TV Locations – Page 5 – IAMNOTASTALKER

April 10, 2020April 9, 2020

The Fine Arts Building from “The Morning Show”

Considering I’ve been at this crazy hobby of mine for twenty years now, you’d think I’d have stalked every square inch of Los Angeles. While watching the second episode of The Morning Show, though, I was reminded of a site I had yet to set foot in – downtown’s Fine Arts Building. I’d heard of the celebrated property countless times, seen photos of its impressive lobby online and read up on its history, but somehow had never visited. So while in the area last December, I decided to amend that and got my first look at the marvel that is the Fine Arts Building.

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The landmark structure, a commission of the Fine Arts Building Company, was erected in 1926.

The 12-story, 107,000-square-foot property, designed in the Romanesque Revival style by architects Albert R. Walker and Percy A. Eisen (who also gave us the Oviatt Building, the Gaylord Apartments and the Beverly Wilshire, aka the Pretty Woman hotel), initially housed studios, workshops, and galleries for local Los Angeles artists.

The impressive terra cotta exterior features castings by Burt William Johnson, including two figures perched on either side of the third-floor overhang, one symbolizing architecture and the other sculpture.

Though the ornate façade is nothing to sneeze at . . .

. . . the sweeping two-story lobby, designed in the Spanish Renaissance style, is the real stunner.

Almost unbelievably so!

Featuring tile work by Pasadena artist Ernest Batchelder, paintings and murals by Anthony B. Heinsbergen, a beamed ceiling, a blue-tiled fountain, and 17-foot-tall glass display cases which initially served as a place for resident artists to exhibit their wares, the 3,000-square-foot chamber truly is a sight to be seen.

Sadly, the Great Depression hit the artisans who rented space in the structure hard, causing many of them to terminate their leases and the property to be sold in 1930. It was then rebranded the “Signal Oil Building.” It went through numerous ownership and name changes in the years that followed until being taken over by the Ratkovich, Bowers Inc. development firm in 1983, at which time it was heavily rehabilitated and its original moniker restored.

Today, the Historic-Cultural Monument houses business offices, though the lobby remains a place for local artists to exhibit their works.

The Fine Arts Building serves as the office of Mitch Kessler’s (Steve Carell) business manager, where he gets some bad news regarding his financial status following his firing, in the Season 1 episode of The Morning Show titled “A Seat at the Table.” It is as Mitch is walking out of the structure that he is accosted by a stranger who screams “Rapist!”, to which he not-so-calmly replies, “I’m not even accused of rape! Sexual misconduct is what I’m being accused of! Don’t you wave your f*cking hand at me! Have a nice day, you f*cking asshole!” I spotted the “811” address placard and the ornate carvings flanking the front doors as Mitch exited the building just before being yelled at and recognized the place immediately.

I believe the interior scene involving Mitch’s business manager’s office may have been shot elsewhere, though I am not sure where.

The Fine Arts Building is no stranger to the screen.

The site portrayed a Swiss Embassy in the 1997 action film Spawn.

It popped up as the location of Jane’s (Angelina Jolie) I-Temp Technology Staffing office in 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

And Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) shows Summer (Zooey Deschanel) the building, which he misattributes to architects Walker & “Eisner,” in the 2009 drama (500) Days of Summer.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Fine Arts Building, from the “A Seat at the Table” episode of The Morning Show, is located at 811 West 7th Street in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby area is open to the public daily. 7th Street/Metro Center Station, aka Penn Station from Cruel Intentions, is right next door at 660 South Figueroa Street.

April 8, 2020April 7, 2020

The McCullough Residence from “Little Fires Everywhere”

I knew I would love Little Fires Everywhere long before it premiered. One look at the trailer had me drooling! A confounding mystery at its center, Reese Witherspoon at the helm, a setting that is almost a character, and two of my favorite cuties, Joshua Jackson and Geoff Stults, in lead roles. What’s not to like? (Though I have to say I really could have done without seeing Jackson in those tighty-whities in episode 1. That’s an image I’ll never be able to get rid of!) The fact that the new Hulu series is lensed in Los Angeles is just the cherry on top! I was fortuitously given intel on several of its locales late last year, months before its March 18th debut. So I, of course, did some major LFE stalking while I was in L.A. in January for my dad’s many pre-surgical doctor appointments. One of the spots I hit up was the massive brick estate belonging to Mark McCullough (Stults) and his wife, Linda (Rosemarie DeWitt).

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Though set in the real-life town of Shaker Heights, Ohio, the McCullough pad can actually be found at 120 South June Street in Hancock Park. It is just a few blocks away from the series’ central locale, the Richardson residence, an oft-shot dwelling at 511 South Muirfield Road that is most famous for having portrayed the Tate mansion on the 1970s television series Soap.

