The next Netflix series set to grip viewers hits screens this week and is likely unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent, the six-part Eric was created by Abi Morgan (The Split) and charts every parents worst nightmare.
One day the unimaginable happens when Vincent and wife Cassie’s (Gaby Hoffmann) nine-year-old son Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) goes missing on his way to school in 1980s New York.
After his son disappears, puppeteer Vincent becomes convinced that if he can create a puppet for his Sesame Street-style TV show that Edgar designed called Eric, then his son will return home.
‘This is a story about people finding their home. Whether it’s a child, a homeless person, a gay Black cop, a wife in an unhappy marriage, or even Eric on the show, it’s all about finding a place,’ the actor previously said.
Filmed between New York and Budapest, before the show hits screens, here’s everything we know about the locations where cameras rolled to bring this story to life.
Where is Netflix’s Eric filmed?
Production Eric began in February last year, with the show being filmed between Budapest and New York.
Director Lucy Forbes explained what it was like filming most of the series in the Hungarian capital during a recent Q&A.
‘We lived there for about six or seven months,’ she explained.
While they used a backlot which was built in 2008, buildings across the city were also utilised.
‘[We had] so many amazing things available to us it had this huge underground network of sort of beer tunnels which we shot all the sort of underground stuff,’ she explained.
The show highlights the issue of homelessness in the 80s in New York, which is what the underground tunnels were used for.
‘Budapest had really interesting architecture and sort of felt reminiscent of the time period,’ she added.
Abi then said sharing the character of New York on screen was also an exciting prospect.
‘I think for me growing up in the 80s I was, you know, it was Snoopy and it was McDonald’s, and I remember when that first came to town, when I went to New York, they really were big yellow taxis,’ she said.
‘And I think we’re playing with that kind of iconography and the sort of circulation of those TV shows, but also the kind of way we sort of revere that bright coloured beautiful Central Park world of good day sunshine.’
As Gaby said, the first time she walked into her character’s apartment which was on a soundstage in Budapest she cried.
‘It was it was so moving because it looked like my apartment. It wasn’t as nice as that. But it felt so familiar and the static and a real I just, I started crying,’ she shared.
‘There’s so many worlds to build,’ Lucy then explained.
‘We got to create a New York club scene in 1980s. We’ve got to create a puppet show. We got to create the tunnels underground. And then on top of that, I got to work with these incredible, incredible actors with this amazing writer. It was just an incredibly creative, rewarding time for me.’
What is Eric’s Netflix release date?
Eric will be released on Netflix on Thursday May 30, with all six episodes available to stream on the day.
Is Netflix’s Eric a true story?
Although the series isn’t specifically based on a true story, creator Abi recently explained how growing up she was ‘haunted by those stories of children who had gone missing’.
‘I think growing up in the UK in the ’80s, I remember being haunted by those stories of children who had gone missing, and then when I went to New York, I looked after a young boy in New York in the mid-’80s,’ she told Radio Times.
‘While I was out there, I saw the milk carton kids and the missing persons. So that has always been very haunting.’
Speaking about the inspiration behind the cases explored in Eric, she continued: ‘I don’t think it was ever based on one specific case, but I think in choosing to go back to that time, I wanted to go back to that very vivid period in history where, obviously, there were those cases.
‘But in many ways, it was more a kind of shout-out to those cities where kids can go missing. At the heart of the show is Vincent’s belief that ‘I want to live in a world where a child goes out into the world and can come home safe.’
She added that was ‘the kind of callout at the centre of the show’, that all people ‘want to live in that world…but unfortunately, there are monsters in the most surprising places’.
Abi then said the quest for a father to find his son was at the heart of her series, as well as the story of a man who had to confront the monsters in himself and the city he calls home.
Eric is streaming from Thursday on Netflix.
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