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Things are dark with Ray Donovan, as the Showtime series returns for its sixth season, set in New York City. We see Donovan the fixer, in rough shape, jump off the roof of a building on the East River. This is shown in the finale of the fifth season, but we see the scene now from the perspective of a police officer who saves him. The recap at the opening of the first episode shows Donovan walking through Lower Manhattan, ending up in Midtown following his wife, who died of cancer a year prior, to the top of a building. Mixed are scenes with Samantha Winslow (played by Susan Sarandon) and shady movie executive Doug Landry (Mitchell Gill), whom Doug kills and stages as a suicide in season five.
In a fugue-like mental state, Donovan is shown wandering the streets of Lower Manhattan. We see the height of the Four Seasons Hotel in Lower Manhattan (with a shot of the Woolworth Building, when it still had scaffolding from the residential conversion on the top floors), and the entrance of the hotel which Donovan enters. It’s named the Eddington Hotel in the show, which is a fictional hotel.
The Queensboro Bridge figures strongly in this first episode – first as a backdrop to where Donovan sits on a bench, and later in the background when officer Sean “Mac” McGrath spots Donovan falling into the East River. McGrath is in the middle of an arrest, which is filmed on the lower level of a sanitation facility along the East River. New Yorkers will recognize the art installation on the top by Alice Aycock, which resembles a roller coaster. You can also see the Roosevelt Island tram, which connects Manhattan to Roosevelt Island.
There’s a little CGI work in this scene however, because there are no buildings that go all the way up to the waterline along the East River at this location, nor is there a little waterfront esplanade park as shown. The Hospital for Special Surgery, which Donovan supposedly jumps off of, is located on the East River but about eleven blocks north.
After a fist fight in the river between Officer McGrath and Donovan, after he is revived, McGrath takes him and the guy he was arresting to Staten Island, his precinct. It’s not explained in the first episode exactly why he arrested someone in Midtown, but you hear the other detainee wonder this as they’re crossing the Verrazano Bridge, the bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island. In fun news, The Verrazano Bridge recently got back its second “z,” following a decree from Governor Cuomo.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
The first scene on Staten Island in Ray Donovan – outside the NYPD station and in front of the bar O’Donoghue’s that Ray goes to after being release – is actually shot in Nyack, New York in the Hudson Valley. O’Donoghue’s exterior and interiors, along Main Street, are used, and there is actually a fire department next door, but the set takes part of the facade at 70 Main Street and makes it look like the front of a FDNY firehouse. There is a old-school looking barbershop across the street in real life, but the phone booth and bus stop sign (saying Arthur Kill Road) was added for the set. Ray Donovan also films in Yonkers as a stand-in for Staten Island.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Ray initially rejects Samantha’s invitation to go back to work, but seeing the situation Officer McGrath is in seems to spur him back into action. He gets off the bus at 42nd Street in Times Square, just off Broadway with a view of the Knickerbocker Hotel in the background. He heads into the building 4 Times Square, the Durst Organization building that used to be the headquarters for Condé Nast, before the magazine company moved to 1 World Trade Center. In the show, it serves as the headquarters for Pacific Media.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Ray heads to the headquarters for Anita Novak, Samantha’s choice for Mayor, who has a campaign office on the corner of West Broadway and Thomas Street at 140 West Broadway in the Tribeca neighborhood. She needs Donovan to track down a guy she had a one night stand with at the Nomad Hotel who had taken video of them.
Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Ray Donovan heads to Trinity Boxing Club to see his older brother Terry Donovan (played by Eddie Marsan). Ray is hoping Terry can help coach Officer McGrath’s son so he can fight back against the kids who bully him. Ray also runs into his daughter, Bridget, at the boxing club. Trinity Boxing Club is located in Tribeca at 116 Duane Street, with a backstory that goes back to the current founder’s grandfather, Lorenzo Snow, who opened up the original Trinity Boxing Club in the notorious Five Points neighborhood over a century ago as a “boxing speakeasy,” since the sport was illegal. It then became a real speakeasy bar during Prohibition, and some of the famous people that stepped through the doors included Al Capone, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Lindbergh, Rudolph Valentino, Joseph Kennedy and more.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Officer McGrath and internal affairs investigator Emerson Lake meet up at the Square Diner in Tribeca where Lake tries to get McGrath to snitch on his fellow officers in exchange for overlooking some of his misdeeds in the force. Things are uneasy but McGrath knows he’s backed up against the wall.
The Square Diner, in operation at 33 Leonard Street for over 100 years, is a popular filming locations also recently seen in Daredevil.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
A lot is happening on the set of Jay White’s movie which is being filmed under the Riverside Drive Viaduct in Manhattanville, just near Columbia University’s new campus. A structure of civic pride when completed, the Riverside Drive Viaduct seems to appear in nearly every New York City production in some shape or form, testifying to its architectural longevity and visual impact.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Bridget volunteers for Anita Novak’s campaign during her internship, procured as a favor to Ray, though she doesn’t quite know it. She hands out fliers in Washington Square Park, just near the Stanford White-designed arch.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
As usual Bunchy is in a tight spot, and he meets up with Ray for help. They meet at the Brooklyn Inn, an old-school bar dating to the 19th century in Boerum Hill, originally built by German immigrants then sold to Italian Americans in the 1950s. Opened in 1885, it is one of the oldest bars in the borough.
Photo: JoJo Whilden/SHOWTIME
Ed Ferrati has a headquarters with a mob-like feel at Astoria Bowl (which never seems to have any guests). The real bowling location is located at 19-45 49th St. in Astoria, Queens.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Ray devises a plan to get Anita up in the polls. In Central Park, while she is jogging, she comes to the rescue of someone supposedly attacking a woman, which gets filmed on camera. Ray watches from above on a bridge.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Anita and Ray go to dinner at the Minetta Tavern in Greenwich Village clearly the beginning of something between them – though one would be hard-pressed to call this a romantic partnership.
Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME
Bridget lives in a walkup apartment in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In the show, we see her street and the shop below it, and we also see her, Smitty, and her father go to Sonny’s, the iconic dive bar in the neighborhood. She gets kidnapped when she is packing up with Smitty, planning to leave town.
Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME
Terry Donovan is released from the Manhattan Detention Complex after he turns himself in for the sake of the Donovan family and gets arrested. Here, he stands outside for a smoke talking to Agent Ange Howe. The Manhattan Detention Complex, the jail facility for the courts in Lower Manhattan, was also shown in the HBO show, The Night Of.
Photo: Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME
Cop Danny Bianchi is taken by Mickey, Ray and Pooch to Yonkers Power Plant, an abandoned site along the Hudson River, as they threaten him unless he reveals where Bridget has been taken. We already know that Lena killed Vinnie Bryant here in retribution for the murder of Justine.
Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME
Located at 141 Worth Street near City Hall, the NYC Marriage Bureau is where Terry Donovan accompanies Smitty and Bridget for their impromptu wedding, wearing a dress found in the home the family is hiding out in on Long Island, burying the bodies of the cops they’ve killed.
Also check out the NYC Film Locations for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
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