The two properties bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, as you can see below – so much so that I am surprised they were both chosen for use on the series. Shaker Heights is repeatedly noted as being “the first planned community in America” on Little Fires Everywhere (in reality, it’s just one of the first), so I guess it somewhat makes sense that two residences would be similar. But from what I’ve seen online of the real town, while all the homes are stately and handsome and quite a few are even Tudor in style, they seem to have fairly distinct looks. So I definitely find the utilization of two such similar spots odd.

The McCullough house initially pops up in the third episode of Little Fires Everywhere, titled “Seventy Cents.” In it, Linda and Mark throw their adoptive daughter, Mirabelle, a first birthday party, which winds up going horribly wrong when (spoiler alert!) her birth mother unexpectedly appears at their door.

The residence is also featured in episode 4, “The Spider Web,” though as was the case in “Seventy Cents,” we only see a very tight shot of it.

Even when Linda is hounded by news crews outside of the house in the episode, we aren’t shown much other than the driveway.

It is a pretty fabulous pad, so it is surprising that we have yet to get a full shot of it.

In real life, the 1927 residence boasts 6 bedrooms, 8 baths, 2 stories, a whopping 6,177 square feet of living space, 2 fireplaces, a 0.40-acre plot of land, a tennis court, a pool, a hot tub, and a detached 3-car garage with what looks to be an in-law unit above it.

As shown in the police report detailing the birthday party fiasco, which Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) reads in “The Spider Web,” the McCullough’s house is said to be at 120 Brighton Road, so the property’s real life address number is being utilized on the series.

I am fairly certain that the actual interior of the home is also being used.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mark and Linda McCullough’s house from Little Fires Everywhere is located at 120 South June Street in Hancock Park. Melanie Cave’s (Elizabeth Perkins) home from Truth Be Told is just up the road at 509 North June Street. And the Richardson residence from Little Fires Everywhere (aka the Tate mansion from Soap) can be found a few streets over at 511 South Muirfield Road.

April 6, 2020April 9, 2020

Hotel Barclay from “Little Fires Everywhere”

Not only do The Morning Show and Little Fires Everywhere share a leading lady, Reese Witherspoon, but the two new series also seem to be sharing locations! Both made use of The Wolves, an insanely beautiful downtown Los Angeles bar that I blogged about in December, as well as Hotel Barclay, a historic and oft-filmed DTLA lodging that I covered way back in 2011. Considering the latter’s recent screen cred, though, I figured it was worthy of a redo.

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Hotel Barclay, which is also referred to as the “Barclay Hotel,” began life in 1897 as the Van Nuys Hotel.

Commissioned by businessman Isaac Newton Van Nuys, the Beaux Arts-style property was designed by the Morgan & Walls architecture firm.

During its early days, the 6-story hotel was the epitome of luxury, boasting a light-filled lobby lined with stained glass windows, a Ladies’ Parlor, a 150-seat formal dining room, a casual grill, a bar, a billiard room, a cigar stand, a newsstand, a buffet, a barbershop, and 160 rooms, each with both a long-distance and local telephone, as well as electric service. Per the Los Angeles Conservancy, the Barclay was, in fact, the first hotel in the city to provide those last two luxuries.

In 1929, ownership changed hands, the fancy dining room was closed and the property re-dubbed Hotel Barclay. The move kicked off a decline not only in the building’s exclusivity, but also its patronage.

Though it fell into some disrepair in the years that followed, eventually becoming a residential hotel (you can read up on the more sordid parts of its history here), the Barclay’s original interior somehow remained intact and still, miraculously, looks much as it did on opening day over 120 years ago!

During my 2011 stalk of the place, the manager invited me inside for a look at the lobby, which is where the interior photos in this post come from. I was practically giddy walking around snapping pictures of all of the historic enclaves! The hotel is like a time capsule come to life!

The Barclay, which, again per the Los Angeles Conservancy, is the city’s oldest continuously operating hotel, was put on the market in 2016 for $40 million and eventually sold in 2018 for $21 million. There are currently plans in the works to turn it into a luxury boutique lodging, though it does not appear as if that project has gotten off the ground yet.

In the “Duo” episode of Little Fires Everywhere, Hotel Barclay stands in for the exterior of New York’s fictional Varick Hotel, where Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) stays while visiting Manhattan.

Interiors were shot at The Mayfair Hotel, another historic DTLA lodging that has been completely revamped since my 2012 post on it, meaning I have to get back out there stat!

