As Netflix’s The Circle continues to engross audiences, many viewers are left wondering where the show is actually filmed. The reality series focuses on a group of people who move into a building and are cut off from the outside world, only communicating with one another through a social media app called The Circle. The participants can choose to be themselves or to create a false persona. It’s Big Brother meets Catfish.

Despite the setting for The Circle being a dystopian future, the producers have taken pains to keep things as real as possible. This has included filming in various locations around the US. The film shoot crew has utilized key areas in California such as the Art Center College of Design, Manhattan Beach, Angeles Crest Highway, Altadena, and the Golden Gate Bridge to portray eerily realistic technology offices, corporate headquarters, and other settings.

The apartment building where The Circle is filmed in the US is also used by the British version of the show. The production team has tried to hide the fact that it’s in Salford, England by incorporating aerial shots of Milwaukee and Chicago into the show. Harcourt told Vulture in January 2020 that the establishing shots and even the food featured on The Circle are meant to feel very American for the show’s US audience.

As for the apartment building, it’s always prepared with twelve fully furnished and ready-to-use apartments for the players to live in. The rooms are fitted with cameras and television screens. There’s even a room that’s referred to as the “testimony room” where blocked players go to record goodbye videos to their fellow competitors. The rest of the production team works in a room across the courtyard from the apartments in an old university campus building.