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Set in a retro futuristic version of New York City, the limited series Maniac on Netflix stars Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. The story centers around two lonely New Yorkers who sign up for a pharmaceutical trial to test an experimental drug that was developed to rewire troubled minds and destroy feelings of pain.
Owen (played by Jonah Hill) is the socially disassociated, “black sheep” of the wealthy, dysfunctional Milgrim family with a history of schizophrenia. Annie, played by Emma Stone, is addicted to a drug from the trial, which she illicitly got from the son of the pharmaceutical company owner. In the drug trial, each takes a pill to bring up the most traumatic moment in their lives, with Justin Theroux playing drug developer Dr. James K. Mantleray who returns to the helm following the unexpected death of Dr. Muramoto.
Many locations throughout New York City and Long Island appear in the show, which uses the city in its current form and adds in elements from the past, and a possible future into the mix.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
Owen lives in an apartment on Roosevelt Island along Main Street, which has a collection of Brutalist ’70s architecture. Specifically he lives in an apartment complex known as Eastwood, designed by Sert, Jackson & Associates. It was developed as a Mitchell-Lama housing development aimed at lower and middle income families. The Queensboro Bridge and the Roosevelt Island apartment buildings are plastered with large neon advertisements.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
Also used as a filming location on Roosevelt Island is the James Renwick-designed stone lighthouse at the northern tip of Roosevelt Island. It is here that Owen is approached by a brother that nobody else in his family is aware of, a copy of his brother Jed, who gives him instructions about missions to save the world. James Renwick also designed the smallpox hospital on the southern end that is New York City’s only landmarked ruin.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
The Milgrim Family apartment is a post-Modernist townhouse on the Upper East Side at 17 East 65th Street. You can see photographs of this over-the-top house when it was on the market from 2014 to 2017 for $40 million. The apartment was owned by French & Company, an art dealership, and was designed in the 1940s by William Hamby and George Nelson, with the current facade added in 1981.
Annie lives in Brooklyn on the border of Williamsburg and Bushwick, not far from Ichiran Ramen and Human Head Records. She stops by a laundromat on Graham Avenue and McKibben Street, but can’t pay for the cigarettes. The shop keeper suggests using AdBuddy.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
To get to work, Owen heads into the New York City subway system run by the New York City Transit Authority, the entity before the current Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). He tries to pay at the retro looking vending machines (added for the set) at the 57th Street N/Q/R/Q line but by the time he gets underground, having enlisted the help of AdBuddy to pay for his fare, he’s shown to be at the 2nd Avenue subway station.
However, savvy transit goers will notice that this station is actually the Bowery J/M/Z subway station with its single platform and dark red columns. This station is frequently shown in television shows, and has been seen in Mr. Robot. It has an abandoned lower level platform that is used for drills by the MTA and NYPD.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
Annie wanders to a bunch of boxes discarded on the sidewalk, which turns out to be in front of the Milgrim Industries offices at 149 Madison Avenue. Sticklers for filming locations will note that she appears to wanders here from Williamsburg in a somewhat jarring geographical cut. The address is correct, but the entrance shown is actually on 32nd Street, at the former location of Olde Good Things, the antique shop. The location was closed as of January 31st, 2018, making it an ideal location to film.
Anna goes to eat at the Cup & Saucer, a beloved diner on Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side before it closed in the summer of 2017. Today, the vintage signs are all gone and a new storefront has replaced it. Cup & Saucer is one of the lost diners of New York City featured in a photo project by Riley Arthur.
The building that serves as the headquarters of Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech, where the drug trials take place, is Chatham Towers in Chinatown at 180 Park Row, a project built under the U.S. Federal Housing Act of 1949 by master builder Robert Moses. The twin buildings each have 25 floors, so the 77th floor scene where Dr. Azumi Fujita goes to talk with headquarters is not technically possible, but the show uses CGI to show a much taller tower).
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
The Brooklyn Public Library becomes the “Brooklyn Public Library Bus Terminal,” where Anna goes hoping to take a bus to see her sister. The exterior shot is indeed the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, located at Grand Army Plaza at the entrance to Prospect Park.
The interior of the “Brooklyn Public Library Bus Terminal” are actually filmed in the Bronx County Courthouse, where the production added the split-flap destination board, ticket vending machines, and other details to make it feel like a bus terminal. It’s certainly a far cry from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the city’s main bus depot on 42nd Street. The Bronx County Courthouse interior was also featured in the Showtime show, Billions, while the exterior has appeared in The Punisher, Daredevil, and Gotham.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
Anna doesn’t make it on the bus, because the split-flap destination sign shows (in her mind) the letter A, the mind-bending drug she’s addicted to made by Neberdine Pharmaceutical Biotech. She heads to her dealer, who is playing chess with a purple koala robot in Washington Square Park, located in Greenwich Village. They sit on the southwestern side of the park, in front of NYU School of Law.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
Anna heads to Chinatown to a “doxxing” blackmailing service, located at 2 Elizabeth Street at the corner of Bayard. This is also an empty storefront, converted for the set. Anna is hoping to get some dirt on Patricia Lugo, who works at Neberdine staffing the pharmaceutical studies.
Anna gets some dirt and heads to Brooklyn Botanic Garden to intercept Lugo, who is part of Friend Proxy, a meetup to have pretend friends. They meet in the bonsai room but in the establishing shots you also see the lily pond and the main greenhouse of the garden. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is located next to Prospect Park, close to the Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn Public Library. Later they sit in the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden, where Patricia asks Anna why she wants to be in the drug trial.
Dr. Azumi Fujita goes to Dr. Mantleray’s apartment to get him to take over for Dr. Morimoto. He’s in the middle of a virtual reality porno when she walks in. This filming location is in Williamsburg, at a home made of shipping containers at 351 Keap Street. We covered this unique residence back in 2013 when the couple who lived there first moved in. It’s made of 6 shipping containers, purchased at $1500 each, and insulated with NASA ceramic infused paint. The home was designed by the wife of the couple, Michele Bertomen, an architect who was a professor at NYIT. She died only a few months after the house was completed.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
In a dream sequence where Owen and Anna are Long Island suburbanites, they stop by Furs by Sebastian. Anna hopes to rescue a lemur of a co-worker who died of stomach cancer who will shortly be turned into a hat. Furs by Sebastian, a fictional store, is located in a strip mall, the Great Lincoln Shopping Center, in Oceanside, New York.
Other suburban scenes are filmed in Valley Stream, Long Island, and Ossining and Briarcliff in Westchester.
Photo: Michele K. Short / Netflix
The Horton Psychiatric Facility shown in the last episode is a building in the Platinum Mile office complex in Westchester that was once the home to many fortune 500 companies in the White Plains, Harrison and Rye areas but has struggled in recent years. The building is located at 400 Westchester Avenue and hosts Fordham University’s Westchester campus. Apartment buildings have been built
Next, check out the NYC Film Locations for Daredevil, which just returned for its third season.
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