On The Morning Show, the Barclay also portrays a New York locale – the Manhattan apartment building where Hannah Shoenfeld (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) lives, said to be at 103 Wooster Street in SoHo. The site initially appears at the end of episode 7, “Open Waters,” in a scene that continues into episode 9, “Play the Queen,” in which Mitch Kessler (Steve Carrel) asks Hannah to come forward and say that the network bosses were complicit in his predatory behavior.

The Barclay is also featured in The Morning Show’s Season 1 finale, “The Interview” in which (spoiler alert!) Claire Conway (Bel Powley) shows up to discover than Hannah has overdosed.

In the episode, it is apparent that a façade containing a fake set of stairs and an elevator was added just beyond the hotel’s front doors for the shoot.

In real life, the Barclay’s front doors open directly into the lobby, as you can see in the photo below.

Only the exterior of the Barclay was utilized on The Morning Show. I believe interior scenes involving Hannah’s apartment may have been shot at the Pan American Lofts, located at 253 South Broadway. You can check out what a unit in that building looks like here.

Hotel Barclay has quite an extensive film and television resume – so much so that it would be impossible for me to chronicle all of its appearances here. A few of the more notable include . . .

Way back in 1975, Det. Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson (David Soul) and Det. Dave Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) chased a suspect through the hotel in the pilot episode of Starsky & Hutch.

The lobby is used extensively as Café 24 Heures, where Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt) works and where Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson) regularly dines, in 1997’s As Good As It Gets.

Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) gets kicked out of the place for writing bad checks at the beginning of Catch Me If You Can.

Hotel Barclay is the Columbian lodging where John (Brad Pitt) and Jane (Angelina Jolie) meet in 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

The lobby masks as the café where Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his friends hang out in the 2009 drama (500) Days of Summer.

Also in 2009, Detectives Flynn (Tony Denison) and Provenza (G.W. Bailey) dine in the hotel’s former restaurant, which sits vacant in real life, in the Season 5 episode of The Closer titled “Tapped Out.”

Leonardo DiCaprio visits the Barclay once again as Cobb in 2011’s Inception. This time it’s posing as a casino in Africa. (One of the hotel’s 2nd floor rooms is also where Cobb was dunked into a bathtub in an earlier scene).

Fellow stalker Anne informed me via a comment on my original post that a now-vacant anteroom at the lodging masked as Drake’s Magic Shop in the Season 3 episode of Castle titled “Poof, You’re Dead,” which aired in 2011. The show’s production team must really love the Barclay! The hotel was also featured in the episodes titled “Ghosts,” “Knockdown,” “Swan Song,” “Sleeper,” “XY,” and “The Blame Game.”

NYPD detectives interview a bunch of clowns outside of the Barclay in the Season 7 episode of CSI: NY titled “To What End,” which also aired in 2011.

In 2018, Hotel Barclay popped up as the supposed San Antonio, Texas-area Gunter Hotel in the Season 2 episode of Timeless titled “The King of the Delta Blues.”

And it portrays the supposed Lahore hotel where Bravo Team captures a terrorist in the Season 2 episode of Seal Team titled “Never Out of the Fight,” which aired in 2019.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hotel Barclay, aka the Varick Hotel from the “Duo” episode of Little Fires Everywhere, is located at 103 West 4th Street in downtown Los Angeles.

April 3, 2020April 2, 2020

Le Petit Paris from “Little Fires Everywhere”

Reese Witherspoon is deserving of a major ‘thank you’ from me! Per the actress’ recent productions, I have been introduced to two fabulous downtown Los Angeles restaurants! The first, The Wolves, popped up twice on her Apple TV+ series The Morning Show. And now, via Little Fires Everywhere, I’ve discovered Le Petit Paris, a striking French brasserie situated on the ground floor of the El Dorado Lofts building. I was actually tipped off about the eatery and the filming that took place there last year by a fellow stalker who works in the area. Though I had never heard of the place, one look at Google images had me transfixed! I was fairly certain I had never come across a more gorgeous space in my life. So my mom and I headed out there for happy hour mid-January while in town for one of my dad’s pre-surgical doctor appointments. We returned the following week for dinner after a long day at the hospital just prior to my dad’s surgery. Neither time did it disappoint.

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The El Dorado Lofts building was originally constructed as the Hotel Stowell in 1913. The 12-story, 264-room lodging, commissioned by financier Nathan Wilson Stowell, was designed in the Art Nouveau and Gothic Revival styles by architects Frederick Noonan and William Richards. You can see what the exterior looked like in its early days here.

Upscale and ornate, the hotel catered to wealthy businessmen called to the area for work, though some celebrities also checked in. Charlie Chaplin even lived there for a time, though, surprisingly, per the Paradise Leased blog, he later described it as “a middle-rate place but new and comfortable.” It sure looks like it was pretty fancy to me! Constructed with all locally-sourced materials, the sweeping two-level lobby boasted a grand staircase, gold leaf columns, and a plethora of Batchelder tilework.

