‘The Family McMullen’; An Excellent Film 30 Years In The Making

At a time when there are existential crises in basically every direction one might look, stories that model adults behaving well feel important. Written, directed and produced by Edward Burns, The Family McMullen (2025; now available to stream on HBO Max) is a continuation of The Brothers McMullen (1995), and this is a film obviously made with love. This is the holiday movie equivalent of a homemade cookie, which feels different and better than one you’d buy packaged in plastic at the grocery store.

I met with the costume designer, Rosemary Lepre Forman, for a conversation about making the film and all the infinite ways that character’s wardrobes provide necessary information when such things cannot be trusted to mere words. How to be supportive, how to resolve conflict, how to hear something from someone you love that you don’t like – these are important things, but the story doesn’t get lost in them. Integral to the narrative, but never overt, this is an elegant rendition of the beloved ‘Holiday’ genre. And in every scene, the character development is directly tied to the clothing.

Early in The Family McMullen we meet Patricia “Patty” McMullen (Halston Sage), an uptight young woman with a preppy flair that evolves as her character deals with the challenges of being a human adult in 2025, and I asked the designer how the planning for that transition was built into her costumes.

“Patty was actually my favorite person to dress,” Forman told me. “I did a lot of research. I know Eddie really wanted her preppy. There are a couple of books that I researched. One was called Take Ivy, the other book, it’s called Preppy. I really took the time and looked through those two. I definitely wanted her to have pearls. I feel like that’s very classic. She’s just a classic girl and she’s smart. But she also has a side where she’s not sure about herself. I feel like she’s still preppy, but elevated. A little elevated because, , not as buttoned up as she was when we first meet her, with the cardigan all the way to the top and her cute little lace blouse. So yeah, we thought that was important to keep the same silhouette, but elevated a bit more where now she’s not as buttoned up as she was.”

The story opens at Thanksgiving, and as time passes, the palette Forman chose stays in its specific rainbow, but with enough shifts to remind us viewers about the shift of seasons. This helps the audience follow the temporal aspects of the plot, which does involve more than a single holiday meal, while also allowing the characters opportunities to evolve and grow. There is a rainbow of fall and winter colors, and it is lovely to watch time shift through tone on screen.

“I definitely kept the colors autumnal,” Forman said, “especially for the beginning of the movie because of Thanksgiving and the season that we were portraying. Even though we shot this in the spring, we had to keep sweaters in the spring and coats. so that was challenging. Thankfully there were a lot of sale racks where I could get the coats. I mean, because there were spring colors all throughout the stores and I was thrifting and digging through sale racks to get all that. But yes, I kept everything autumnal, those color palettes for the show for the majority of it.”

Let me pause for a second and provide a little context.

Michael McGlone (Patrick McMullen) and writer/director/actor Edward Burns (Barry ‘Finbar’ McMullen) reprise their roles from the first film, as does Connie Britton (Molly McMullen). But 30 years after the original, Finbar now has adult children Patty McMullen (Halston Sage) and her brother Tommy McMullen (Pico Alexander). The planning for this, finding ways to connect the two stories (without making either required viewing to enjoy or understand), very much felt like the sort of problem solving best left to the clothes. I wanted to know about the costume designer’s process, how the details were worked out in advance, when such things are possible.

“I start with my boards,” Forman explained. “Those boards, I really try to stay on point with my boards. Then when we have the fitting, and that’s when the character comes to life. With Patty, we were in a three-hour fitting, but we created her whole character in that time. It takes time. It’s not going to happen in five minutes, but once the clothing starts being put on, it just all of a sudden, the character comes alive. You might think something looks really good. And then when you see it on, maybe it doesn’t look right. then you have to fix it. So, you chip away at it during a film especially, TV is more like, quick, quick, quick, get it on, let’s go. But that’s what I love about doing film; you really get a chance to chip away at everything.”

