Every Real-Life Location Behind Netflix’s ‘Crew Girl’ Revealed

Netflix’s newest teen sports drama has viewers hooked, and it turns out the show’s postcard-perfect East Coast setting is not actually the East Coast at all. ‘Crew Girl’ was filmed entirely in Victoria, British Columbia, and nearby communities on southern Vancouver Island. The production swapped Canadian coastline for a fictional Massachusetts prep school, and fans are already digging into exactly where their favorite scenes were shot.

The Netflix series follows 16 year old Teagan Tao, a talented rower who relocates with her mother Ella after her father’s financial misdeeds come to light, only to discover her new school has no girls rowing team, forcing her onto the boys varsity crew as coxswain. With the show now streaming, curiosity about its gorgeous waterfront backdrops has only grown.

Hatley Castle Becomes Easton Prep

The production used real locations including Hatley Castle at Royal Roads University to create the fictional Easton Prep campus. Fans of period dramas and superhero movies may already recognize the castle grounds from other productions, but for ‘Crew Girl’ it became the beating heart of the show’s old money boarding school world.

The series comes from showrunner Vivian Lin, known for ‘SkyMed’ and ‘The Lake,’ who developed ‘Crew Girl’ alongside Morwyn Brebner as a high stakes, soapy teen sports romance set in the elite world of East Coast rowing. That elite atmosphere leans heavily on Hatley Castle’s grand architecture and manicured grounds, which stand in beautifully for a prestigious New England institution.

Filming moved between Royal Roads University and multiple locations along the Gorge Waterway, with the rowing sequences requiring coordinated water operations and athletic choreography. The castle setting gives the show its class divide tension, since Teagan’s arrival as an outsider is meant to feel like a fish out of water moment against all that old money grandeur.

Rowing Scenes Shot on Elk Beaver Lake and the Gorge Waterway

The scenes depicting the rowing races were lensed on the sprawling freshwater hub in Saanich, Elk Beaver Lake Regional Park, and the Gorge Waterway, a tidal estuary in the heart of Greater Victoria. These two bodies of water essentially became the show’s athletic proving ground, standing in for the fictional Easton crew course.

To capture the intensity of the races, the crew got creative with their equipment. The production used a floating camera barge capable of towing the actors’ boat for close up shots, with drone photography used for when the cast rowed independently. That combination let the show balance sweeping aerial shots of the water with tight, personal moments inside the boat.

Altogether the cast sometimes logged up to 8 or 10 hours a day on the water, with a techno crane also used to help capture the rowing footage. It is a level of commitment that helps explain why the rowing sequences in ‘Crew Girl’ feel so authentic rather than staged.

The rowing sequences also made use of the Victoria City Rowing Club and Gorge Narrows Rowing Club as real facilities standing in for the show’s fictional athletic program. Using working rowing clubs rather than sets gave the cast and crew access to genuine equipment and coaching resources during the shoot.

Sidney and Eagle’s Cove Bring the Small Town Feel

Crew Girl also used downtown Sidney and its waterfront as the fictional Eagle’s Cove, Massachusetts, the small hometown where Teagan and her mother start over. The charming waterfront town gives the series its cozy, close knit backdrop away from the pressure of the prep school world.

In the story, Teagan and her mother Ella leave California behind and relocate to Ella’s small Massachusetts hometown of Eagle’s Cove after the family scandal upends their lives. Sidney’s real harbor charm does a lot of heavy lifting in selling that fresh start atmosphere on screen.

Other confirmed filming locations rounding out the production include Selkirk Trestle, Tillicum Road Bridge, and Point Hope Maritime. Together with Sidney’s waterfront, these spots helped the crew build out a believable East Coast town using entirely West Coast Canadian geography.

Filming Timeline and Production Details Behind Crew Girl

Principal photography began on September 8, 2025, and wrapped on November 21, 2025, with the production initially listed under the working title Easton Prep. That fall shoot lines up with the crisp, autumnal look of many scenes in the series.

The show is produced by Blue Ant Studios, blending high stakes sports rivalry, soapy teen romance, and class divide social issues as it takes viewers inside the posh, cutthroat world of competitive prep school rowing. That mix of genres is a big part of why the location choices matter so much, since the show needs both grandeur and intimacy from its settings.

Miku Martineau leads the cast as Teagan Tao alongside Sam Braun and Kyle Clark, with Jessica Paré playing her mother Ella. All eight episodes of ‘Crew Girl’ are now streaming on Netflix, giving fans plenty of time to spot every Victoria landmark hiding in plain sight.

With Hatley Castle, the Gorge Waterway, and the streets of Sidney all doing double duty as a fictional Massachusetts prep school town, which ‘Crew Girl’ filming location are you most surprised was actually shot in British Columbia?