Most 8 a.m. walks to Spanish 2 fail to peak my interest, but today the staged television broadcasting vans and the students waving British flags in front of Humanities caught my eye. In order to get to the bottom of this seemingly out-of-place event, my fellow Daily Bruin contributor Coleton Schmitto and I went investigating.
Turns out, the filming of the upcoming Lifetime movie “William & Kate” was taking place at several different locations on the UCLA campus earlier today. The movie captures the time when Prince William and Kate Middleton first met and began their royal romance at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
By the afternoon, the film production had migrated from Humanities to Kerckhoff Grand Salon where we talked to Bola Ogun, 24, a production assistant who was outside on Kerckhoff patio during the filming.
Although we weren’t allowed access into the Salon during the filming, we caught a glimpse of the excessive amounts of lights needed to achieve that soft glow that characterizes the stereotypical Lifetime movie.
Ogun informed us that this was their third and final day shooting on the UCLA campus, and they will be filming at the Van Nuys airport on Thursday. Ogun said UCLA is a prime location to film this section of the movie because of its older architectural style.
In Kerckhoff Grand Salon they were filming a scene in which William and Kate watch the television broadcast of the funeral of William’s great grandmother. The actors playing the parts of William and Kate are Nico Evers-Swindell and Camilla Luddington, relative unknowns who have had guest appearances on shows such as “NCIS: Los Angeles” and the Hallmark movie “Accidentally in Love.” The movie is scheduled to air some time in April around the time of William and Kate’s actual wedding.