Where is Outer Banks filmed? The real locations — and the political fight that decided them
Outer Banks filming locations explained: why Netflix shot its North Carolina treasure hunt in Charleston, South Carolina, and how the HB2 "bathroom bill" pushed the show out of Wilmington.
Bad news for anyone who booked a Kildare County pilgrimage: there is no Kildare County, and the show about the Outer Banks of North Carolina was not filmed anywhere near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Pogues have been running around Charleston, South Carolina, this entire time. One state over. Different state. I know.
Where they actually shot it
- Charleston, S.C. and its surroundings have been home base since season one kicked off there in May 2019
- The marsh-and-boats footage — the most OBX-looking stuff in the show — is largely Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant, S.C.
- Season 4 finally, finally filmed some scenes in the actual Wilmington area, with permits for Wrightsville Beach covering, per the paperwork, "2 people jumping from the pier" and a body on the beach. Extremely on brand.
- Oh, and part of season 4 was shot in Morocco, because treasure hunts escalate.
So why not North Carolina, the state in the title?
Here's where it stops being a fun trivia item and becomes a legislative saga. Co-creator Jonas Pate is a Wilmington guy who wrote the whole thing as a love letter to his hometown.
"Of course, we wanted to shoot it in Wilmington," Pate said, noting the scripts even name-check Masonboro.
But North Carolina had passed HB2 — the 2016 "bathroom bill" targeting trans people — and Netflix declined to bring the production into the state while its effects lingered, moving the show to Charleston instead.
"When we wrote it, it was 100 percent Wilmington in our heads," Pate told the Wilmington Star-News.
HB2 was repealed in 2017, but a provision in its replacement, HB142, kept productions wary for years after. Which is how a show about North Carolina spent multiple seasons pumping tourism money into South Carolina. Charleston restaurants owe the North Carolina General Assembly a fruit basket.
The redemption arc
Pate eventually got his homecoming: his follow-up series The Runarounds shoots in Wilmington, and he greeted the occasion with the energy of a man released from a very specific purgatory — "What a blessing," he said. "It only took us about seven years."
Anyway. The Outer Banks are lovely. The show just isn't there.