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Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
The Flight Attendant on HBO Max fits into a unique genre: a comedy-thriller, focused on a hard partying, hard drinking flight attendant named Cassie Bowden (played by Kaley Cuoco) who ends up in an international web of intrigue after hooking up with a mysterious and handsome first class passenger (Alex Sokolov, played by Michiel Huisman) after a flight to Bangkok. The Flight Attendant is based on a New York Times bestselling book of the same name and the filming locations for The Flight Attendant are primarily in New York City, with some international spots here and there. The cast also includes Rosie Perez, Zosia Mamet, T.R. Knight, Michael Huisman, and Bebe Neuwirth.
Now, if the premise and some of the subsequent events seem semi-implausible, The Flight Attendant seems hyper aware of that. The show employs some interesting story-telling mechanisms that assist the hapless Cassie, and considering that Cassie is blacked out most of the time, her self-sabotaging actions can be excused through that vein. And the dialogue of other characters serve to counterbalance what she says and does, and yes, she’s often quite charming. You do wonder how she manages to keep her job and her friends, however. The Flight Attendant has enough to keep the viewer wondering whodunnit. International filming took place in March, at the early onset of the pandemic and it was one of the first productions to start filming after New York City reopened for business in August of this year. And now, without further ado, here are the filming locations you will find in The Flight Attendant!
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
For her job at the fictional “Imperial Atlantic” airline, Cassie’s home base is New York City. She’s a first class stewardess doing international flights from John F. Kennedy Airport, located in Queens, New York City. Unlike a lot of other televisions that often recreate an airport in somewhere like the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, The Flight Attendant really filmed the airport scenes in JFK Airport. The difference shows, because it’s hard to recreate all of the signage, and mimic the architecture and layout of an airport, and make it still feel authentic. The shooting, which took place during hours the airport was still operational, caused quite a stir.
The actor Griffin Matthews who plays Shane said in an interview, “When you see us walking through airports, we were filming in multiple airports. We were really in Thailand. We were really in JFK…It was one of the first things that we shot—the walking through the airport scenes—which strangely enough caused such an uproar because they couldn’t get the airports shut down.” Other scenes, including the hotel rooms, airplane interiors, and apartments were filmed on sound stages in New York City.
After a night out, before she leaves for Bangkok, Cassie wakes up while sleeping on the bench of a subway car. The announcements indicate she’s at Broadway Junction on the L train, which is on the border of Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York, far far away from where she lives in Manhattan.
If you are wondering where the scene was filmed however, it’s usually only in one of two stations that the MTA allows for shoots in: Bowery or Church Avenue. This particular scene is filmed in the Bowery station.
Cassie’s best friend, Annie (played by Zosia Mamet) is a lawyer and her clients seem to be involved in some shady stuff. In an early scene she appears in, she’s standing on the banks of Newtown Creek, an industrial zone on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, and a client comes out with bloody hands. Cassie later returns here in search of a shell company she’s trying to locate.
Newtown Creek is an EPA Superfund site, meaning it’s one of the most polluted bodies of water in America, but it also has some great architectural highlights, including an award-winning wastewater treatment plant (yes, that’s a thing) and most relevantly, it’s the home of Broadway States, one of the large sound stage companies in New York City. That’s why you see a lot of film and television productions shooting around Newtown Creek. Besides The Flight Attendant, Newtown Creek and Broadway Stages has appeared in The Undoing, Billions, The Punisher, Mr. Robot, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil and more.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
After the mysterious Alex Sokolov (played by Michael Huisman) winds up dead, Cassie takes it upon herself to try to locate and identify who the mysterious Miranda (played by Michelle Gomez) is. Miranda was out with Alex and Cassie that night in Bangkok. Using the name of Alex’s company, Unisphere Asset Mangement, as a start, she shows up at the Midtown office in hopes of getting more information.
In The Flight Attendant, the address is shown as 2350 Park Avenue but if you Google that, you’ll see that it puts you in the Bronx. This building is clearly in Midtown and eagle eye viewers may notice the Gothic building next door, home to the Swedish Seaman’s Church. The building used as Unisphere Asset Management is located on both 48th and 49th Street, with an official address of 12 E. 49th Street, but the scene is done on the 48th Street entrance.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Cassie goes out (again) the night before her second FBI interview, and meets up with fellow flight attendants Shane and Jada (played by Yasha Jackson). They have dinner atop the Hotel Chantelle, a bar and venue known for its burlesque shows located on the Lower East Side.
