Tamara Deverell & Shane Vieau Win Production Design Oscar
Canadian Production Designer Tamara Deverell and Set Decorator Shane Vieau win the 2026 Academy Award for Production Design for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, capping an extraordinary awards season for the film.
Canadian Production Designer Tamara Deverell and Set Decorator Shane Vieau have won the Academy Award for Production Design for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
The win was announced at the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026, recognizing the extraordinary visual world created for the film and marking a major achievement for Canadian production design and the many artists and craftspeople who helped bring it to life.
For Deverell and Vieau, the Oscar caps an exceptional awards season for Frankenstein. The pair also won the BAFTA for Production Design, while the film’s design was recognized by the Art Directors Guild among numerous other honours.
Building the World of Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein called for a world that is monumental, Gothic, romantic, and deeply grounded in character.
Led by Deverell, the production design moves through laboratories, grand interiors, frozen landscapes, and elaborate period environments while maintaining the distinctive visual language that runs throughout the film.
Vieau’s set decoration adds another layer of history and character to those spaces, filling them with the detail, texture, and material richness that make the environments feel inhabited rather than simply constructed.
Behind that work was an extensive art department led by Supervising Art Director Brandt Gordon and a large team of art directors, set designers, concept artists, illustrators, scenic artists, and other artists and craftspeople who helped bring the film’s visual world to life.
The Production Design Oscar may carry the names of the Production Designer and Set Decorator, but achievements on this scale are built collectively. For us, it is also an opportunity to celebrate the extraordinary depth of talent working throughout Canadian art departments.
A Major Career Achievement
Deverell has built a wide-ranging career across film and television, with production design credits including Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Nightmare Alley, and Suits. Earlier in her career, she worked as an art director on films including Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic.
Frankenstein marks her first Academy Award win following her previous Production Design nomination for Nightmare Alley, also shared with Vieau.
Vieau is one of Canada’s most accomplished set decorators. In addition to his work with Deverell on Nightmare Alley and Frankenstein, he received an Academy Award nomination for Dune: Part Two and previously won the Oscar for The Shape of Water alongside Production Designer Paul Austerberry and Set Decorator Jeff Melvin.
Their continued recognition on the international stage speaks to both their individual artistry and the strength of Canadian production design and art department talent.
