At the corner of Franklin and Columbia streets is one of Chapel Hill’s iconic restaurants, Top of the Hill, also known as TOPO. Before filming at Carolina, Han brought her production team to campus three times and chose TOPO for lunch so the production team could get a “feel” for campus. With its high street view, you can see much of Franklin Street in both directions, and you truly do get a good feel for the town we all love so much.

One of the fraternity houses in Fraternity Court was used as Jeremiah’s frat house in several scenes, like playing football out front and playing video games inside with Redbird.

Welcome to the Carolina Inn! Built in 1924, it’s been a campus mainstay and has welcomed visitors for over a century. Known for its timeless charm and warm Southern hospitality, the Inn remains a favorite for alumni and families and is full of activity during football weekends and Commencement.

The Carolina Inn is also the hotel where Han, Lola Tung, Christopher Briney, Gavin Casalegno, Rain Spencer and other stars from the show stayed while they filmed on campus. Students and visitors frequently saw the cast on golf carts going from the hotel to the scenes they were filming. The Carolina Inn exterior is also shown as the location where Laurel and John Conklin are attending a conference.

Welcome to Finch College! This is where Belly is driving into campus with her family for move-in in the opening scene of season three. During the move-in scene, you see the Finch College plaque on the stone columns coming into campus. Those plaques were made a little bigger than our current plaques so that the Finch plaques could slip over them. When Han came to look at the set, she asked the art team to tarnish the plaques more because they looked too new for a 234-year-old university.

Hill Hall is home to Carolina’s music department. The Hill Hall lobby is where props were stored that the extras were asked to carry in their scenes, including books, backpacks, water bottles and volleyballs. Each extra was assigned a number with correlating props. They were instructed to carry their items however they wanted and to remember how they held those items so that they looked the same in every take.

The auditorium off Hill Hall’s Rotunda staged all extras during the three-day filming. While many of the extras were Carolina students, quite a few extras came from outside our campus.

Much of the behind-the-scenes activity took place in the Hill Hall parking lot. This is where the large production trucks were parked. The entire lot was shut down for a week so production could move in all the props and store them during the filming. These props included move-in supplies, bikes for the scenes at Old West and Belly and Conrad’s cars.

At the end of filming, everything was packed and you never would have known that a production was filmed on campus, except more than 60 five-gallon water jugs that were left for the University. With triple-digit July heat, the production crew joked that they never drank so much water.

Hill Hall also served as the background for the famous bench scene. Belly walked down this path and looked to this area before having a flashback of her and Jeremiah sitting on a bench. Contrary to popular belief, the bench was not a Carolina bench but was built by the production’s art department specifically for this scene, but it would have fit in nicely on our campus! Next to Hill Hall is Person Hall; both locations were used to stage the crew and extras during filming. While Person Hall was mainly used as an area to reapply make-up, all of Hill Hall and its parking lot were used to store everything needed for filming.

Pettigrew Hall is home to the UNC-Chapel Hill Office of Scholarships and Student Aid, but for Finch College, it is the study abroad office and is seen in episode two when Belly calls her mom and shares the news that she got into the study abroad program in Paris. Belly asks her mom to send her birth certificate, but Laurel says that she can’t because she is at a conference. This conference, coincidentally, was filmed at the Carolina Inn. So technically, Laurel was only about a half a mile away from Belly during that phone call.

Over on Franklin Street toward the Post Office Building, you can also see the area where a scene for episode five was filmed. This scene showed Belly trying to fit a lot of things she was carrying on her bicycle. Conrad noticed her struggling to hold everything and turned around to offer her a ride. So technically, the Chapel Hill Post Office is part of Cousins Beach. A cool cameo, we think!

Graham Memorial is a favorite campus spot for studying because of its grand lounge that looks like a giant living room. While Graham Memorial lounge wasn’t filmed in “TSITP,” Lola, Gavin, Christopher, Jenny, Rain and Sean all hung out in this space between takes to touch up their makeup and take a break from the heat. Graham Memorial lounge also has ties to another film production that took place on campus. In the summer of 1998, part of UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus turned into the fictional Virginia Medical University for the filming of “Patch Adams,” starring Robin Williams. This room was transformed into what it is today to represent an office for the chancellor.

One of the most notable scenes filmed in the third season took place in McCorkle Place, the oldest part of our campus. After Belly learns that Jeremiah cheated on her, she strolls through McCorkle Place and has several flashbacks to memories with Jeremiah. The sidewalk in McCorkle Place is the spot for the flashback of Belly and Jeremiah dancing together at night. Han wanted this scene to feel fun and light and asked that Lola and Gavin dance together in different styles for 15 minutes. Lola and Gavin did every dance from the chicken dance to salsa, but Han ultimately chose the twirl and lift dance that you see in the show. To create the right setting for this scene, the production team waited until 10 p.m., when it was completely dark, changed the lightbulbs in the light posts and hosed down the walkway to enhance the visual quality.

The other scene filmed in McCorkle Place is Belly and Jeremiah walking across campus and Jeremiah running into his fraternity brother playing hacky sack.

Old West is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Two main scenes were filmed here. One is when Taylor comes out of Belly’s dorm, running into Jeremiah after trying to check in on Belly and yelling at Jeremiah for cheating. The second scene is when Belly and Anika walk on campus and run into Lacey, who is standing over at the bike racks. An interesting fact is this scene was the last scene filmed on campus.

Belly’s dorm is Old East (pictured above), the oldest state university building in the nation. Here Belly moves into her dorm and Jeremiah runs out to her and spins her around in the parking lot. It was important to Han that Belly moved into Old East because this is where she lived when she attended Carolina. Han was in the first class of women who lived in this residence hall.

New East is where Taylor and Lucinda move into as Taylor’s first-year residence hall.

You might have noticed quite a few people during the move-in scene wearing long-sleeve tops and fall apparel. Finch College is supposed to be a small college in Rhode Island, so the props team had everyone wearing fall outfits, as typical Rhode Island weather is cooler than North Carolina’s weather. Unfortunately for the crew, cast and extras, the temperature did not mirror Rhode Island at all. It was 106 degrees the day the move-in scene was filmed, which happened to be the hottest day recorded in North Carolina that July.