Sharp Objects starring Amy Adams: On location at the Crellin Estate

The Sharp Objects Home: Gothic and Gorgeous

Earlier this week, we looked at Barnesville, GA, which stands in for Wind Gap, Missouri in Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams. 

If you go wandering to Barnesville for a look-see what you won’t find is Adora’s gorgeous Gothic home. The gated mansion sits thousands of miles away in the Redwood Valley area of Mendocino County in California.

The Sharp Objects house: 11535 East Rd, Redwood Valley, CA 95470

The show’s location manager Gregory Alpert told Vulture that director Jean-Marc Vallée “had very specific marching orders for the mansion: “I want a house that if someone was screaming, you would never hear them.” 

Alpert was sent photos of the house by the Mendocino County film commission; 

the 7500 square foot five bedroom, four bathroom home is boasts a foyer with a staircase, formal living and dining rooms, a gourmet kitchen, a breakfast room, a family room, and a home office. The 1,700-acre ranch also features its own nature preserve and 24 miles of road. The $6.2 million home had just been purchased as a retirement property. 

“Once I drove off the county road, the driveway itself is about a mile long,” Alpert said. “As I was driving up and the house exposed itself to me, I had one of those epiphany moments that, unfortunately, are few and far between. Oh my God! That’s the Crellin estate! I just fell in love with it. I did this quick 30-second video where I stood in front of it and did a 360-panorama and when I finally showed it to Jean-Marc, he went, ‘Boom! That’s it!’”

The then-yellow house was painted the more traditional Victorian blue-green color which I just adore. Vulture reports production tracked down the original painter.

“We were up against the clock and we didn’t want to bring out giant cranes,” Alpert said. “You had to put scaffolding precariously placed on some of the tiles. By tracking down the original painter, it gave comfort to the homeowner. We gave him two choices of traditional colors and he picked one with the understanding that we would leave the color.”

 The main gate, fence and some landscaping were all added. 

Now ... about all those mysterious rooms that lay upstairs, Amy’s bedroom with the deep bathtub, Marion’s room kept in pristine shape like a shrine ... none of that is inside the house. In fact, no one from the production ever saw the inside of the home, contractually they were limited to exteriors only! Production designer John Paino and his team—construction guys, set decorators—built the entire interior of the house on a soundstage here in Los Angeles... including some exteriors.

The foyer and that wallpaper you've been salivating over

“The house, although nice, didn’t have any of the grandeur that our set did,” Alpert said. “Any time you see Amy or Patricia walk in and out of a door, that was the extent of it. We were never inside the house.”

Camille's stepdad tinkering with that damn sound system

*Not that Adora’s husband—such a vapid, seemingly emotionless character I can never remember his name—would hear a thing anyway, deaf to the world as he is, muffled in his headphones. That’s an $80,000 stereo system he has installed in there by the way.

I feel like everyone I know is watching Sharp Objects. Are you? It’s not too late to catch up with previous episodes before watching Episode 4 tonight! Can not wait.