“All I did was give the truth some oxygen.” So says Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) at the top of the highly-anticipated season two opener of “The Morning Show,” which Apple TV+ dropped last week. And give life to the production he does! One episode in and the storyline is already packed full of drama, tension and strife, largely at the hands of the deliciously devilish UBA network head Ellison, who is still tirelessly working behind the scenes of the series’ eponymous show-within-a-show, pulling strings like a gleeful puppetmaster in a bespoke suit.
Titled “My Least Favorite Year,” the season premiere sees big changes for “Morning Show” co-hosts Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon), who are both dealing with the fallout from their rogue reporting on the sexual harassment scandal of former anchor Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell). While Bradley is attempting to make do with a new co-host and low ratings, Alex has left both New York and the show and is now living a quiet life in an idyllically cozy cabin said to be in Maine where she is working on a memoir.
Despite what its snowy surroundings would have you believe, though, Alex’s new digs can actually be found in sunny Southern California. (As was the case with season one, while set on the East Coast, filming largely takes place in Los Angeles.) And it is a spot executive producer Witherspoon is very familiar with! Located at 636 Crater Camp Dr. in Calabasas, Alex’s cabin was also utilized as the residence of Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz) and Nathan Carlson (James Tupper) on the hit HBO series “Big Little Lies.”
The house belonging to Alex’s supposed Pine Tree State neighbor, Aria Bloom (Molly McNearney), where the retired anchor attends a snowy New Year’s Eve party, has her tarot cards unsuccessfully read and finally decides to return to “The Morning Show,” can also be found in Southern California. Known as the Milbank Mansion, the Mission Revival/Beaux-Arts masterpiece is one of Los Angeles’ most historic properties.
Located on an elevated corner at 3340 Country Club Dr. in Los Angeles’ Country Club Park, the two-story estate was originally built for Isaac Milbank, the wealthy businessman who developed the prestigious neighborhood, and his wife, Virginia. (Please remember this is a private home. Do not trespass or bother the residents or the property in any way.) To design the dwelling, the couple commissioned architect G. Lawrence Stimson, who was also behind Pasadena’s Wrigley Mansion (now the Tournament House and Wrigley Gardens).
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Image Credit: Lindsay Blake Per a 1988 Los Angeles Times article, the Milbank Mansion “is considered to be the most substantial surviving estate built for a single family in the city of Los Angeles before World War I.” Indeed, the property, which was completed in 1913 at a cost of $35,000 (about $1 million in today’s dollars), is a marvel!
While measurement details are quite disparate online, according to PropertyShark, the residence boasts 12 bedrooms and five bathrooms in an impressive 10,059 square feet.
Secluded behind a formidable stucco fence and tall hedges on a massive 1.79-acre lot, little of the dwelling is visible from the street. And since it was last sold in 2007, MLS images are nil. But, fortunately, some up-close and personal glimpses of the manse can be gleaned virtually via its multitude of film and television appearances. (Some interior photos can also be seen here.)
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Image Credit: Apple TV+ The property is perhaps most noted for its arched portico entrance, which “The Morning Show” showcased to fabulous effect. The striking curved glass and cast-iron piece that caps the massive front porch calls to mind Paris’ iconic Art Nouveau Metro subway entrances, designed by Hector Guimard in the early 1900s.
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Image Credit: Apple TV+ Shown at night illuminated by soft light reflecting off the snow-covered ground, the Milbank Mansion was made to look like a majestic castle in the episode, the perfect wintery spot for Alex to make her game-changing New Year’s Eve decision to return to “The Morning Show.”
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Image Credit: Amazon Studios Though Alex does wander the property’s palatial interior in the episode, due to dark lighting and tight shots, not much of it can be seen. The short-lived Amazon series “Hand of God,” which features the Milbank Mansion as the home of Judge Pernell Harris (Ron Perlman) and his wife, Crystal (Dana Delaney), grants audiences much better views of the grandiose living spaces, including the formal entry and the intricately carved bifurcated staircase at its center.
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Image Credit: CBS The estate’s glorious interiors, as well as the elaborate accouterments that adorn them such as beamed ceilings, formidable moldings and extensive built-ins, are also highlighted in the season 10 episode of “CSI: Miami” titled “By the Book,” as Horatio Caine (David Caruso) and his team investigate a murder on the premises one dark and stormy Halloween night.
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Image Credit: CBS The episode also gives screen time to the property’s bucolic backyard, with its sparkling pool and spa, multiple gardens, sprawling lawns and plethora of loggias.
All in all, the Milbank Mansion is an absolutely stunning property and it is not very hard to see how it has become one of the city’s most oft-filmed spots, masquerading as everything from an embassy to a school to a house of ill repute onscreen.
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Image Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Other productions to feature the residence include the 1929 short “Wrong Again.” It is there that famed comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy bring Blue Boy, a horse from the stables where they work, in a mistaken attempt to collect reward money from the homeowners, who are actually hoping to reclaim a missing painting of the same name instead.
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Image Credit: Avco Embassy Pictures The manse plays a brothel belonging to “L.A.’s famous madam” Francis Amthor (Kate Murtagh), where detective Phillip Marlow (Robert Mitchum) is captured and taken in the 1975 noir “Farewell, My Lovely.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures. It pops up in interior scenes involving Washington, D.C.’s Embassy of Ohtar, which Sunny (Goldie Hawn) visits a couple of times in the 1984 comedy “Protocol.”
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment The home appears as the exclusive Chapman Academy Preschool, which prospective parent Charlie Hinton (Eddie Murphy) proclaims is “Princeton for preschoolers,” in the 2003 comedy “Daddy Day Care.”
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Image Credit: Sony Pictures Entertainment The interior of the estate is featured as the inside of the Finch home, where Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) is sent to live in the 2006 dramedy “Running with Scissors.” The dwelling was heavily distressed for the shoot, though, as well as clogged with random ephemera, and is, therefore, highly unrecognizable in the role.
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television The home also masks as the Church of the Dark Prince, where Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis) and detective Chloe Decker (Lauren German) investigate a case in the season one episode of “Lucifer” titled “#teamlucifer.”