Patronage declined during the Great Depression resulting in the building being sold in 1938. It eventually became a low-budget residential hotel known as the El Dorado. The place continued to deteriorate in the years that followed and by the 1980s, it sat abandoned and remained so for the next two decades. The Gilmore and Associates development team finally stepped in, purchasing the building in 2000 and transforming the former hotel rooms into luxury condos, a project that was completed in 2010. (You can check out images of two of the revamped units here and here.) The once-grand lobby was made available as a possible restaurant space and it was then that David and Fanny Rolland set their sights on it. (You can see what it looked like at the time here.)

The husband and wife duo, who hail from France and previously founded two eateries in Cannes, began transforming the 8,000-square-foot space into a magical Parisian-inspired oasis.

Le Petit Paris opened its doors in September 2015.

To say that the 300-seat restaurant is striking would be a gross understatement.

I mean, come on!

With massive skylights, sparkling crystal chandeliers, two bars, a large patio, a fireplace, a towering split staircase, subtle pink and red accents, and a spectacular mosaic floor, Le Petit Paris is easily one of L.A.’s most gorgeous spots!

I especially loved the painting of Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby hung near the bar.

Had to do it!

The food at Le Petit Paris is as delicious as the place is beautiful! Both the executive chef and the executive pastry chef hail from France and all of the menu items are homemade on the premises. During our initial happy hour visit, I had a glass of champagne (natch!) and my mom ordered the carpaccio, which she was thoroughly obsessed with. She talked about it for days afterward! So on our second visit, in which we grabbed dinner in the dining room, she was seriously bummed to discover that the carpaccio was only available on the happy hour menu. (She did love the French onion soup she wound up ordering, though.) The following morning, when we arrived at the hospital, my dad asked how our dinner was. When my mom expressed her extreme dismay at not being able to order her beloved carpaccio, my dad looked down at his hospital gown and many IVS, turned to her and said, “Yeah, I feel so sorry for you.” We laughed about that one for days afterward. Smile

In Little Fires Everywhere, Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) meets up with her former boyfriend, Jamie Caplan (Luke Bracey), at Le Petit Paris, which is said to be in New York, in the episode titled “Duo.”

During our first visit, I asked the bartender about the filming of Little Fires Everywhere and he informed us that while he did not work at the restaurant at the time, ironically he was an extra in the scene that shot on the premises! When he applied for a job at Le Petit Paris months later, he did not realize it was the same place. It was only when he showed up for his interview that he made the connection.

Sadly, Le Petit Paris is currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When the world gets back to normal (oh, what a fabulous day that will be!), I am very much looking forward to sipping a glass of bubbly in one of the restaurant’s plush chairs, soaking up the magical ambiance of the place.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Le Petit Paris, from the “Duo” episode of Little Fires Everywhere, is located at 418 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. Please be advised that the eatery is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Check its website for any updates.

April 1, 2020April 1, 2020

Hilton Checkers Hotel from “The West Wing”

One of the best parts about finally watching The West Wing for the first time is all of the L.A. locales I’ve been able to identify and stalk (you can read about a few of them here, here, and here). One spot that I recognized on sight was Hilton Checkers Los Angeles, which masked as a supposed Washington D.C.-area hotel in the Season 1 episode titled “Take This Sabbath Day.” I’ve had the pleasure of staying at Checkers several times over the years (even once in the penthouse!), so it was not hard to ID it when it appeared onscreen. Though I blogged about the lodging back in 2009, I figured it was worthy of a redo, so while staying at the Millennium Biltmore, which is across the street, back in December of last year, my mom and I headed over to Checkers for a cocktail and to do some stalking! I was shocked when I walked in to discover that the place had been completely revamped and looked quite a bit different than it did during my last visit in late 2017.

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Initially opened as the Mayflower Hotel in 1927, the property was designed by architect Charles Whittlesey.

Built on a lot measuring a scant 60 by 160 feet, the skinny lodging towers over the street below at 12 stories, which was the city’s height limit at the time.

The Mission Revival-style façade boasts amazingly intricate Spanish Moorish ornamentation with a nautical theme. Sadly, the bas-relief sculptures of the Mayflower and the Santa Maria that once flanked the hotel’s front doors have since been removed.

The Los Angeles Conservancy describes the building’s original interior as “Pilgrim Revival.” With restaurants named Mayflower Tavern and Ye Bull Pen Inn (you can check out what the latter looked like here), The Mayflower certainly had a different aesthetic than it does now. At some point, Chart Room, another bar with a maritime slant, opened on the premises. You can see the exterior of it here. It’s quite a leap from the hotel’s current state!

