Madeline’s Real Estate Office from “Big Little Lies”

I try to keep things positive on this blog, but, man, Sunday night’s Big Little Lies finale was an epic disappointment!  The entire season was hugely lackluster, truth be told, which is especially frustrating considering the outright perfection of Season 1.  I will contend that the first few episodes started out semi-promising, but the show quickly made an about-face, jumping the shark not long after Renata Klein’s (Laura Dern) “I will not NOT be rich!” jailhouse proclamation.  My friend Jennifer summed things up perfectly when she messaged me Monday morning saying, “This entire season felt like it was a bunch of shots composed of the following: the same flashbacks over and over again; waves; shaky cam footage with low-to-no sound; driving shots.  That was the meat and potatoes of the season, and the dessert was the one or two shots each episode that didn’t fall into those categories.”  The locations proved just as mediocre as the rest of the season (again, especially disappointing considering those of S1), but I still have quite a few left in my arsenal to blog about including the real estate office where Madeline Martha Mackenzie (Reese Witherspoon) worked.  So here goes!

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  The supposed Monterey-area Sotheby’s where Madeline is employed first appeared in Season 2’s premiere, “What Have They Done?”  (How Madeline went from being the director of a community theater in Season 1 to a real estate agent in Season 2 was never explained – like so many of the other changes made – but I guess that is beside the point.)

I did not recognize the office when initially watching the episode the night it aired back in June, but while scanning through it the following morning on the hunt for locales, I noticed the bright green and orange coloring of its exterior, shown fleetingly as Madeline walks inside, and knew immediately that filming had taken place at Hotel Shirley in Sierra Madre.

Thanks to my many visits to Sierra Madre when I lived in nearby Pasadena, I have long been familiar with the two-story structure, which is a focal point of the city’s quaint downtown.

Though one of the area’s Historical Landmarks, oddly, I could not find much information about Hotel Shirley’s background online.

Per the sign displayed out front, the building dates back to 1889 when it served as the headquarters of Hawks & Copps Real Estate and Insurance.  In 1911, it was rebuilt as Hotel Shirley, a lodging for visitors to Mt. Wilson described by newspapers of the day as an “ideal summer resort in the mountains” boasting “fine cuisine” as well as having “no fleas or mosquitoes” – always a plus.  In later years, the property became everything from a church meeting hall to a grocer to a house of ill repute before finally being purchased by local realtor Judy Webb-Martin in 1994.  She set about restoring the structure to operate, in part, as her brokerage firm, a project which took five years to complete.  Being that Hawks & Copps was the city’s first real estate office, the site really has come full circle.  You can check out a short video Judy put together about the building’s provenance, which is where the black and white still below comes from, here.

Big Little Lies made use of the north side of Hotel Shirley’s lower level which, in real life, is home to the Sierra Madre outpost of the Deasy Penner Podley brokerage firm.

I ran out to stalk the place shortly after its appearance in “What Have They Done?” and was thrilled to be wholeheartedly welcomed by the agents present, all of whom expressed my same affinity for the show.  How exciting it must have been for them to witness a beloved series come to life right before their very eyes in their very workspace and to share the same air with such esteemed stars as Witherspoon, Dern, and Meryl-freaking-Streep!  My new friends even allowed me to take pictures of the office’s interior and showed me exactly where filming had taken place!

As you can imagine, I was like a kid in a candy store, snapping away!

Deasy Penner Podley is also where Renata rants to Madeline about Otter Bay Elementary School Principal Warren Nippal (P.J. Byrne) in the episode titled “The End of the World.”  According to the employees I spoke with, the office’s actual furnishings were used in the shoot, though the site has since been remodeled slightly with the black desks swiped out for natural wood versions and the back wall painted green instead of blue.  Several pieces were also moved out for the shoot to give the space more openness, but otherwise, it is very recognizable from its onscreen appearance.

The Deasy Penner Podley agents also informed me that a third scene was shot at the office, but like so much of the footage from Season 2, it wound up on the cutting room floor.

Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood website, I learned that Hotel Shirley is visible in the background of the 1956 drama Strange Intruder in the scene in which Paul Quentin (Edmund Purdom) catches a bus to leave town.  (That’s it in the top left of both screen captures below.)

The Hotel can also briefly be seen in the Season 1 episode of Camping titled “Going to Town,” which aired in 2018.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking ! 

Stalk It: Deasy Penner Podley, aka Madeline’s real estate office from Big Little Lies, is located on the bottom level of Hotel Shirley at 30 North Baldwin Avenue in Sierra Madre.  The Starbucks where Tori Bachman (Sarah Sokolovic) propositioned Ed Mackenzie (Adam Scott) in the episode titled “The Bad Mother” and where Renata lashed out at Mary Louise Wright (Streep) in “I Want to Know” can be found across the street at 1 Kersting Court.  And Mother Moo Creamery, where Madeline runs into Mary Louise in “Kill Me” – and where she was supposed to throw an ice cream cone at her -is up the road at 17 Kersting Court.