'Prodigal Son' films at LI's Marshall Field house
Tom Payne stars in the Fox series "Prodigal Son," which filmed in Lloyd Harbor this week. Credit: Fox / Phil Caruso
The Fox investigative drama "Prodigal Son" has shot on Long Island for a second time this season, spending Monday to Wednesday at the Marshall Field III Main House in Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve, in Lloyd Harbor.
"I've scouted that state park maybe three or four times in the past five years — I always have it in the back of my head," says location manager Morgan Roche. "It's such a beautiful location. It looks over the sound. You can see to Connecticut from the house — it's just stunning." But with the state-owned mansion not normally open to the public, "It's got a really great quality of old-school glamour that's also a little creepy."
That, she says, fits the aesthetic of the show, which finds disgraced FBI profiler Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), the son of incarcerated serial killer Dr. Martin "The Surgeon" Whitly (Michael Sheen), assisting the NYPD on homicide cases that could benefit from Bright's insight into the minds of killers. "We tend to take people to places where murders happen and have that great visual element," says the Pittsburgh-raised Roche, 39. "It's beautiful but … ," she adds puckishly.
The episode, the 12th of this current second season, allows a rare glimpse inside the Gilded Age mansion of businessman Field, heir to the department store chain Marshall Field's, which Macy's absorbed in 2006. "You'll get to see the front foyer, which is this really cool circular room," says Roche. Beyond it is "a sunroom with these floor-to-ceiling French doors, I think five sets of them, out to the back of the house, which then looks out over the sound. We had a drone unit, too, so you see this huge aerial shot of the house and all the property."
The shoot featured some of the series' principals, as well as "one of our big-name guest stars," says Roche, whose credits include Netflix's "Daredevil," "The Punisher" and other Marvel Comics TV series.
"Prodigal Son" had filmed nearby in December, at a manor home on Cold Spring Road in Laurel Hollow that doubled as an etiquette school in the season's fifth episode, "Bad Manners."
The series, which premiered its second season in January and has aired seven episodes through March 2, returns April 13.