An excellent example of this is a tee shirt Tommy wears, a St. Francis DeSalle’s tee from the 2015 Rockaway Beach Summer Classic. It’s not a shirt that’s vital to the story, but successful costume design never pulls rank or stands out unless it is supposed to. Instead, the wardrobes characters wear on screen talk to our subconscious. I asked if this was from the script, if it was her idea; how this tiny detail that tells us so much about this young man found its way on screen.

“That was Edward Burns, the director’s idea,” the designer explained. “He wanted that shirt, so I had it made and printed. But yeah, the director and I collaborate. This is our sixth project together. And he loves a T-shirt, so I put them in. But I also had to age the T-shirt to make it look like he was 20 years old. And that’s always fun, I love doing that. A lot of aging went into some of the characters, especially Sam, who plays Patty’s love interest.”

Whenever a film feels successful, and I very much think this one does, the invisible work done behind-the-scenes is collaborative by the very nature of the medium. This writer is convinced that the movies we love most, that intangible spirit we call movie magic, is mostly possible when those on the production-end like and respect each other’s departments and work. I asked if there were any stories about working with other department heads, and I learned how much time and effort went into making sure the interior spaces, like the bedroom for Tommy’s Karen, felt like a space cultivated by a whole person.

“Sam Bader was our production designer and he was great,” Forman told me. “And we did collaborate a lot, or, I ask him for the pictures of everybody’s set, their bedrooms, their apartments, what have you. Like, what color is the couch? What color are the pillows? What are the curtains? And the bedspread. I mean, all that matters with wardrobe. I would send him my fitting photos so he could help out with the color scheme and keep it so everything wasn’t the same, so it all kind of blended.”

When the pair goes on a date, Karen wears a flowered dress, and it’s the first, and one of very few, times in the film when someone wears a floral patterned textile. That felt significant, or important, and I had to ask the costume designer about it.

“That dress was very important to me,” Forman said, “especially in that it had to have some movement. I really wanted the dress to have some movement when she was dancing. I researched Saturday Night Fever, which is one of my favorite films, the dance scene with John Travolta and Karen Gorney, his love interest. They did this dance and there was some ruffle and movement. And I thought, ‘that’s what I want for Karen. It has to have some movement.’ And I was so pleased with how it came out.

“That’s actually my design,” the costume designer continued. “One we shortened a little bit just so she could dance in it. And really, that was a really important dress for me. There were like five different dresses and that was the one that I really wanted. And, the director loved it. She loved it. And I feel like it’s so important for the actor to really love their clothing as well, because, , it has to be their character, but also, she dressed up for Tommy. She wanted to impress him. He also dressed up for that scene, which was also important. There’s a book that I love called The Sartorialist. And there was a, there’s a picture of a boy on a park bench and he had a skinny tie. And I was like, ‘that’s Tommy,’ I found his look. That’s what he’s going to wear to the date. I was really happy with their looks for that scene.”

Karen’s mother, Nina Martin (Tracee Ellis Ross), is another character who gets a print (mostly) to herself. Nina wears strong animal prints, and as with Tommy’s tee, I felt like this gave the audience helpful information.

“Well, she’s in the music business,” Forman told me. “She has a lot of style and money so she had to look expensive. The leopard print was another thing that the director wanted for her. It was actually in the script that she was wearing leopard. I had that dress made and I was really happy with that and so was the actress. She looks really good in the film and the chemistry between her and Barry is really funny.”

A little later there is a Cinderella moment of sorts, when Patty’s aunt Molly lends her a red dress, a scene that is filled with joy and the hope of youth. I wanted to know about that one and that scene. And the choice for red, because there’s so little red in the film wardrobe, especially for a holiday film.

“That was another one of my favorites,” Forman said to me with a smile. “When you’re reading the script, you can see that there are certain places where you really have to want to have something special, and that was one. I think the red was always important to me because it was almost like Pretty Woman, when she comes out in that red dress. That’s how I wanted it to be, a nod to that. Also, since this is a holiday movie, red was kind of a nod to the season as well. but also red because it’s such a beautiful color and it stands out. So I thought it was important that she stood out in that scene and it was special.”

