If you, like us, binge-watched Netflix’s Pieces Of Her from start to finish, then you’ll no doubt have taken note of some of the scenic (and curiously familiar) locations where the series was set.
From barren sandy landscapes to thick bush, it’s clear from the get-go that the series is supposed to be based in a small town. That in itself is a plot point for main character Laura (played by Toni Collette), who initially fronts as a local mum who enjoys a quiet life in the fictional US town of Belle Isle, Georgia.
As the series progresses, Laura’s daughter Andy (Bella Heathcote) pieces together parts of Laura’s double-life, eventually unravelling a dark crime which took place when her mum was younger.
While the gripping eight-part series is technically based in the US, the actual filming took place a little further away than you’d expect—more than 15,000km, in fact.
Where was Pieces Of Her Filmed?
Pieces Of Her was largely filmed across Australia’s east coast in locations including Sydney, Homebush and the Central Coast’s Umina Beach.
Sydney’s Olympic Park also became somewhat of a Hollywood studio-esque stand-in as the actors took to the grounds to film the tense scenes.
Aussie actor Toni Collette, who grey up in Sydney’s Glebe, told marie claire that it was “dreamy” to film Pieces Of Her on home soil, and Bella Heathcote, who grew up in Melbourne, also enjoyed the window of freedom the location posed after enduring the city’s major lockdown in 2020.
“I’d been in Victoria for most of [the Covid] lockdown,” Heathcote told us.
“But going back to Sydney it was like footloose, fancy free—we were in this sweet non-Covid period, it felt like a six-month Covid reprieve.”
New South Wales’ Minister for the Arts Don Harwin commented on the benefits of utilising Australia’s east coast landscape for major International film and television productions: “[It] will deliver a substantial investment to the state’s economy and provide a significant amount of work for local cast and crew along with catering, security and other on-set operation,” he said in a statement.
Pieces Of Her certainly isn’t the only major tinsel town production to be filmed down under. A number of major films have made their way to Australia in recent years including Amazon’s Nine Perfect Strangers, Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, which starred Hollywood heavyweights Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.
Is Belle Isle in Pieces Of Her a real location?
While the US state of Georgia is very much real, Belle Isle is completely fictional. Pieces Of Her is based on a novel of the same name by Karin Slaughter—she created the township as Laura’s home after she returned from serving time in prison.
