The Tate Mansion from “Soap”

I have a pretty amazing memory, especially when it comes to things most people find useless, such as filming locations and movie quotes.  I’m like a vault.  Or an elephant.  Once something enters my brain, it locks in and I don’t forget it.  So I was shocked when I received an email a couple of weeks back from a fellow stalker named Andrew who wanted some assistance in tracking down the mansion belonging to the Tate family on Soap.  My parents and I watched the 1977 ABC series religiously during my childhood years and The Major (Arthur Peterson) is still one of my favorite television characters of all time.  I mean, a guy who regularly walks around with a stuffed dog that he thinks is still alive tends to stay with you.  Somewhere along the way, though, I inexplicably forgot about the show and upon moving to L.A., never thought to look for any of its locations.  So I was thrilled to receive Andrew’s email and immediately told him I was up to the task!

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At the time I began the hunt, I had no recollection whatsoever of what the Tate residence looked like, so I did a Google search for “the Soap mansion” and was led to this image of a Tudor-style dwelling that someone had snapped on the Dearly Departed tour.  Now Dearly Departed is run by my friend Scott Michaels and while I could have easily emailed him for the address, I figured finding the pad on my own would be a snap due to the fact that, because of its stately appearance, I was 99.9% certain it was located in Hancock Park.  After quite a bit of time poking around the area, though, I came up completely empty-handed and started to doubt my instincts.  So I sent a message to Scott and he wrote back immediately with an answer.  As it turns out, the Soap mansion is located in Hancock Park – at 511 South Muirfield Road to be exact.  While I was glad to know my hunch was correct, I was at a loss as to how I missed the place during my searching.  So thank you, Scott, for leading me to the right spot!

The Grim Cheaper and I headed over to stalk the manse while visiting L.A. two weeks ago and I could not have been more excited to see it in person.

I was floored to discover that very little of the 8-bedroom, 6-bath, 7,426-square-foot property, which sits on 0.41 acres, has been altered in the 36 years since Soap has been off the air.  (Please pardon the low-res screen captures featured in this post.  I purchased the series on DVD, but unfortunately the discs will not play on my computer.  They will play on my regular DVD player, though, so I was forced to snap photographs of my television screen in lieu of making screen grabs.  Guerilla blogging at its finest!)

As you can see, the 1929 estate, which was said to be located in Dunn’s River, Connecticut on the series, aka a “neighborhood known as ‘Rich’,” looks exactly the same today as it did onscreen when the show first premiered in 1977.

Soap is not the only production to have been lensed at the handsome brick property. The site portrayed the home of Olivia McKenna (Melissa Newman) in the 1982 horror film One Dark Night.  (Huge thank you to Scott Michaels for providing the screen captures below.)

Ian Gallagher (Cameron Monaghan) and Mickey Milkovich (Noel Fisher) robbed the residence in the Season 3 episode of Shameless titled “The Sins of my Caretaker,” which aired in 2012.  The Tate mansion was only used for exterior shots in the episode, though.  A house around the corner at 434 South Rossmore was utilized for interiors.  You can check out what the inside of the Tate dwelling actually looks like here.

The property masked as a church in the Season 1 episode of Grace and Frankie titled “The Funeral,” which aired in 2015.

The residence’s interior was also featured quite extensively in the episode.

The interior of the mansion appeared very briefly as the home of Rose Brady (Rosemarie DeWitt) in the pilot of the new Amazon series The Last Tycoon, which is the only episode of the show that has yet to air.

According to OnLocationVacations, The Last Tycoon has filmed at the residence several times over the past few months, so you can expect to see it pop up regularly as future episodes are released.

In the Season 2 episode of the Netflix series Love titled “Back in Town,” which aired in 2017, one of the mansion’s rooms masqueraded as a therapist’s office.

The estate portrayed Denny’s (Donal Logue) house in the Season 1 episode of The Unicorn titled “The Client,” which aired in 2020.

And it is currently being featured as the home of Elena Richardson (Reese Witherspoon) and her family on Little Fires Everywhere.  Of choosing the property for the Hulu series, production designer Jessica Kender told Architectural Digest, “We saw this big beautiful Tudor-esque house built in the 1920s.  It was in this little pocket on top of a hill with a fountain in the middle.  Everything about it read very old money, it has this beautifully moneyed perfection type of vibe.”  And don’t worry – the mansion wasn’t really burned down for the shoot.  Instead, producers had the facade re-created inside of a soundstage for the fire scenes.

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Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Andrew for asking me to track down this location and to Scott Michaels, of the Find a Death website and the Dearly Departed tour company, for finding it! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 

Stalk It: The Tate mansion from Soap is located at 511 South Muirfield Road in Hancock Park.