Fontainebleau Miami Beach featured on Eva Longoria’s new series
ABC drama ‘Grand Hotel’ has cast with South Florida ties
MIAMI BEACH — The Riviera Grand Hotel is the oldest and most famous Miami Beach hotel you may have never heard of.
Described as the last family-owned luxury resort in the island city, the hotel has white columns, curvy facades, marble floors and rooms with turquoise-blue curtains.
You can’t check into the Riviera Grand, but you may recognize its reallife stand in, the Fontainebleau Miami Beach. That’s where ABC’s new summer series “Grand Hotel” was partially filmed last year.
The show, which debuts Monday at 10 p.m., chronicles the drama, scandals and secrets of hotelier Santiago Mendoza (Demian Bichir), his second wife Gigi (Roselyn Sanchez), their family and the employees who help run the place. The pilot opens with an immediate mystery — a line chef named Sky, who has some valuable information about the Mendozas, goes missing during a Category 4 hurricane.
Eva Longoria, an executive producer and director of the show, described it as a modern take on the upstairs/downstairs story. She said she was inspired by the popular Spanish drama “Gran Hotel” that was set in Spain in the early 1900s.
Her English-language version spent three weeks last year filming at the Fontainebleau. Longoria and the rest of the cast returned to the resort this past Monday night for a red carpet
premiere party and screening at LIV Nightclub.
“I just want everybody to enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it, especially the Fontainebleau because it’s so iconic in South Beach,” she said at the premiere. “Being able to shoot here during spring break, Ultra Music Festival, high season and we were still able to get it done.”
In the first episode, viewers see a lot of the Fontainebleau, from its grand lobby and posh suites to manicured grounds, gleaming pools and umbrella-filled beach.
Brian Tanen, the show’s creator, said that as he wrote the script he envisioned the fictional Riviera Grand as something akin to the classic Eden Roc or Fontainebleau hotels, which were designed by famed South Florida architect Morris Lapidus.
“When we did our location scout in Miami to see where we could actually film and the Fontainebleau was available, we were overthe-moon excited. It is exactly the place that we imagined it,” said Tanen, who grew up in Coral Gables.
The pilot for “Grand Hotel” was the first production to receive a new film incentive from the city of Miami Beach. The city awarded the studio $10,000 as part of an initiative to make it easier for TV and film productions to work there.
In recent years, Florida’s film and TV industry boomed, thanks to a film/ TV tax credit incentive program that drew high-profile productions. But money ran out for the program in 2017 and productions flocked to other states, such as Georgia.
“Florida used to have an amazing tax credit that allowed productions to come here really easily so,” Tanen said. “We actually don’t have that anymore and we had to fight to film our pilot here in Miami, so I would encourage locals to push their representatives to bring that back here. It’s great for the economy to film locally, and there’s nowhere else like Miami when you are trying to emulate Miami.”
After the pilot was filmed in Miami Beach and ABC picked up a full order of episodes, the cast and crew headed to Los Angeles, where a mini-replica of the Fontainebleau was constructed.
“We built on a sound stage basically four stories of this hotel just in the middle of Los Angeles in Manhattan Beach so that lobby that you see, the iconic Fontainebleau lobby, we recreated on a stage,” Tanen said, noting that the exterior shots to be shown throughout the season are still the real Fontainebleau.
“We have the guest hallways, those rounded hallways with the striped wallpaper we have as well. We have the offices. We have tunnels underneath where all the staff members walk around. It really felt like walking around a living, breathing hotel,” he said.
Cast members said they were wowed with how real the set felt compared to its 1954 muse.
“It’s to scale,” said Bryan Craig, who plays Javi, the boozing lothario son of the hotel’s owner. “They really put a lot of work and time to really duplicating the real thing out there, which is impressive. “
In addition to its backdrop, the show’s cast is also South Florida-centric.
Craig, for one, grew up in Wellington. Shalim Ortiz, who grew up in Miami, plays Mateo, the hotel’s manager.
Miami entertainer Jencarlos Canela portrays a popular Miami rapper named El Rey. Canela said he modeled the character after another Miami personality and one of his friends, Pitbull.
“He inspired me a lot to bring this character to life for sure. Pitbull is my brother,” Canela said. Asked how he would describe the series, he said, “It’s Miami, it’s passion, it’s rhythm, it’s music, it’s drama and it’s a little bit of humor, which is what my character brings to the table.”
There’s another familiar face in the series. Longoria stepped out from behind the camera for some scenes. She plays Beatriz Mendoza, the hotel owner’s first wife.
“I gave myself a role. I was like, I need to be in this too,” she said. “I’m a dead person. I’m the original Mrs. Mendoza and so you see me in flashbacks.”
Longoria said the show is a TV postcard of Miami to viewers and tourists.
“The show is a paid vacation, total escapism, and there’s not enough TV like that on right now,” she said. “Everything is dark and deep and this is a great family drama. Every frame looks like an Instagram photo of Miami, and you’re going to want to come. You’re going to want to be here, for sure.”
“It’s great for the economy to film locally, and there’s nowhere else like Miami when you are trying to emulate Miami.” — Brian Tanen, the show’s creator