggest problem was, where do we find a home that has the scope of possibilities for a very luxurious palace?”
Sage and his team searched in several places before checking out the Ross estate, which would serve as the legs of the lush royal palace.
The 45,000-square-foot mansion in Fayetteville, GA, is 235 acres in size and was previously owned by boxer Evander Holyfield. With 12 bedrooms and a dining room that sleeps 100 people, scale director Craig Brewer and Sage were looking.
“The entrance hall with the large two-story interior and the double staircase was perfect,” says Sage. ‘In addition, there were two beautiful large rooms with giant windows and 18-foot ceilings. We used five key spaces that turned us into Zamunda. ”
These spaces have been converted for the film’s main sets, including the King’s bedroom and the dining room. The master bedroom in the palace was Ross’ own. According to the rapper, “Coming to America” from 1988 is perhaps his favorite movie of all time and that he was delighted to see Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall walk through his estate.
“They changed the wallpaper in the dining room, and I asked them to keep it there,” laughs Ross. ‘They also created the large dining room table for a dining room with seating for 50-60 people, and I left that for me as a gift. It’s humungous. ”
The decorator Douglas A. Mowat deserves the honor of improving the actual rooms of Ross. To transform the master bedroom, he went with the existing color – warm white – but brought in blues and silver to ‘make the room pop and give it more dimension.’ Mowat took the lead by adding silver leaf to the canopy above the bed.
Sage made sure he respected the original film by keeping a similar color palette, “but we changed it a bit,” he says. “We took the bones from the original set with the idea that it would be regularly refurbished and upgraded.”
Elsewhere, Sage built the ball and throne room on external soundtracks, but the architecture of the mansion served as the basis for the design. “We did it so that it would always feel like the same building,” Sage adds.
The Ross mansion consisted of a white interior with a gold ceiling finish throughout, and when it came to the external sets, Sage emphasized throughout the gold-colored leaves. “We used so many gold leaf that we bought out the country’s stock for at least two months,” he cracked.
He relied on visual effects to enhance the silhouette of the film. Within a second, a campaign bell rang, and while the actual set was small, Brewer and Sage placed the shot in a can of Zamundan Palace and Residence. “It was our moment to sell the place as a bit of a fantasy and show where they live and to bring out the fairytale quality of everything,” says Sage.
Sage was the favorite to create the iconic My-T-Sharp barbershop for a range. He searches for all the information on the original set created by Richard Macdonald. He researched and studied the photos on the wall, impressed by the drawn photos of baseball stars and boxers. Sage adds: ‘We put a lot of effort into finding as many as possible, and we got just about everything. The feeling of going back to the set is a connection to the original and brings the two films together. ‘
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