Where Was ‘To Leslie’ Filmed? Andrea Riseborough Explains How The Movie “Respected the Feeling” of Texas

The 2022 drama To Leslie began streaming on Netflix last Thursday, and has been trending in Netflix’s Top 10 Movies carousel ever since. It’s no wonder that folks are curious about the film, given that star Andrea Riseborough snagged a shocking—and controversial— Oscar nomination earlier this year. The guerrilla, low-budget publicity campaign—which asked A-list celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Cate Blanchett to praise Riseborough’s perfomance on social media—led to an official Academy investigation into possible rule violations.

The Oscar campaign methods may have been shady, but Riseborough’s performance in this low-budget indie drama is legitimately good. She stars as a single mother named Leslie, who wins $190,000 in her local Texas lottery, but eventually loses all her winnings to alcoholism. After showing us her win, the film fast-forwards six years in Leslie’s life to what she believes to be rock bottom: Evicted from her apartment, unable to pay rent, and forced to rely on her 20-year-old son to give her a roof over her head. But despite given a second, third, and fourth chance, Leslie can’t seem to kick her addiction and stop letting down everyone who loves her.

It’s a powerful film, made even more impressive when you realize just how limited the production’s resources were. Read on to find out where To Leslie was filmed and what the To Leslie production budget was.

Where was To Leslie filmed?

Even though Leslie’s character is a born and bred Texan, To Leslie was filmed in Los Angeles over the course of just 19 days. Travel wasn’t really an option for the production: The movie was filmed in late 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many months before the vaccine became widely available.

“We shot this in peak Covid, and the only rehearsal we were able to do was on Zoom,” director Michael Morris in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Andrea and I were able to do regular Zooms leading up to day one, but we never did what I always do, which is sit around a table and read it out loud. And even when we were shooting, it was masks and shields, and as soon as I shouted cut, everyone went to separate places.”

So how did the production make LA look like West Texas? They shot on film, rather than digital, adding a gritty, Americana-look to the shots. “A lot of the visual references actually were from mid-century street photographers, who obviously shot on film,” Morris said in that same interview. “We tested 35, 16 millimeter, and some digital grain filters. But it was clear after the test that there was only one choice, and I didn’t want fake grain on this. I wanted to be ingrained in more of an American look.”

In an interview with Parade magazine, Andrea Riseborough credited the film’s production design team with finding LA locations that felt like West Texas. “I’ve spent a great deal of time all over the South, and a great deal of time in Texas,” Riseborough said. “Although we shot it in Los Angeles, I feel the designers in every way respected the feeling, tone and texture of the landscape there. It was an even more difficult feat because it was during the pandemic.”

What was the To Leslie budget?

The To Leslie production budget was under $1 million, according to a report from IndieWire. Given that most people agree that anything under $5 million is a “low-budget” movie, that’s like, a really low-budget movie, considering the fact that it’s Oscar-nominated. Though it only earned $76,599 at the box office, it’s safe to say the film was more than worth the cost, from the Oscar nomination to the trending spot on Netflix it has enjoyed for the last week.

Now that’s what I call a good return!