The Mayflower shut its doors in 1985 at which point it was purchased by a group of developers who began a massive $49-million, 4-year renovation. Two floors were added to the top of the structure to house the property’s mechanical appliances as well as a new gym and spa. (You can see those two rather boxy floor additions in this side image of the hotel.) The lobby area was also revamped to include a new bar, a new restaurant and a library lounge. Rooms and suites were expanded considerably, bringing down the total units from 348 to 188. The site re-opened as Checkers in December 1989. The Hilton eventually took over the property in 2002 and it became known as Hilton Checkers. The AAA Four Diamond lodging boasted a very upscale European interior, with ornate mirrors, plush seating and dark wood tables scattered throughout, as you can see in the pictures below, which were taken during a 2009 stay.

I loved the look of the place, but in 2019 management embarked upon yet another massive renovation.

Several lobby walls were removed in order to open up the bar (now named 1927 Bar+Kitchen) and library. The bar circa 2009 is pictured below.

And there it is today.

Yes, the interior is sleeker, brighter and airier, but I think it has lost quite a bit of its charm.

Per aerial views and this image, the rooftop pool, one of my favorite aspects of the hotel, also appears to have been filled in (the photo below is from 2009).

Though the hot tub remains.

I still consider the place one of downtown L.A.’s top lodgings, despite the changes. As my mom and I discovered, 1927 Bar+Kitchen serves up some fabulous fare and libations, the onsite Zagat-rated restaurant, Checkers Downtown, remains one of the area’s top eateries, and the hotel is within walking distance to pretty much every local attraction.

In the “Take this Sabbath Day” episode of The West Wing, which aired in 2000, Checkers masks as the D.C. hotel where Joey Lucas (Marlee Matlin) stays while in town. It is in the lobby bar that Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) apologizes to Joey on behalf of the president.

The West Wing was not Checkers’ first rodeo.

The hotel served as the outside of San Francisco’s Bix restaurant in the 1992 thriller Final Analysis.

In the Season 1 episode of Shark titled “Fashion Police,” which aired in 2006, Sebastian Stark (James Woods) dines with the mayor in Checkers Downtown . . .

. . . and later crashes a party on the rooftop deck.

Checkers appears as the exterior of The Algonquin Hotel in the Season 7 episode of Mad Men titled “Field Trip,” which aired in 2014.

It pops up as the New Amsterdam Hotel, where Vikram Singh (Sunkrish Bala) hacks into the mainframe of the attorney general’s office, in the Season 8 episode of Castle titled “XX,” which aired in 2015.

Irvin Irving (Lance Reddick) and Jun Park (Linda Park) also dine on Checkers’ rooftop patio in the Season 3 episode of Bosch titled “Right Play,” which aired in 2017.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Hilton Checkers Los Angeles, from the “Take This Sabbath Day” episode of The West Wing, is located at 535 South Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. You can visit the hotel’s official website here. Please be advised that the hotel is temporarily closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Check the website for any updates.

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020

Mitch’s House from “The Morning Show”

My dad is unfortunately back in the hospital and right now this blog is one of the main things keeping me sane. Being able to research, track down and write about filming locations, trivial as that may be, sparks major joy for me and has provided a much-needed distraction from all that is going on with my dad, not to mention the world. So I’ll be here, blogging away. Hopefully my posts will provide my fellow stalkers with a bit of joy and distraction, too. Last week, I received an email from a reader named Esteban letting me know that he had tracked down the house where Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) lived on The Morning Show. I had actually IDed the locale and stalked it a while back, but had not gotten around to blogging about it. So thanks for the reminder, Esteban! I became extremely mesmerized with Mitch’s massive home as soon as it popped up in the first episode of The Morning Show, titled “In the Dark Night of the Soul It’s Always 3:30 in the Morning.” Thankfully, finding it was a snap – after I overcame an initial hurdle at least.

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The first glimpse we are given of Mitch’s pad is the aerial view below. Purported to be located in a wealthy suburb of Manhattan, with its expansive yard and Cape Cod detailing, the place definitely has an East Coast feel. So much so that when I initially saw it, I became convinced filming of the series had taken place in New York! It was not until I spotted Cicada restaurant pop up in episode 2 that I figured out The Morning Show had actually been shot in Los Angeles.

In that same episode, I also noticed an address number of 4019 visible on the gate in front of Mitch’s estate. Considering the four-digit number, the size of the house and the large yard, I decided to take a look in the Encino area first. Armed with an address number and an aerial view, it did not take long to find the right place at 4019 Valley Meadow Road.

