Into today’s fast-paced society, we all dream of owning a place to escape to paradise. If Hallmark Channel’s adaptation of The Beach House is making you want to jet off to your very own low-country beach house, you’re not alone: The real-life Georgia setting is both a popular spot for vacations and film crews. It needed no props or backdrops to create an earthly taste of heaven.
While The Beach House is set in Charleston, South Carolina, most of the movie was actually filmed just further south on Georgia’s Tybee Island, a scenic, coastal area south of Hilton Head Island. Tybee Island is a city and a barrier island located in Chatham County, Georgia, 18 miles east of Savannah, United States. Though the name “Tybee Island” is used for both the island and the city, geographically they are not identical: Only part of the island’s territory lies within the city.
The quaint little island, which is home to just 3,000 residents, was the perfect place for Mary Alice Monroe’s popular book to come to life, thanks to its beautiful beaches and marshes and population of loggerhead turtles, which are a key part of the story. When Cara finds her life spinning out of control, she returns to the Lowcountry to visit her mother. Before long, the rhythms of the island open her heart as she becomes a bona fide “turtle lady” and repairs the family beach house.
“A lot of [the story] was set outside Charleston on the Isle of Palms, so it was really important for us to find a location like this beach house that we could use [in order] to be close to the water and really showcase the need for attention on the loggerhead turtles,” assistant producer Tammie Ross told the Savannah Morning News. “We shot a little bit in the squares [in Charleston], but really [the shoot] has been mostly here [on Tybee Island].”
While the island’s sandy beaches and beautiful oak-lined streets lay the perfect backdrop for most of the movie, the crew also shot some scenes in the city of Savannah and Isle of Hope marina nearby. By the end of filming, stars Andie Macdowell, Minka Kelly, and Chad Michael Murray had all fallen in love with the destination. “It is beautiful,” Andie wrote on Instagram.
The area is so stunning it’s also served as the setting for dozens of other movies including The Last Song (2010), Forrest Gump (1994), Baywatch (2017), Gifted (2017), and another recent Hallmark movie, Love at the Shore (2017).
While you’re there, you can rent your very own charming beach cottage and make your way around the salty swamps on a boat to take in the local wildlife.
The Beach House previewed in late April and will be aired again on May 12 at 11 am est on The Hallmark Channel.
Photo courtesy of The Hallmark Channel
Ref. Country Living, MSN/Entertainment.com, the Hallmark Channel
Leave a Reply