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A-Game Sports in New Rochelle traded in bats and balls this week for television props and boom mics as CBS took a trip to the area to film an episode of their popular Sunday night show "God Friended Me."
"God Friended Me.” stars Brandon Michael Hall as Miles Finer, an atheist “whose life is turned upside down when he receives a friend request on social media from ‘God’ and unwittingly becomes an agent of change in the lives and destinies of others around him.”
This week, production for the show set up shop at A-Game Sports, as they filmed an episode centered on "reconciliation through baseball." Co-founder Darin Felman said that they were contacted by producers at the end of November, and had a team of scouts head to the Hudson Valley to scope out the location before potentially shooting.
“There were other places in the area under consideration, but they knew they wanted a sports facility, because the theme for the episode was baseball related,” he said. “Once they came here, everything was put in motion between us, the owner of the building and the city. They picked a date for the shoot, and that was that.”
In the episode, Hall said that “(he) got a friend request from someone (he) knew very well once upon a time, and there are some old wounds there. It's about reconciling that through baseball."
The star said it was his first time in the Hudson Valley, and the first time the show has been filmed in the area.
“I've been to the city, and I've been to the Bronx. This is my first time (in the Hudson Valley). It's absolutely beautiful up here. When we got out the van is was breathtaking, and you're close enough to New York City without being in New York City, and you can feel that."
“With this show, it's really great. We've been shooting at all these different locations in New York (including some spoiler-ish locales), but this is our first shoot in the Hudson Valley."
Despite only shooting scenes for the show on Thursday, Feldman said it was an elaborate three-day process for the crew, who had to set up the shoot and then take everything down and put the facility back to normal.
“What was good about the process was that they treated us and the facility with a lot of respect. They did as much as they could to not be disruptive and to be respectful before the day of the shoot, during the shoot and then after, in terms of setting up,” he said.
“The actual shoot was (Thursday,) but they came to set up on Wednesday, and then were back on Friday to take things down and basically put everything back in its proper place and putting the facility back. They have a huge professional crew that took this stuff seriously and took the use of other peoples’ premises very seriously. We didn’t know what to expect, but it was a great experience.”
Before heading back to set, Hall made sure to heap his own praise on the entire production crew, from top to bottom.
"Everything has been great. The show is really living up to what it is in its first season. (Creators) Bryan (Wynbrandt) and Steven (Lilien) are great, as is everyone from the people in the background to the craft service people to the camera guys, everyone is just upstanding and outstanding.”
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