‘We get 200 tourists a day’: when your house becomes a TV star
What’s it like to live on the set of a soap opera? Or above Ted Lasso’s favourite pub? The residents of the homes made famous by hit TV shows tell all
Half the world recognises the apartment that Carrie Bradshaw lives in. Or the New Jersey mansion where Tony Soprano ate, slept and obsessed over the ducks in his swimming pool. In the 1990s, if you asked a good chunk of the global population where Will Smith lived, they would instantly picture a huge, white abode in Bel Air.
For the real people who call those places home, this can be an issue.
“We had loads of problems with people just walking in during Covid,” says Kate Fox, who lives in a house that featured in British soap Emmerdale, for the years it was filmed entirely in her West Yorkshire village of Esholt. “Somebody actually came and just stuck their head through our front door. Maybe once a month you’ll get somebody opening the door or doing something inappropriate like peeking through your windows. People have no issues about completely invading your space – but you get used to it.”
Public intrusion is a common experience for the residents of TV-famous homes. In 2015, Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, had to urge fans to stop paying homage to his show – because they were recreating a scene where an entire pizza is thrown on to the roof of the house whose exterior was featured as Walter White’s bungalow. And last year, the owner of the apartment made famous by Sex and the City’s lead character erected a gate outside it because “at any hour of the day or night, there are groups of visitors in front of the house taking flash photos, engaging in loud chatter, posting on social media, making TikTok videos or just celebrating the moment”. Eventually, the owners of the Breaking Bad house followed suit, erecting a 6ft iron fence – not that it stopped fans. “They still try to throw pizzas even though she’s got a gate, she’s got signage,” said Frank Sandoval, who runs Breaking Bad tours to the house in an RV. “They even try to climb the gate.”
But not everyone treats the arrival of hordes of fans as a bad thing. “At first, I was confused why they would want to come in,” says Glenda Kenyon, whose place in Barry, south Wales, features in BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey as the home of Stacey’s mum, Gwen. “I just said, no, sorry, I can’t do it. Then the second year I thought, no, I’ve got to change it, so I started opening up.”
Glenda turned her home into a walk-in tribute to the show. It has a collection of memorabilia including fridge magnets, key rings, tea towels and “nearly every T-shirt you can buy”. She’s set up a photo opportunity in the kitchen with the frying pan Gwen uses to cook her infamous omelettes, as well as a face mask of the character visitors can put on. She even ended up partnering on tours with a coach firm, whose “Dave’s Coaches” bus regularly appeared in the show, and another run by Knock-off Nessa – who impersonates Ruth Jones’s character. Last year, she welcomed 168 busloads of people to her home, and it has given her a renewed purpose.
“I was lonely before, so lonely,” says Glenda, who lives alone and has experienced depression. “It has changed my life, because before I was so quiet, and now I can open up. I’m a hell of a lot better than I used to be. When you’re meeting people, you’re not thinking about the depression. I had no friends before, and now I got everybody.”
Having a home that’s famous for being on TV doesn’t just change the life of its owners. If the show is big enough, it can change an entire area – as a pocket of London’s Richmond found out after Ted Lasso was set there. The high-end jewellers and panama hat boutique that line the chi-chi alleyway of the soccer goof’s home are now joined by the Ted Lasso Store, featuring a recreated locker room decked out with a “Believe” poster, and a replica shirt for every player – available to purchase alongside a selection of mugs, scarves and snow globes. Over the road, an Italian restaurant attracts customers with a £5 “Eat like Ted” offer that entitles you to a box of Ted’s favourite shortbread biscuits.
“I didn’t realise it would be such a big deal,” says Reece Kent – who lives above, and is the general manager of, The Prince’s Head pub – Lasso’s regular. “Before I started working here, I was like, OK, we might get a few tourists. But I get 150 to 200 a day. At first it was just people from America, but now it’s Germany, Australia, Japan. I had a couple from Jamaica the other day.”
