“A lot of people think design is picking out a cute chair or painting a wall,” says Monique Dias, production designer for NBC’s Grand Crew. “But it’s about taking who a character is and figuring out what their world would look like — and that’s not always pretty, clean or perfect.”

Grand Crew, which returns to NBC for its second season on March 3, is a single-camera comedy starring Echo Kellum, Nicole Byer, Justin Cunningham, Aaron Jennings, Carl Tart and Grasie Mercedes as a group of thirty-something Black friends in Los Angeles navigating relationships, careers and the city’s infamous traffic.

“I grew up with the Black side of my family,” says Dias, who’s half Cape Verdean. “One of the original appeals of the show for me was the opening story in season one about how Black men are allowed to be all sorts of things, not just stereotypes.”

Read the full interview here.