The filming locations choices for The Flight Attendant show an effort made to accurately recreate Kelly’s partying, and show her in multiple real bars and restaurants in New York City.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Cassie manages to make it to the FBI interview and meets up with Annie in Foley Square, a park and plaza in Lower Manhattan that is situated behind many government buildings, including various federal, city and state courthouses. Cassie is once again interviewed by agents Kim Hammond (played by Merle Dandridge) and Van White (played by Nolan Gerard Funk).
This filming location is very accurate, as the FBI is actually located at 26 Federal Plaza, just off Foley Square in the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Cassie drags Shane to Alex’s memorial service, without telling him its for the guy she hooked up with in seat 3C. They meet in front of an entrance to Penn Station, on 32nd Street and 8th Avenue which leads into the Amtrak area. From there, they could connect to the Long Island Railroad, NJ Transit or the subway inside the transit hub. We are told in The Flight Attendant his parents live in Westchester, which would mean that they would need to take Metro-North if they went by train and leave from Grand Central, not Penn Station.
All this makes sense from a filming location standpoint, because later we see Cassie taking a train that is a Long Island Railroad train, not a Metro-North train (or Amtrak or NJ Transit).
We see Cassie walking down the street, about to get in a taxi, followed by Miranda. The scene suggests that Cassie lives nearby, in Sutton Place, a neighborhood on the Upper East Side near the Queensboro Bridge.
Sutton Place is home to the fabulous townhouse of the UN Secretary General and that famous view of the Queensboro Bridge as seen in the movie, Manhattan.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Annie’s loft, supposedly located on 410 Plymouth Street if you’ve been paying attention to the signage on the show, is not a real place in Dumbo, Brooklyn. The address exists but no building of that style is there.
If you’re looking for an apartment like this, with brick arches and a stylish shower in the middle of the living room, you won’t fin dit. The interior of the apartment is filmed on a set. It’s well done however, and bears a strong resemblance to the apartments at 168 Plymouth Street, former paint factory turned into turned into condo apartments.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Cassie manages to meet up in time with her brother Davey, Davey’s husband and two kids on their visit to New York City. They go first to the New York Aquarium, located on Coney Island.
The New York Aquarium is the oldest aquarium in the United States in continual operation. In 2018, a 57,500-square-foot new building was constructed for, holding 784,000 gallons of water, showcasing the acquarium’s shark exhibition along with a huge variety of marine life.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
While at Alex’s memorial, Cassie learns through eavesdropping that there is a flight that Alex was supposedly on that might tarnish his name. She learns its through a company another fellow flight attendant, Nate, works for.
Using his romantic interest in her, she gets a spot on the flight that is leaving from Teterboro airport, an airport for private flights in New Jersey, to Maine. She discovers something very strange when she gets on the flight. Teterboro Airport is no stranger to real controversy — it is where Jeffrey Epstein was arrested.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Cassie goes to the restaurant SHI in Long Island City to meet up with Davey and his family, but only Davey arrives. Things don’t go well and it’s the real first moment in The Flight Attendant that you see the impacts an addiction might have on Cassie’s personal life.
The Asian restaurant is located just next to Gantry State Plaza, and nearby is the new Hunters Point South Park.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Sabrina is the receptionist at Unisphere Asset Management and Cassie begins to suspect she knows something about Miranda. Miranda finds out about her meeting with Cassie and goes to her apartment…
Sabrina’s apartment is located in the heart of Greenwich Village at the intersection of West 4th and West 12th Street just above the restaurant Cafe Cluny. Later we see another scene filmed in the Greenwich Village area, when Cassie’s new love interest, Buckley, calls her.
Photo: Phil Caruso/HBO Max
Alex’s apartment is in Hudson Yards, with a view of the Vessel sculpture. They show him living at 31 Hudson Yards, where the Equinox is located. Vessel, a climbable sculpture designed by Thomas Heatherwick actually plays a plot point in the show, because the doorman of Alex’s apartment hates it so much. Cassie knows this from what Alex casually mentioned about where he lived and she uses it to convince the doorman to let her into Alex’s apartment.
After Annie kicks Cassie out of Max’s hospital room and her apartment, Cassie goes wandering New York City. She ends up at Pier 64 on the Hudson River, across from the Frying Pan bar. She calls everyone she knows, looking for company. The next day, she ends up in a bar supposedly in the East Village. The bar interior appears to be a set, similar to the one used for Allied Bar in High Fidelity.
Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik
When Cassie returns from Rome, she meets up with Annie inside the Bel Aire Diner in Queens, one of the classic standalone diners still left in New York City. Miranda drops something off in Cassie’s coat.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Bel Aire Diner transformed its parking lot into a drive-in movie theater.
Stay tuned for more filming locations as The Flight Attendant continues! Episodes Thursday on HBO Max.
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