'Schmigadoon!' cast gushes about 'breathtaking,' 'beautiful' British Columbia
"It's a breathtaking city and the people are wonderful," Keegan-Michael Key said about filming the Apple TV+ series in Vancouver
We've reached the last episode of the Apple TV+ musical hit Schmigadoon! Season 2, with Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) finally able to leave Schmicago for the real world.
But in this reality, the world of Schmigadoon! is actually British Columbia, with both seasons of the series filmed in Canada.
"I saw a lot more bears than I'd ever seen in my life," Cecily Strong told Yahoo Canada about her time in Coquitlam, B.C., specifically. "I didn't know about the bears, so now I can brag about being ... a bear person."
"The scenery is unreal. ... Driving home and looking out at water and mountains and the clouds, it was like, I can't believe that's just my view on the way home."
"Vancouver by the way, downtown Vancouver especially, is breathtaking," Keegan-Michael Key added. "It's a breathtaking city and the people are wonderful. ... I've shot there a few times and ... I love it."
Aaron Tveit echoed Strong and Key's admiration for Canada in a separate interview.
“I've worked and traveled all over Canada, I love Canada,” Tveit said. “I did Rent on tour in Vancouver in 2004 and I had not been there between then and 2020, when we shot the first season.”
“The city has just exploded in that amount of time but it's a wonderful place to work and film, and the industry there is so entrenched. [It’s] always great to go somewhere where there's just amazing technicians and crew, that makes such a huge difference in a production.”
As Dove Cameron explained, when the Schmigadoon! cast was filming Season 1, much of Canada was locked down, so the cast didn't have very many opportunities to explore B.C., or even spend time with each other.
"I keep joking, Aaron and I really didn't really get to know each other at all until Season 2," Cameron said.
"But there was one moment in the finale of Season 1 where we exchanged a glance and [co-creator Cinco Paul] was like, there's a storyline there. I think that's how our storyline came to be. It's the one moment we were on together.”
Broadway star Ann Harada highlighted that on their days off in Season 2, some of the cast would get together and hike mountains and take walks down to the water.
“I'm from Hawaii and it really reminded me of Hawaii, even though not climate wise, but you have mountains, you have water, you have everything you kind of want visually and spiritually,” Harada said.
“Plus, the food's incredible. I just love that there's such a huge Asian population there and that I could just walk down the street and get anything I kind of craved because it's all there. I just feel like that town is so walkable and lovely."
For B.C. residents, you might even see more of Jaime Camil in the future.
“First season [my wife and I] stayed 75 days in Vancouver for a 15-day work shoot,” Camil said. “My wife told me, 'if we need to move from Los Angeles I would move to Vancouver.' She loves it. … Oh my god, what a beautiful city.”
