“I just feel very lucky that we got to film here”

Published on 09 October 2026

While those who live in Waitaki know what a great place it is, its reputation as a uniquely beautiful part of New Zealand is being spread worldwide by the cast and crew of Netflix’s smash hit East of Eden series.

In a video released by the New Zealand Film Commission and Netflix this week the region, and Oamaru’s Heritage Precinct came in for special praise from the show’s stars and production team.

Florence Pugh, who plays a star role as Cathy Ames, said, “New Zealand, it really felt like a perfect match – it’s such a beautiful place, the people are amazing, the culture is amazing. The respect to ancestry and the land is something that I just want to take forward into my life every day”.

The welcome the cast and crew received from local iwi at filming locations was a treasured memory for Mike Faist, who plays Charles Trask, “One of the greatest things we got to experience before we started was a whakatau ceremony, where the rightful owners of the land – the Maori tribe – welcomed us to a ceremony where they blessed us and allowed us to use the land for the sake of what we were doing here. It was quite an emotional experience”

Otago’s natural landscape and historic architecture cared for by the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust  was also highlighted by the Production Designer Grant Major, “We filmed in a beautiful part of the country in the South Island, it was the landscape that brought us there” and the show’s Director Garth Davis “It just has that epic scope, and its relatively untouched as well. There’s still some very old towns with period with period architecture.”

Zoe Kazan Co-Showrunner, Writer and Executive Producer – whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed James Dean in the 1955 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel about good and evil in America summed up her experience, “I just feel very lucky that we got to film here”

ENDS

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