“That dress was actually a size eight that was cut down for her, she’s like a two or a zero. I have an amazing tailor, Corinne Reuter. I don’t think you could see all the detail on that dress, but in the back, there are these beautiful red buttons that go all the way down the back. I mean, you wouldn’t even know what size it was originally. She really did magic with that. But that dress is from 1999. The Brothers McMullen was in the nineties. There were a few nods that I really wanted to make sure made it in, some of the clothing that the actors wore were from the nineties.”

My Lovely Readers will understand why I had to ask if there were any other little nods to the first film in this one.

“She also had a Dooney and Bourke bag,” the designer said to me. “I was like, she has to have Dooney and Bourke. It’s so nineties.”

Over on the menswear spectrum, Finbar’s costumes achieve a similar effect. The character is snarky, though he obviously cares, and finding ways to reflect that in his wardrobe was something I had to ask about.

“He’s like a man child,” Forman told me with a laugh. “He cares a lot though. His flannel shirt that he wears, the director and I spoke about that. He said, we have to find that flannel. I want the exact same flannel. And I thought, ‘okay, that’s 30 years ago. But I’ll try. So my assistant and I were in a thrift store in New Jersey, somewhere in the outskirts. And we found it. I mean, we couldn’t believe it. It was like, think it might be the exact shirt, but it wasn’t. And Eddie was so excited that it came back to life. He always wore that cap, we had that made as well, and then there was the Irish knit sweater that I had shipped from Ireland.”

Specifically, I had to know about a chambray shirt he wears, almost western in feel, with pearl snap buttons and a yoke across the shoulders.

“Those are a Double RL kind of look,” Forman said. “He wears a traditional navy peacoat and we had that. That was authentic, that wasn’t something that I just bought. We thrifted that and fit it to him. And all aged, everything’s aged down for him, though sometimes he wears his own T-shirts. But yeah, he definitely likes things that are worn. And it makes sense for the film and it reads on screen, you really don’t want something brand spanking new.”

All of the characters feel like they could be real people. Everyone is actualized and flushed out, even minor characters obviously got the designer’s full attention. Like the sisters of Sam-the-Plumber (Sam Vartholomeos); Cathy (Christina Catechis), Carla (Christina Mavronas) and Christine Dukakis (Isabella Kaimakliotis), harridans, all of them, this is very clear, even though they spend mere moments in the film.

“The Dukakis sisters were great,” Forman said to me with a laugh. “They all had their own look as well. The actor, Sam, is Greek. Eddie, the director, tends to say, oh, oh, you’re Greek? Okay, let’s get a little Greek in there, he’s known for that. We did a TV show called Bridge and Tunnel. We did two seasons of that, and in the second season, he asked all the people if they had hobbies, or what they did. One of the actresses was a drummer, so he was like, okay, you’re gonna be a drummer in the next episode. I love that he expands with and lets the actors go back to their roots.”

As our conversation came to a close, I wanted to know what Rosemary Forman hoped audiences would take away from The Family McMullen.

“I just want people to go and see it,” the designer said. “It’s a feel-good movie, the clothes are fun, it’s just charming. I think everyone will enjoy it. And I really, , and it’s a very special project to me. Probably one of my favorite ones I’ve done with Eddie. I knew that this was gonna be something that people were going to see. I had a lot of fun, and I was really pleased. And it looks real, that’s what the whole thing about costume design is, you want the clothes, in a sense, to go away. You don’t want to really focus on clothes, but you want to see that character in what they wear. I think that in every character, I think someone’s gonna relate to the person.”

‘The Family McMullen’ is now available to stream on HBO Max and Edward Burns’ first film in this universe, ‘The Brother’s McMullen’, can be found on Netflix.

MORE FROM FORBES

ForbesOn Creating A World That Lets Us Believe In “The Chair Company”By Rachel Elspeth GrossForbes‘The Heart Is The Greatest Power Sign’: Dr. Stephanie Lake On Bonnie CashinBy Rachel Elspeth GrossForbesRuth E. Carter’s Costumes For ‘Sinners’ Have Made Pop Culture BetterBy Rachel Elspeth Gross