Richmond is far from the only place this has happened to. Over 37 years, a suburb of Melbourne was thronged by more than a quarter of a million soap opera fans on bus tours, desperate to see the real-life cul-de-sac that moonlighted as Neighbours’ Ramsay Street – resulting in a security guard being permanently stationed there. Esholt had its share of soap fans, too, with regular coach tours turning up. But Richmond is still packed with fans – and the pub has transformed one table into a designated fan area, next to a big AFC Richmond logo, replica shirt and signed pictures of the cast. They’re now the end point of a Lasso tour, which leaves them regularly flooded by big groups of tourists wanting to see the non-existent dartboard that featured in the show, and fiercely competing to sit at the table where Lasso held chats with his footballing assistant coach Beard. There has been one unexpected consequence of it all for Kent, though: needing to convince fans that he didn’t inspire a character in the show, the similarly named Roy Kent.
“A couple of weeks after I started, this tourist came in who’d seen my name on the website and had made all these connections that Roy Kent was based on me,” laughs Kent. “Luckily, after a while, they believed that it was actually based on Roy Keane. I would have loved to be Roy Keane, but I’m not.”
The Prince’s Head pub, the setting of the fictional Crown & Anchor pub in the ‘Ted Lasso’ Apple TV show. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Being confused with a star of the show isn’t the only strange side-effect of having a TV show filmed in your home. “The end of our house had a vet’s waiting room and surgery in when I was growing up,” says Fox, who spent a chunk of her childhood having to pick her way around cables and lights, and being instructed to be as quiet as possible during takes. Until, that is, Emmerdale moved production to a set, and decided to create a mock-up of Fox’s home as one of the highlights of the now-defunct Granada Studios tourist attraction. “So there was an exact copy of my front lounge in a studio. Me and my mum went a few years ago. It was just a bizarre, bizarre place to be.”
Its effect on residents’ finances also doesn’t hurt. “When we were kids we sold tours of the house when my parents were out. We’d charge like 50p and let people have a look around,” says Fox. “I think the tourists liked getting a tour from a child. I never got any complaints!”
The owners of TV-famous homes who want to sell up also have very little to complain about. When the owners of Walter White’s Breaking Bad home eventually tired of fan attention, they sold it for $1.3m – reportedly to a streamer who intends to “treat it like a monument” – not bad compared to the $350-400,000 neighbouring homes are valued at. Esholt has attracted superfans “who have moved here specifically for the Emmerdale connection”, according to Fox. And two of the houses featured in Gavin and Stacey have been bought by superfans recently – one of which was sold very much as seen, because, they said, “To be able to own the original furniture was the cherry on top of the cake for us.”
Having a house associated with TV stars can also work the other way round too. Fox’s family may no longer have their home if it weren’t for the relationship they struck up with an Emmerdale star.
“At one point, Mum and Dad were at risk of losing the house to the council. Leah Bracknell [who played Zoe Tate] contacted the press and said: ‘You need to write about this,’” says Fox. “She’d appear in photos with them as well, and they did end up being allowed to buy the house off the council. We’ve still got all the press clippings now. She was really, really nice.”
A number of the Ted Lasso stars also became fond of their filming locations. According to Kent, “they’d pop in on days they weren’t filming – for lunch or just a drink”, although Lasso himself wasn’t the main culprit. “Jason Sudeikis [who plays Lasso] only popped in once. I had Coach Beard in a couple of times. Dani Rojas was the main one – he’d have lunch and bring friends. They were lovely.”
Despite getting to meet celebs, living somewhere TV famous isn’t for everyone. “People who moved here during filming or since, they really do struggle with the tourists – they think it’s so rude and shocking that people just walk into your house,” says Fox. But, ultimately, for some people, it brings a real sense of happiness – particularly if you’re a fan of the show.
“I was over the moon when I first saw my house on telly. Every time I watch, I’m going: ‘That’s mine! That’s mine!’” says Glenda.
“People tell me that I’ve put Barry on the map and I do feel like that’s true. I’ve had people from India, Africa, New Zealand, Swindon – you name it, I’ve had them. I’m very proud. I’ve done something in my life I can be happy about.”
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