In real life, the extremely private residence, which was built in 2007, boasts 8 en suite bedrooms including a 3-room master suite with a sitting room, upstairs office, his and her bathrooms and a walk-in closet, 14 baths, 15,000 square feet of living space, a formal living room, a formal dining room, a 2-story library, 5 fireplaces, a cook’s kitchen with 2 islands, 2 refrigerators, 2 dishwashers and 4 ovens (!), coffered ceilings, wainscoting, a maid’s room, a gym, a home theatre, a 1.46-acre lot, a tennis court, a basketball court, a pool, a pool house, a waterslide, a waterfall, a fire pit, an outdoor kitchen, a dog run, and a home generator that can run the property for several weeks without power. Talk about amenities galore!

Sitting perched behind a plethora of foliage and a large gate, virtually none of the place is visible from the street, though, sadly.

But we do see plenty of it on The Morning Show, including the front exterior . . .

. . . the expansive backyard . . .

. . . and the real life interior, which you can check out some photos of here. It even looks like some of the homeowners’ actual furniture was utilized in the shoot!

Mitch’s pad is a pretty special place. It’s exactly the type of spot I’d love to shelter-at-home in over the next couples of weeks, amirite?

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mitch’s house from The Morning Show is located at 4019 Valley Meadow Road in Encino. Steve’s (James Marsden) mansion from Dead to Me can be found just a half a mile north at 4230 Valley Meadow Road.

March 27, 2020March 25, 2020

Mia’s House from “Little Fires Everywhere”

Reese Witherspoon certainly is the darling of streaming TV! First Big Little Lies (that’s HBO, but still), then The Morning Show, then Truth Be Told (which she executive-produced) and now Little Fires Everywhere. The latter, which is currently airing on Hulu, is an adaptation of Celest Ng’s 2017 book of the same name. Centering around two very different families living in the upscale town of Shaker Heights, Ohio (where Ng grew up), the series had me hooked from episode 1. I only grew more obsessed when I learned that filming took place in L.A.! The opulent home where Elena Richardson (Witherspoon) lives is a locale I was familiar with and recognized on sight – it’s the Tate mansion from Soap at 511 South Muirfield Road in Hancock Park. But the charming duplex Elena rents to Mia Warren (Kerry Washington) in episode 1, “Spark,” said to be on Windsor Avenue, is a spot I had never seen before. So I promptly began hunting it down.

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An address number of 2008 was clearly visible next to the front door of the adorable property in several scenes. And thanks to an Architectural Digest article I came across, I knew that Mia’s rental was somewhere in Pasadena. I had an inkling it was actually in South Pasadena, which is often confused with Pasadena proper, so I began my hunt there. The first result kicked back when I searched “2008,” “Street” and “South Pasadena” was a listing for a home at 2008 Fremont Street, which Google Street View showed me was not the right spot. So I started popping the little yellow man over to the adjacent 2800 blocks and found Mia’s pad just 3 blocks over at 2008 La France Avenue. Being that I had no plans to head to L.A. at any point (stay home, people!), I enlisted my friend Anne, of The Drewseum, who lives in the area, to stalk the place (at an appropriate social distance, of course) on my behalf, which she did the very next day! Thank you, Anne!

In real life, Mia’s rental is a single-family home, not a duplex as depicted on Little Fires Everywhere. The reason that producers chose a house to portray the multi-family dwelling was actually derived straight from the script. As Elena explains to Mia upon first showing her the property, “Every house on Windsor has two families in it, even though it appears to only have one. It was actually designed that way to avoid any stigma of renting instead of owning.” On Little Fires Everywhere, Mia and her daughter, Pearl (Lexi Underwood), are said to live in the top unit.

Only the exterior of the house was used in the production.

The inside of Mia’s rental was a set. As production designer Jessica Kender told Architectural Digest, “Mia is more transient, and her house has a warm feel as they travel only with their clothes and her art supplies. The character found furnishings at the thrift shop and turned the sunroom into her art studio. She found natural objects like branches [and] feathers, and hung a fishnet from floor to ceiling and her artwork on the painted accent walls.” Kerry Washington also apparently had a hand in the design of Mia’s place. Kender furthers, “Kerry did not want a lot of furniture in the bedroom as it would feel too permanent. Her character’s space was a bed on the floor, a side table, and artwork above the bed. She didn’t even want incidental chairs to show that [her character] was staying.”

Originally built in 1923, the 2-story traditional-style home boasts 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 2,160 square feet, a fireplace, and a 0.17-acre lot.

The pad has curb appeal for days, so it is not at all hard to see how it wound up on a drama set in the idyllic community of Shaker Heights.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Big THANK YOU to my friend Anne, of The Drewseum, for stalking this location on my behalf and taking the fabulous pictures that appear in this post!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Mia’s rental from Little Fires Everywhere is located at 2008 La France Avenue in South Pasadena. The Simpson house from She’s Out of Control is one block north at 1960 La France.

