Gube isn’t the only person who brought his own horological props to the show. In episode two, Sidney sends Gary “Sweeps” [the restaurant’s head sommelier] to Alpana—a real Chicago restaurant run by Alpana Singh, the youngest woman to receive the rank of master sommelier—to learn about wine pairings. In a scene with the real Singh, a Tiffany watch is visible as she raises her glass to taste. As with Gube, this wasn’t one of Roeper’s props but Singh’s own timepiece.
“Alpana was gracious enough to call me yesterday to tell me this story,” says Roeper. “That watch is about 25 years old, and before Singh was the first woman sommelier, and before she had her amazing place and her TV show, she moved to Chicago when she was 23 years old. She was starting to get a tiny bit of success, and she wanted to get one thing that represented that move and her new path. She walked into Tiffany’s on Michigan Avenue and bought the watch. She wanted to wear that watch in the scene because she said it’s a symbol of what she was capable of doing.”
Eagled-eyed viewers will also have noticed that, between season three and four, pastry chef Marcus Brooks, played by Lionel Boyce, has ditched his Tissot Powermatic 80 and returned to his trusty G-Shock. “Marcus and his watches became a joke,” laughs Roeper. “We had him in his steel green-dial Tissot that everybody noticed. It’s a beautiful watch. Lionel really likes it. But when we started doing time changes and episodes, we decided that he wouldn’t have had anything so expensive, and we went back to the G-Shock.”
Roeper also has tricks up her well-stocked sleeve. Josh Hartnett joined the cast as Frank, Richie’s ex-wife Tiff’s new husband. This guy is the ultimate tech bro, complete with a curated art collection he knows nothing about. You’d be expecting an Omega or a Cartier, maybe even a Richard Mille, but Frank wears a Movado Verso Chronograph. “I’ll tell you a secret, it looks like a Daytona. That’s why we used it,” says Roeper. “Josh knows watches. He’s got really great taste. But sometimes we have one day with actors on set, so I don’t have time to go out and get a $30,000 watch.”
