Kitty Covey moved halfway across the world for love, but did Anna Cathcart and the XO, Kitty cast actually film in South Korea? They sure did! And the show’s stars say they experienced “a pretty big culture shock” while filming in Seoul.
“From the moment I landed in the airport and saw other Korean people walking around, I was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s going on,’” Peter Thurnwald, who played Alex, told J-14 exclusively in May 2023. “People would come up to me and speak Korean, and I would be like, ‘hi,’ and then I’d point to Min-yeong, and be like, ‘Just talk to him.'”
Keep reading for filming details and where the series is set.
Was ‘XO, Kitty’ Filmed in South Korea?
The cast actually did film in South Korea, in multiple locations around the country. For example, the Korean Independent School of Seoul (KISS) doesn’t exist in real life, but the show used the Kaywon Art School and the Independence Hall of Korea in Cheonan as Kitty’s school.
Anthony Keyvan, who played Q, told J-14 it was an “amazing” and “transformative” experience to shoot the show abroad.
“I feel like all of us learned so much during the course of this production,” he added. “It’s really cool to see how everyone came together with a collective goal to make an amazing show regardless of the language barrier — because our entire crew is Korean. So it was so interesting to see how an American crew and a Korean crew could act with each other.”
Where Was ‘XO, Kitty’ Filmed?
Similarly, the National Library of Korea in Sejong posed as the KISS library. As for the Han Hotel, where Yuri’s (Gia Kim) family lives, it doesn’t actually exist. So, they used the State Tower Namsan, Grand Hyatt Seoul and Pacific Hotel. A few scenes were actually filmed in the real location, like Kitty’s arrival at the Incheon International Airport outside Seoul!
“We would go out on the weekends, and after work we would go and get late-night fried chicken, and go to karaoke and those fun things,” Anna told Netflix’s TUDUM. “You do become a tight-knit group because you lean on each other and you all understand what you’re going through, and [you have] people to share the excitement and the overwhelmingness of everything and people who just really get it. Those were some of the most amazing months of my life.”
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