Twisted Metal found the perfect imperfect car for Anthony Mackie

In the world of automobiles, cars are much more than vehicles. Twisted Metal. They’re a job requirement, a home, a fortress, a noble steed, and even a family for someone like John Doe (Anthony Mackie) who has nowhere else to go. As the saying goes, they are a unique character. And the designers behind Peacock’s new series adaptation made sure to take that into account — particularly when it came to John’s beloved Evelyn.

“We were dealing with: What is our actual starting vehicle?” Victoria Paul, Twisted Metal’s production designer, said. “And then once we have that, we did so many illustrations — like, It’s white, with a stripe of blue. It’s this or that. How has the hood been modified? How did we modify the back? What is the wheel? What is a gun?”

The conversation (even when they spent a “lot of time thinking about which guns attached to which vehicles”) always came back to practicality — and how that balanced against a game franchise as frenzied and wild as Twisted Metal.

“There were some very specific beats about the interior that we had a match. You know, like where certain buttons were, that was very clear from the game,” Paul says. “But mostly, I think it was just us trying to say, OK, what’s the most badass car we can give this guy given he’s been driving this car for 20 years?”

Skip Bolen/Peacock

In Paul’s mind, Evelyn had to be a car that John conceivably found on the side of the road; in all likelihood, someone’s everyday car that was in constant use before the apocalypse hit. Ty Guidroz, Twisted Metal’s car coordinator, came onto production a little after they decided the style of Evelyn. The makeup and look of Evelyn make sense to him.

“The choice of the Subaru WRX was because this is an action-packed show. These cars were going to be expected to do a lot of things,” Guidroz says, noting that there were four different Evelyns, all souped up to do what they needed the car to do. “Part of it was [that]Pre-2002, it was a vehicle that was suitable for its age. It was also a car that was age appropriate, pre-2002. [it] could do and perform the things with the type of car that these kids would actually drift — even today! These cars are taken to the track and drifted. The drifting track is a great place to practice. [the cars] You can also find out more about us on our website. perform the way we wanted them to perform.”

Evelyn is John Doe’s baby, the central car in a series full of them, so of course she got a little bit of special love and attention. She was the longest process, particularly since, as Paul says, there was “no real role model for her from the game.” But as Guidroz and Paul note, Evelyn is just representative of how they wanted every car to feel, whether they were looking at the big Tahoe that Agent Stone (Thomas Haden Church) drives or the infamous ice cream truck that Sweet Tooth (Joe Seanoa) maniacally drives around in.

“Each car has its own character,” Guidroz says. “We had to do that selection process for every character, for every vehicle along the way: What is it supposed to do for us? What is it? You can also find out more about us on our website. to do? What are we going to do? Will we flip it? Were we going to flip it over? And so all those things had to come into play when they were selecting the perfect car.”

Twisted MetalPeacock has released season 1, now available to stream.