All About the Real Homes in 'Don't Worry Darling' — From Midcentury Icons to Desert Oddities
Warner Bros
Don't Worry Darling is turning heads in more ways than one!
While the movie itself is receiving mixed reviews (and sparking quite the controversy with all the on-set drama), there's one thing spectators can all agree on — the filming locations were absolutely stunning.
Olivia Wilde's sophomore directorial effort, which raked in $19.2 million in its first weekend, according to the Los Angeles Times, was shot mostly in Palm Springs.
The California hotspot is known for its sprawling desert landscape, endless blue skies and midcentury modern architecture, making it the perfect location to bring to life the seemingly utopian 1950s town of Victory.
From Victory's bizarre dome-shaped headquarters to Jack (Harry Styles) and Alice (Florence Pugh) Chambers' charming suburban home, here are the real places Olivia Wilde and her team brought the chilling thriller to life.
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The Volcano House
Warner Bros
Perhaps one of the most eye-catching locations in the film, the Volcano House is actually located about 100 miles north of Palm Springs, in Barstow, Calif. The futuristic home, featuring a dome-shaped roof with reflective glass walls, serves as Victory's mysteriously forbidden headquarters and is the setting for pivotal scenes involving Pugh's character, Alice.
Katie Byron, production designer for the film, tells Variety that the unique structure is an actual residence built directly onto a volcanic cinder cone. "Working with these historical sites," she says of the home, "we had to really respect these places and anything we did to them we had to do very carefully."
Byron also revealed that this particular location came with many challenges. "You have a tiny little road that snakes around that volcano to the top, and where do you put the restrooms, the trucks, the grip equipment?"
While most production crews would be steered away from a location with that many difficulties, Byron says they were willing to do whatever it took to film at the Volcano House.
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Canyon View Estates
Warner Bros. Pictures
All of the exterior shots of Jack and Alice's midcentury home, along with the other characters' picture-perfect Victory residences, were captured at the Palm Springs complex known as the Canyon View Estates.
The Chambers' house is situated in a cul-de-sac surrounded by similar single-level homes. Movie goers will recognize the location from scenes where Alice and Wilde's character, Bunny, routinely see their husbands off to work in the morning.
Despite the interior of the house being filmed on a set, the home itself is a real private residence that was designed by well-known architects Palmer and Krisel in the 1960s.
The Kaufmann House
Slim Aarons/Hulton Archive/Getty
Home to Chris Pine's character Frank, the mastermind behind the Victory Project, the Kaufmann House was built in 1946 by architect Richard Neutra. The home was perhaps most famously captured in photographer Slim Aarons' iconic image, "Poolside Gossip."
Set in front of a mountainous backdrop, the modernist residence has a streamlined exterior with indoor/outdoor features. Byron revealed that filming at the Kaufmann House also came with its challenges, especially since it's seldom used as a movie set.
"We were shooting in one of the most historic buildings in California," she says of the famous home. "The restrictions of how we could shoot it and what we could do inside were definitely the highest I've ever worked with," she adds. "The rules actually set the whole film up with this idea of 'we're respecting all the places that we move into.'"
