Where was ‘Crew Girl’ filmed? Inside Netflix drama's real-life shooting locations
Prep school dramas are all about the location, and that means ivy-covered buildings, a lake or river nearby, and that specific New England-in-autumn aesthetic that makes everything seem expensive and dangerous at once. ‘Crew Girl’ leans into this with good gusto, sending protagonist Teagan into the fictional coastal town of Eagle’s Cove, where she stumbles into the boys’ rowing team as its coxswain and finds herself caught up in both their campus politics and a love triangle.
The thing is, Eagle’s Cove isn’t anywhere. It doesn’t exist. But the show still had to be filmed somewhere, and that somewhere turned out to be Victoria, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, according to Tudum. Showrunner Vivian Lin has even gushed about the beauty of commuting to the workplace every morning in the town. “Just driving into work each day was so beautiful,” she said.
Eagle’s Cove blends the contained small-town feel of ‘Gilmore Girls’ with the old money of ‘Gossip Girl.’ Speaking with Tudum, Miku Martineau (Teagan) added, “Eagle’s Cove is very much a coming-of-age, small-town vibe, but there is also so much wealth and power; Easton Prep is such an elite school. When Teagan first gets there, she’s a fish out of water. It’s intimidating.”
Easton Prep, the elite school at the center of all the drama, is also fictional, but the production team managed to find a perfect building to film in – Hatley Castle, a 40-room mansion on Vancouver Island surrounded by old-growth forest and sprawling formal gardens.
The building was completed all the way back in 1908 and has been a popular filming location ever since, hosting ‘The Descendants’ and multiple ‘X-Men’ films. So, if the castle looked too familiar, that may well be the case. Talking about the place, Lin went on to say, “Prep school gives you such a fun vibe. There’s an out-of-touch-ness that’s so fun to play. Cam and Teagan are the only ones like, ‘What is this place? We’re just trying to get on the rowing team and pay for our unis.’ Meanwhile, someone’s lighting a McLaren on fire.”
The production team has stated that ‘Crew Girl’ was actually the first Canadian production to film eight-person rowing boat shots. It sounds simple unless you consider that the craft is 67 feet long, and the entire set is floating on water. To do this, they constructed a barge large enough to carry the camera crew and their equipment and then attached the racing shells to it for filming.
They also had up to five boats in the water at the same time during the regatta scenes. Sam Braun, who plays Josh in the show, says, “You had to finesse the performance with a little bit of movie magic to make it look like we were ripping through the water. When we were doing the drone stuff, we got cooking for sure.”
Whatever the case, the result speaks for itself: the race scenes look hectic and fast on screen, even if the actual choreography was closer to a well-rehearsed dance on the water. But all this means that you can’t visit Eagle’s Cove or Easton Prep. However, the real Hatley Castle and the surrounding waters of Victoria are open to the public.
