“This is the coolest place. It’s actually a public park, and what’s so amazing about it is that it’s full of kangaroos—hundreds of them. You just have to be prepared with the right shoes because there’s a lot of kangaroo poop. If you walk deeper into the woodsy part, that’s where we shot Axis Mundi. There are wonderful and weird water features and these thin trees. We were looking for similar topography that had been established in Season 1, when we shot in Vancouver.”

“Once they land on Skull Island, what we’re seeing is this spectacular beach in Australia. It’s a famous surf spot. But the waves were so strong that we weren’t able to put the cast in inflatables and make a beach landing there, even with stunt people. So we just cut to the rafts on the sand. But that whole walk along the sand is on this beautiful beach, which people visit frequently.”

“This is a private property with a real variety of landscapes. So there’s big, open grassy areas where we could have sleeping Kong. One of the great challenges was finding places big enough for our digital giant creatures—we had to have true scale. This area also had this spectacular old-growth forest. The way light moved through the trees had this ancient feeling that made it perfect for our Skull Island adventure.”

“This reservoir is the main source of fresh water for the Gold Coast. All of the Santa Soledad scenes were shot here. It was amazing that we were able to shoot there because of the environmental restrictions. We weren’t allowed to use anything that had oil or gasoline. Our brilliant production designer Caroline Hanania built this mythical village with nontoxic, sustainable materials. Then our team distressed the set for present-day scenes. You can also visit as a tourist and hike.”

"Shooting here had to be done guerrilla-style because it's unbelievably busy. There's no way you could control the traffic or even get a permit. Our cameraman hid a camera in his jacket, someone had a handheld light, and Kurt Russell went incognito in a baseball cap. We also created a ring of our own extras around the leads. Then there was another camera shooting from a building above. Hiromi Kamata did a great job directing the chaos of that. It was pressurized but so exciting."

“This is a real Japanese bar on the Gold Coast, run by Japanese people. In the show, it’s supposed to be set in Tokyo. We changed the decor to make it look less tasteful, with kitschy artwork. This place is a callback to Season 1. It’s supposed to be a spot that Kentaro once loved but has become a cheesy tourist bar. So we made it look as if your favorite local dive turned into a cheap chain, but Japanese-style.”

“This sanctuary took abused and overworked elephants and brought them to this wonderful place where they roam and are rehabilitated. You can feed and pet them. The day of shooting, they took the elephants away so they wouldn’t get anxious, but we got to walk with them and feed them. They’re very intelligent, sensitive creatures. You really do feel a sense of communication and connection with them.”

“This is the scene when Tim, May, and the team get on inflatable rafts and make landfall at Skull Island. The whole journey is along these limestone karsts, which are magnificent. There’s something really ancient and awesome about this place; it felt very primordial, very Skull Island. It’s popular for tourists to take boats out to these islands and do day trips. We got in the water and swam a little bit too. We were pinching ourselves all day because we literally felt like we were in paradise.”

“We hiked up to these incredible cascading waterfalls to shoot Tim and May’s adventure. We shot in the pool between two levels of waterfalls. It’s part of a national park and you can hike to it, and it’s pretty slippery and treacherous but so beautiful. On our first day shooting there, monks came and blessed our production with a ceremony and prayers. It was lovely.”

“This incredibly delicious local seafood restaurant is run by women in a remote little village, and they serve phenomenal meals according to Halal standards. And on the other side of the riverbank are hundreds of monkeys roaming around. They were shouting at us while we were eating. We were just there stopping to eat between location scouts but fell in love with it. So it’s featured at the end of episode 10.”

“Here was our opportunity to do a classic Godzilla moment, with people running through Shinjuku. It’s about finding a spot in the landscape where, if you were looking up, there’s a spot between buildings where something of Godzilla size could actually appear. So it was about creating enough negative space. We had the best time while shooting in Tokyo. Ren Watabe [who plays Kentaro] curated a list for us and sent us to his favorite restaurants and shops.”

“We shot this in Australia, but it’s meant to be Florida. We redressed it like an American dive bar—this is where Shaw gets into the bar fight. We situated it there because the street outside the bar has a Florida kind of feel, and we had to shoot all these exterior scenes of their hijinks going in and out, running along the street and into a van. But they drive on the other side of the road in Australia, so we had to reverse traffic and get American vehicles. It wasn’t easy.”