March 25, 2020March 24, 2020

The Baldwin Home from “For All Mankind”

Apple TV+ is seriously setting the bar high when it comes to original content! Every program I’ve come across on the streaming platform has been excellent. I first got hooked on The Morning Show, then Truth Be Told and, most recently, For All Mankind, a 1960s/1970s-set series that focuses on an alternate reality in which Russia wins the space race and the United States struggles to keep up. I love anything having to do with NASA (The Astronaut Wives Club is another favorite). Add to that incredible set design and costumes and a fascinating premise and it is not hard to see how I became obsessed. I was also thrilled to discover while watching that, though set in Texas and Florida, the show was filmed entirely in Los Angeles, So I, of course, immediately began tracking down its locales. The first spot I set out to find was the supposed Houston home belonging to the Baldwin family – astronaut Ed (Joel Kinnaman), his wife, Karen (Shantel VanSanten, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Meghan Markle), and their son, Shane (played by both Teddy and Tait Blum).

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Fortunately, an address number of “3345” was visible on the front of the Baldwin house in several scenes, which made IDing it a snap.

The huge front yard, abundance of foliage and traditional architecture led me to believe the property was most likely in Pasadena, so I began searching 3300 blocks there and quickly found the Baldwin pad at 3345 Lombardy Road in the desirable Chapman Woods neighborhood.

The sprawling one-story residence looks much the same in person as it did on For All Mankind.

Originally built in 1949, the dwelling has retained its mid-century look, making it a perfect fit for the series. Producers really did not have to do much to make it screen-ready.

Throw in a few period cars and, voila, they had themselves a very seemingly retro home.

The property’s massive backyard, which you can see images of here, was also featured on For All Mankind, in the second episode titled “He Built the Saturn V.”

Only the exterior of the house was utilized on the series. The inside of the Baldwin residence was a studio-built set. You can check out what the actual interior of the home looks like here. Though portions of it are a bit dated, it does not resemble the Baldwins’ place in the slightest.

In real life, the pad boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2,844 square feet, a formal dining room, 3 fireplaces, French doors, bay windows, a plethora of built-ins, a 3-car garage, and a 1.29-acre lot with expansive lawns, a tennis court, and a large patio.

The Baldwin residence is currently for sale for a cool $2,688,000. Shockingly, the listing makes no mention whatsoever of the place’s recent small-screen role! I would think such a thing would only up the property’s value! If I was the agent, I’d have the information splayed across the sign in the yard! I mean “1+ acres” is great, but so is a film history and the income that comes along with it. Man, why do I always have to think of everything?

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Baldwin residence from For All Mankind is located at 3345 Lombardy Road in Pasadena. Nora Walker’s (Sally Field) house from Brothers & Sisters can be found two miles east at 1640 Lombardy.

March 20, 2020March 28, 2020

The Buhrman House from “Truth Be Told”

I am a firm believer in love at first sight. I definitely had hearts in my eyes upon catching a glimpse of the stunning Victorian where the Buhrman family lived on Truth Be Told. The towering Queen Anne, pitched atop a leafy hill, was striking, to say the least, and I promptly set out to find it. Though set in San Francisco and its environs, little of the new Apple TV+ series was actually lensed there – most filming took place in L.A. But I figured the Buhrman pad had to be one of the show’s few NorCal locales. I couldn’t imagine such a unique property being in Los Angeles and not coming across it in all my years of stalking. So I began my hunt in the Bay Area, but after countless fruitless hours decided to switch to L.A. on the off chance it might be there. Lo and behold, I discovered the place listed on several online location databases, including Malibu Locations which showed it as having an address number of “2150” and being in Altadena, shockingly enough! How I had never seen it during my almost two decades of living in nearby Pasadena was beyond me! I headed right over to Google, searched for “2150,” “Victorian,” and “Altadena,” was led to 2150 Mendocino Lane and all became clear. As you can see above, no part of the Buhrman’s fabulous Victorian can actually be seen from the street, though it is apparent in aerials. Making the pad even more elusive, the view shown on Truth Be Told was actually of its rear entrance, situated off a small private road named Kengary Lane.

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The massive abode is Truth Be Told’s central location. It is at the supposed Menlo Park pad that author/professor Chuck Buhrman (Nic Bishop) is murdered on Halloween night 1999, thereby setting off the main storyline. Though featured throughout the series’ eight-episode run, we oddly don’t catch many full views of the place, the best being in episode 7, titled “Live Thru This,” as seen below. The shot appears to have been digitally altered because the house is not actually visible at all from Kengary Lane due to a plethora of foliage surrounding it, as I sadly discovered upon arriving to stalk it. I figured the property was still blogworthy, nonetheless. (I did not trespass to take the photo below, by the way. I stayed on Altadena Drive, which is public, and zoomed in on my camera for the shot.)

