Scenes for an upcoming episode of the USA Network series “Royal Pains” were filmed on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday along Old Northern Boulevard in the Village of Roslyn.
But for series co-creator and Roslyn native Andrew Lenchewski, the shoot provided a rare opportunity for a homecoming.
“I don’t get back to Roslyn as much as I’d like, but I pass by Exit 37 on the Long Island Expressway almost every day when we go out to the towns we shoot in,” he said Monday. “It’s a great feeling knowing we’re making it in the backyard. It brings back a lot of memories.”
Lenchewski grew up in the villages of Flower Hill and later Roslyn Estates, where his mother still lives, and graduated from Roslyn High School in 1994.
“Royal Pains,” which follows concierge doctor Hank Lawson – played by Mark Feuerstein – as he develops clientele throughout the Hamptons social sphere, debuted in 2009 and has been on the air for five full seasons. Its current sixth season premiered on June 4.
The series often films in upscale locales across Long Island, from the edge of the Long Island Sound at Sands Point down as far south Long Beach and as eastward as the real-life Hamptons represented on the show.
Mike Fucci, a location scout on “Royal Pains,” said Old Northern Boulevard serves as one of three Nassau County streets used to sell the Hamptons atmosphere without the production team trekking crews out to the end of Long Island.
The other two roads, he said, are Audrey Avenue in Oyster Bay and Birch Hill Road in Locust Valley.
“It’s very difficult to do a full day, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. or whatever it may be, driving three hours to the Hamptons,” he said. “So we look for places like Old Westbury or Muttontown that are very much like the Hamptons but are only 45 minutes from New York City.”
Added Lenchewski: “Roslyn gives this sense of being so carefully preserved and offering this very quaint town that is very hard to find in a lot of these towns now.”
But Lenchewski said the show’s production team has only filmed in Roslyn one other time, when a vacant storefront along Old Northern Boulevard was converted to a Hamptons housekeeping business.
The second time around, crews returned to the same storefront – still vacant three years later – and the nearby Gerry Pond Park to depict what Lenchewski called the “fair at Hampton green,” which coincides with the grand opening of Lawson’s HankLab offices.
“I didn’t push for the show to shoot there,” Lenchewski said. “They went out scouting.”
The storefront was used to create the interior of Lawson’s offices. Lenchewski said Feuerstein, who directed the episode, treats a patient, as does Reshma Shetty’s Divya Katdare, a physician’s assistant named after one of Lenchewski’s Roslyn High School classmates.
“We have all these things going on, it’s this kind of super set piece that we’ve turned Roslyn into,” he said.
The entire main cast, including Feuerstein, Katdare, Paulo Costanzo – who plays Feuerstein’s brother, Evan R. Lawson – and Brooke D’Orsay, who plays Evan’s wife Paige, filmed scenes over the three-day shoot, Lenchewski said.
Feuerstein also cast Lenchewski’s mother in a small role as a return favor to Lenchewski for previously casting his father.
Lenchewski said he did not have many opportunities during the shoot to traverse his old neighborhoods, but he did take Feuerstein and a producer to Delicacies Gourmet for lunch.
The food, he said, was as tasty as he remembered it was nearly 20 years ago.
“I made them have a ‘chicken fantastic,’ which is the sandwich of my childhood,” he said. “It was honestly one of the best days I’ve had working on the show. I loved every minute of it.”
