Where Was Nine Perfect Strangers Filmed?
'Masha is a person who has to evolve,' explains executive producer Bruna Papandrea. 'The move was a natural progression for her as a character, but also to be in this incredible environment and have her guests come there is a very natural story element that we always anticipated doing for a second season. What we felt was that a winter setting was both slightly ominous, but also incredibly beautiful and also luxurious.'
To film season two, the cast temporarily relocated to Munich, where they lived for six months. Shooting took place around Austria and Germany, as well as on a soundstage. Locations included Salzburg, Hallstatt, Alpendorf, Leopoldskron Palace, and Gradonna Ski Resort. 'We really did get to do a lot of very cool bopping around to some crazy locations that I don't think we would have ever found ourselves in otherwise,' notes Annie Murphy, who plays Imogen, one of Zauberwald's guests.
To film season two of Nine Perfect Strangers, the cast temporarily relocated to Munich (pictured), where they lived for six months.
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On set, the actors became especially close, and Christine Baranski, who plays the wealthy Victoria, encouraged their bonding. In the series, Murphy plays Victoria's estranged daughter, Murray Bartlett plays former children's TV host Brian, Henry Golding plays rich kid Peter, and musician King Princess plays a struggling pianist who travels with her girlfriend Wolfie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers).
Below, Papandrea, Murphy, and King Princess speak to Condé Nast Traveler about their experiences filming Nine Perfect Strangers.
What vibe did you want Zauberwald to have?
Bruna Papandrea: What we all really wanted was the sense of history, because Masha has history with this place and there is that incredible sense of the old that you get throughout Europe. But [it has] been redone to be very luxurious and very opulent. Soho House does it brilliantly all over Europe. That was one of our references for how you take something incredibly old and historical and update it and make it really beautiful and new. We wanted it to feel very warm and very beautiful, and to have elements of any luxury wellness retreat.
To achieve a luxurious and opulent feel for the locations of Nine Perfect Strangers, the team turned to Soho House locations in Europe for inspiration, according to the show's executive producer Bruna Papandrea.
Udo Kramer
Was the exterior of Zauberwald an actual resort?
King Princess: The exterior was Franz Ferdinand's hunting castle, Schloss Blühnbach.
Annie Murphy: The reason we shot in Germany in the first place is because they wanted such a stark difference between season one and season two, and they wanted season two to be this beautiful snow globe-y winter wonderland. Then cut to it being the hottest winter on record for decades and decades. These poor ski towns that make their entire annual income from tourism, everything ground to a halt. In so many shots of us in our parkas and our hats and our mitts we're just pretending to have chattering teeth and we're sweating underneath there. Behind the scenes, the crew was there was shoveling like snow that had been trucked in and was slowly melting. But one day at Blühnbach there was the most glorious snowstorm—it's a scene where we're all snowshoeing. But then it snowed so much that we got snowed in and had to wait to be shoveled out.
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