“The big thing about shooting in Louisiana was all of the tropical plants,” he notes. “There’s palm trees everywhere and weird trees that are not in Boston, so we removed the trees in post-production.”
Linfield was also shot in Louisiana. Alex’s grandmother’s house, which he inherits, was in the Garden District. The only thing that’s given the location away is the sidewalks. “New Orleans sidewalks are notoriously in bad shape,” Haley says. “All the New Orleans natives see it and they go, ‘That’s New Orleans because of how crazy the sidewalks are.’ But it’s great when Poppy runs after Alex because it’s one last big hurdle for her. Emily ran so hard on those two days that she pulled a muscle.”
Barcelona, Spain
One of the biggest changes from the book was moving the wedding of Alex’s brother David (Miles Heizer) from Palm Springs to Barcelona. Haley says it’s almost impossible to film in Palm Springs due to cost, so they decided to stage the summer nuptials in the Spanish city instead. “It added a certain European destination vibe that made the scope of the film feel bigger,” Haley says.
The rehearsal dinner was filmed in the Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona, with flowers and parasols for extra décor, while the wedding itself took place at Santa Clotilde, a private villa with public gardens. The rooftop of the ME Barcelona also made an appearance early in the film. Although some soundstages were used, the Airbnb Poppy rents in the city was a real home. The team added orange paint and built scaffolding and plastic sheeting around the balcony.
“We had the rain machine outside, but I needed privacy for Tom and Emily,” Haley says. “It was such an intimate scene out in the rain. We found some really cool locations, but they were too public. This home was a really great find. The exterior of her Airbnb was a different location that was on a beautiful street in Barcelona.”
For the airport scenes, the team cleaned and dressed up the now-shuttered old New Orleans airport, which was also used to film Carry On. “We made it look like a few different airports,” Haley notes. “It made life so much easier because when you shoot an active airport there’s a whole security thing and it takes forever to get in and out.”
Squamish, British Columbia
Recreating British Columbia in Spain for Alex and Poppy’s first vacation together was a particular challenge. The filmmakers ended up finding a village and forested area called Espinelves. “It’s so small that we had to be so smart about where the camera was and what trees we could see,” Haley says. “It’s basically a little nature park. Bruce did incredible work with the design and put in RVs and tents. He added more trees so that we could block certain things.”
