Was Long Bright River Filmed on Location in Philadelphia? Actually...
Here’s the scoop on where Long Bright River starring Amanda Seyfried was shot.
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On Long Bright River, streaming now on Peacock, Amanda Seyfried stars as Mickey Fitzpatrick, a Philadelphia police officer who suspects that local murders are related to her missing sister.
While the serial killer mystery and the hunt for her family member propel this thriller along, the setting is also very important to the story, diving into the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, an area that has been hit hard by the opioid crisis in past years. However, the show wasn't actually filmed on location.
Read on to find out more about where Long Bright River was filmed — and the cast members’ deep connections to the story’s setting.
Where does Long Bright River take place?
Like Liz Moore’s critically-acclaimed 2020 book of the same name that the series is based on, the story unfolds in and around the Philadelphia community of Kensington.
The action follows Mickey as she patrols the neighborhood and searches for her younger sister, played by Ashleigh Cummings.
Moore, who lives in Philly, was inspired to write her novel following her first visit to Kensington in 2009, she told NBC Insider.
“I went there to write some nonfiction about the neighborhood as part of a photo-essay project,” she said. “A lot of the people that I met were experiencing addiction or were the family members of somebody experiencing addiction.”
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Over repeated visits, her connection grew, as did her story idea about family and the destructive force of addiction. That powerful narrative struck a chord with Nikki Toscano, the showrunner, executive producer, writer, and director of the series.
“I love the love story between two sisters … I loved the sense of place that Liz brought to it,” she told NBC Insider. “I thought that it would just visually translate to the screen.”
Where was Long Bright River filmed?
The shooting location for the Peacock series was New York City. Production for Long Bright River took place in March 2024, according to 4filming.com.
But Toscano said that concerted efforts were made to depict the essence of Philly, even though the Big Apple was standing in for the city of Brotherly Love.
To that end, the shoot included actors, consultants, and artists connected to Philadelphia, Philly Voice reported.
“We brought Kensington to us,” Toscano told the publication.
The visual impact emerges in everything from small props to eye-catching street murals in the series that were created by Philly artists.
It turns out that key cast members brought a sense of Philadelphia to the New York set. John Doman, who plays Mickey’s grandfather, grew up in Philly. Doman even revisited old stomping grounds with a member of the cast.
“One of the other actors had never been to Philly, so I drove him down and we went all through Fishtown and Kensington,” he told Philadelphia Magazine.
Seyfried, meanwhile, grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. For Seyfried, who won an Emmy for her role in The Dropout, bringing Long Bright River’s Kensington-set drama to the screen has been a learning experience that transcends city lines and locations.
“This was a neighborhood that I did not know anything about. It's made famous by being the center of the opioid epidemic,” Seyfried told NBC Insider. “The show is so, so deeply rooted in reality that it’s going to … educate people.”
All eight episodes of Long Bright River are streaming March 13 on Peacock.
Additional reporting by Stephanie Gomulka.
