In the new Netflix movie “Dangerous Lies,” Camila Mendes plays a caregiver who is shocked when her employer dies and leaves his big old house in Chicago to her. I was curious about the house, which looked familiar to me, so I did a little digging to learn more about it.
The first thing I learned was that the house isn’t really in Chicago. No surprise there, of course. As with many productions these days, including Camila Mendes’s popular TV show “Riverdale,” this one was filmed in Vancouver, aka “Hollywood North.”
The second interesting thing I learned was that they shot it on location inside this house, instead of building separate sets for the interiors. And that’s when I figured out why I felt like I had seen it before. Two years ago I featured another show that filmed inside the same house. (This is the kind of discovery I get ridiculously excited about, ha.)
Keep reading for all the photos and details about it!
Note that the post may include some minor spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie yet.
The House from the Movie “Dangerous Lies” on Netflix
“Dangerous Lies” is about a young married couple named Katie and Adam (Camila Mendes and Jessie T. Usher) struggling to make ends meet. He’s a grad student and she works as an in-home caretaker for an 88-year-old man named Leonard.
She’s only been on the job for four months when she finds him dead. Before the police arrive, her husband Adam does some snooping in the house and discovers a large trunk filled with cash. Noting that Leonard had no family or friends who would miss the money, they can’t resist keeping some of it for themselves.
They’re later stunned to learn that Leonard left everything to Katie in his will. It seems like good news at first, but they soon realize that the house is hiding more secrets than just that stash of cash.
Although the story takes place in Chicago, the real house where they filmed is
at 127 Queens Avenue in New Westminster, British Columbia, and is known as Nelson’s Folly.
According to the New Westminster Heritage Preservation Society:
The first owner of this eponymous elegant estate was Westminster Brewery owner, Nels Nelson. Situated on a large, beautifully landscaped corner lot, the design of the house features many elements which are typical of the Prairie Style, including a low pitched, hipped roof with wide overhanging eaves for a strong horizontal emphasis. The grouped, classical column porch supports frame a graceful entry.
The blog Tenth to the Fraser has more information about the original owner of Nelson’s Folly:
The most successful brewer in New Westminster was Nels Nelson, a Danish immigrant who first arrived and worked in Victoria breweries. In about 1882 Nelson moved to New Westminster and became brew master at the City Brewery.
After it became the Westminster Brewery, he bought and expanded it in the 1890s. Nelson was one of the first in Canada to use glass bottles sometimes instead of beer kegs or barrels.
During the great fire of 1898, Nels quickly brought out fire hoses and used brewery water to protect modern new machinery while the building burned around it.
The Redfin Listing page for the house reports that it last sold for $400,000 in 1988. I imagine it’s worth a lot more than that today!
When I saw this shot of the entry hall from the upstairs landing (below),
I realized why the interiors of the house looked so familiar:
The interiors of this house were used for the new “Charmed” reboot on The CW!
Here’s the same entry hall shot from a similar angle in the pilot episode of that show (below):
The Parlor of the House in “Dangerous Lies:”
At the beginning of the movie, Katie’s a waitress at the Smile Diner, which is supposed to be
on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s a real restaurant in Vancouver.
All the interiors were reportedly filmed on location inside the house.
The Same Parlor in “Charmed:”
Leonard’s Study:
Elliott Gould, who was Ross and Monica’s dad on “Friends,” plays the kindly old gentleman in “Dangerous Lies” who lived his entire life in this house and loved it too much to leave.
He tells Katie that he hired a gardener a couple of years ago, but one day he stopped showing up.
Hm. I’m sure that guy just moved on and found another job. He’s probably fine.
According to Redfin, the house was built in 1913.
It has 7 bedrooms, 7 baths, and a whopping 10,000 square feet.
The Kitchen:
We Saw the Same Kitchen on “Charmed:”
The first time I saw this kitchen on “Charmed” I thought it had a quirky layout for a TV show.
Now I know why — because it was a real kitchen in an historic house with original details!
In this shot from “Dangerous Lies” you can see the back staircase to the left (below):
The Entry Hall and Staircase:
The Same Staircase on “Charmed:”
From what I can tell, they shot the pilot episode of “Charmed” inside this house in 2018.
After the show was picked up to series, they recreated the look of the rooms on a soundstage.
Upstairs Landing:
This upstairs landing gave me flashbacks to the one in the Keyhouse on “Locke & Key,”
so I had to pull up the photos from that show to compare the two:
It had a similar layout but wasn’t quite as grand as the one in “Dangerous Lies.”
I loved that house, too. You can read my post about it and see the photos of Keyhouse there.
The Bedroom in the “Dangerous Lies” House:
I was totally swooning over the bedroom fireplace. That tile!
The movie was originally going to be called “Windfall,” and I think that title would’ve been better than “Dangerous Lies,” which is so generic I keep forgetting it. I wish Netflix would run these things by me first…
BTW, they used a different exterior for the house in the “Charmed” reboot on The CW:
In yet another fun twist, the exterior of the new “Charmed” house
previously appeared in the series “The Witches of East End:”
You can read all about it and see the photos of it in my post about the “Charmed” reboot.
It was fun to see the same rooms but inside this different (real) exterior.
According to The Cinemaholic:
The Hollywood in the North has been a popular location for the streaming service as several Netflix originals have been shot here. It serves as the background for films and TV shows like “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,” “Altered Carbon,” “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” and many more.
Camila Mendes, who plays the lead role of Katie in “Dangerous Lies,” also appears in one of the leading roles in hit teen drama “Riverdale,” which is also filmed in Vancouver.
These photos are all screenshots I took while watching the movie on Netflix.
Have you seen it yet? What did you think of the ending? I’m still scratching my head over the whole thing. Either they failed to tie up some loose ends or I missed something! But maybe I was just too distracted by the house…
Looking for a house from a favorite TV show or movie?
Visit my Houses Onscreen page to see all the others I’ve featured, listed A-Z,
including the mansion from Locke & Key.
