Where Was ‘Damsel’ Filmed? Discover the Filming Locations for Millie Bobby Brown’s Netflix Movie

Forget about the Oscars, the movie that every Netflix subscriber was watching this weekend was Damsel, the new fantasy action flick starring Millie Bobby Brown.

Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and written by Dan Mazeau, Damsel stars Brown as Elodie, the princess of an impoverished kingdom who agrees to marry another land’s prince (played by Love, Simon star Nick Robinson) in exchange for money for her people. Then her new husband tosses her into a pit with a fire-breathing dragon. How rude! Elodie realizes that she was nothing more than a sacrifice for this vengeful, talking dragon (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo). Now, she must use her wits—and her surprisingly utilitarian wedding dress—to survive.

Since its streaming release on Friday, Damsel has been in the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 trending movie titles list. And as more people watch the movie, more people want to know: Where was Damsel filmed?

Read on to learn more about the Damsel filming locations.

Where was Damsel filmed?

The Netflix movie Damsel was filmed in large part on a soundstage at Troubadour Meridian Water Studios in London, England. The cave where Brown spends most of her screen time was a set—but just because the rocks were fake, that didn’t make the experience any less strenuous for the young actor.

In an interview for the Damsel production notes, director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo talked through the difficulty of filming in such a small space, with the camera so close to Brown’s face. “Filming in those cave sets was a challenge for Millie because it’s not easy for an actress to have the camera so close to you and to be completely naked emotionally — showing them the pain, the horror, the excitement, the fear, every single detail,” Fresnadillo explained.

In that same interview, Brown added that though they were filming on a soundstage, “everything felt real. We filmed in these warehouses in London. And when you walked in, you truly felt immersed. There was no faking it. There’s no green screen.” (There actually were some green screens, according to the behind-the-scenes photos provided by Netflix.)

Still, we get what Brown was saying. That said, even though Brown thought the caves were “wonderfully designed, very complex and very tactile,” she did not enjoy filming in them.

“It was hard running through them. It was hard falling in them. It was hard to scream, because nobody could hear you. You couldn’t see anything. Everything felt so real,” she said. “I’m also a little claustrophobic, so a few scenes were tough for me. The tunnel scene where I fall forward into an upside-down position — it’s a really cool shot, but I was so scared that we rearranged a few things and I had my assistant and my brother behind me, holding onto my legs. They’d yank me out when the anxiety got to be too much.”

For the exterior shots of the castle and the surrounding grounds, Damsel filmed on location in Portugal, in cities and regions including Tomar, Batalha, Douro, Vila Nova de Foz Côa, the mountains of Serra da Estrela, and Sortelha. The castle design was inspired by Manueline architecture, a style that is unique to Portugal.

As production designer Patrick Tatopoulos said in the press notes interview, the exterior shots were “less dark than what we’re used to seeing. It’s warmer and more flamboyant than the gloomy castles that are typically used for fantasy stories with dragons. And that was the trick: Aurea needed to be a very pleasant place to be on the outside.”

So there you have it! Damsel may take place in a fantasy world, but the set and filming locations were very much real.