Per Zillow, the sprawling 3-story Victorian boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,162 square feet, a rock fireplace, a 2.7-acre lot, a detached garage, and a wraparound porch. But neither the fencing out front . . .

. . . nor at the rear provide any sort of clue as to the beauty that lies just beyond them up the driveway.

What I wouldn’t give to see the home up close!

As you can see in this photo, a sign by the property’s front door reads “Circa 1886, Estab. here Sept. 1, 1984,” so I’m wondering if it was initially located elsewhere and then moved to its current location, which sounds crazy but isn’t all that out of the ordinary in Los Angeles.

Interior scenes taking place at the Buhrman house were shot elsewhere. As you can see in these images as compared to the screen captures below, what was shown onscreen bears little resemblance to the actual inside of 2150 Mendocino Lane.

A reader named Mimi wrote in to let me know that the Buhrman house also portrayed the Minnesota residence of Chrissa Maxwell (Sammi Hanratty) in the 2009 straight-to-video movie An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong.

The property popped up as the home of a serial child abductor in the Season 5 episode of Criminal Minds titled “Mosley Lane,” which aired in 2010.

And fellow stalker Richard (you may remember him from this post and this post) let me know that the Victorian appeared in the recently-aired Season 1 episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star titled “Monster Inside” as the residence of a man who refuses to believe his mother has passed away.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Buhrman house from Truth Be Told is located at 2150 Mendocino Lane in Altadena.

March 16, 2020March 14, 2020

Joe and Love’s New House from “You”

I apologize to those who don’t follow me on Instagram or Facebook for not posting updates about my dad here. He was finally moved out of the ICU a couple of days ago, thank God, and is currently progressing in the right direction. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi and cell signal in the ICU were nil, to the point that I could not even use my cell phone as a hotspot, which explains my lack of new posts. Now that I can get online again, my blogging schedule should return to normal. And I figured what better spot to kick things off with than the house Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) and Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti) moved into in the final episode of You’s second season, titled “Love, Actually.”

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One look at the place, with its traditional architecture, large set-back from the street and insane curb appeal, and I knew it was likely located in Cameron Woods, a highly photogenic neighborhood in Van Nuys that is used for filming all.the.time. Situated at the southern end of Orion Avenue, the charming two-block enclave is a latticework of picket-fenced suburban homes, each one seemingly prettier than the last. It’s like a studio backlot come to life! An address number of 6301 was visible on the curb in the episode, so I promptly headed over to 6301 Orion on Google Street View and, sure enough, there was Joe and Love’s new pad looking back at me!

In real life, the idyllic property, built in 1951 but recently remodeled, boasts 2,969 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, a kitchen with Caesarstone counters, a butler’s pantry, countless built-ins, a laundry room, multiple fireplaces, hardwood flooring and wainscoting throughout, a pool, a pond, a motor court, a cabana, gorgeous landscaping, and a 0.58-acre plot of land.

The stunning pad (you can check out interior photos of it here) last sold for $1,885,000 in January 2018.

It is not hard to see how the place came to be used on You. A quintessential slice of Americana, the home perfectly encapsulates the normalcy and traditionalism that Joe will never be able to subscribe to. No amount of white picket fencing or manicured shrubberies can tame his obsessive and murderous ways. Instead, the pad serves as a prison of his own making. As he says upon moving in, “Not every Siberia is cold. Some are 73 and sunny with eco-conscious landscaping.”

Though one of the series’ most notable locales, the residence only appears in a single segment – “Love, Actually’s” closing scene.

Along with the front exterior, the property’s backyard is also featured in the episode, as you can see in the screen capture as compared to the MLS image below.

Considering Cameron Woods’ prolific filming history, it should come as no surprise that Joe and Love’s house has popped up in other productions.

In 1984, it portrayed the home of Mother Blaisdel (Diana Douglas) in the Season 4 episodes of Dynasty titled “The Vigil” . . .

. . . and “The Voice Part 3.”

The pad’s interior also appeared in the episodes, but it looked very different at the time.

The Dixie Chicks race through the house Ferris-Bueller-style in their 1999 “Ready to Run” music video, which you can watch here.

More recently, the property was featured as the home of a man who falls off his roof while installing Christmas decorations in the Season 2 episode of 9-1-1 titled “Merry Ex-Mas,” which aired in 2018.

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Joe and Love’s new house from the final episode of the second season of You is located at 6301 Orion Avenue in Van Nuys’ Cameron Woods neighborhood.