By Bill Barlow
OCEAN CITY – Psychological horror came to the Ocean City Boardwalk on Saturday, as a crew filmed on the beach and boardwalk for the M. Night Shyamalan series “Servant” on Apple TV+.
The cast and crew, including about 65 people, set up at The Flanders Hotel for the shoot, according to Doug Bergen, a spokesman for the city.
Several residents and visitors posted to Facebook that they were psyched to see their favorite beach town included in a show. One woman posted images of the shoot, showing a crowd on the boardwalk, and a notice from Uncle George Productions stating that those who did not want to be photographed should leave the area.
“Servant” is set in Philadelphia, following a couple who hired a nanny to look after their baby son. It’s described as a psychological horror series starring Lauren Ambrose, Toby Kebbell and Nell Tiger Free, who also played Myrcella Baratheon on Game of Thrones. “Servant” is described as a dark, complex and very bingeable series.
The scenes are reportedly part of a third season for the series, expected to premier next year.
The second season of “Servant” premiered on Jan. 15 on the subscription streaming service. Film director Shyamalan, who set “The Sixth Sense” in Philadelphia, is an executive producer of the series, along with Tony Basgallop.
Karen Bergman, an Ocean City Councilwoman who is the director of catering at The Flanders, said filming did not take place in the historic hotel, but outside on the beach and boardwalk.
The crew was not in town long, setting a staging area in the Flanders’ parking lot and completing filming in one day.
The Uncle George production company website shows the series was also filming in Philadelphia earlier this year. No one from that company responded to a request for comment. The NJ Motion Picture and Television Commission lists the shoot as scheduled for March, along with multiple other projects being filmed in New Jersey.
The news that the filming took place locally received an enthusiastic response online. “This is so awesome,” wrote one member of the Facebook group “OCNJ Chatter,” while another wrote “Very cool.”
Many said they were big fans of the show, while others said they would start watching in order to catch up before the episode that includes Ocean City becomes available.
Ocean City is a great place to film on location, according to local resident Birch Miles, who has worked extensively in television and film. It provides a beautiful setting and it’s an enjoyable place for the working crew to spend some time.
“I’ve worked on both sides of the camera,” he said, mostly in New York but also in Philadelphia and in California. He’s also brought people to Ocean City, including for musical productions. “I found that people really love coming here to work. It’s a really good place to shoot.”
He said production companies often film exterior scenes and establish shots, while interior scenes are more likely to take place on a soundstage rather than on location. For instance, he said, he saw a small film crew on the beach early one morning.
“It was just getting light enough to see the waves. I was checking the surf,” he said. “It was what in film we call the B unit.”
The crew was capturing images to give the film a sense of place. In this case, it was for “Girl Most Likely” with Kristen Wiig, which also included scenes filmed in Atlantic City. Film of the sunrise captured that morning was included in the film, Miles said.
Ocean City has also been the site of filming for other projects, including the 2005 David Schwimmer vehicle “Duane Hopwood” and the coming-of-age romantic drama “That Night” filmed in downtown Ocean City in the early 1990s.
Two of the most famous films featuring this area date from the 1980s. With its Tony Marts setting, “Eddie and the Cruisers” holds a status close to legend on the South Jersey shore. And in 1980, “Atlantic City” with Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon opened to critical acclaim.
Ocean City has had plenty of time on the small screen as well. Last year, the HGTV show “Beachfront Bargain Hunt” was filmed in Ocean City, following Stephanie and Stephen Scibal’s search for a house in the beach resort. That episode originally aired Feb. 17, 2020.
Area officials were less pleased when a season seven episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” aired on FXX in 2015, with scenes shot in beach towns throughout the area. The caustic outlook of the show extended to a beach vacation. The seventh season episode “The Gang Goes to the Jersey Shore” includes stray dogs wandering the beach, locals smoking angel dust and a disturbing moment that appears to have been filmed under the Ocean City Music Pier.
The episode includes footage taken in several towns, with the characters only ever describing it as “the Jersey Shore,” and includes some scenes clearly filmed on the Ocean City Boardwalk.
