‘Anyone But You’ Director Will Gluck’s Guide to Sydney, Australia

For me, my love of Sydney, Australia — where I shot Anyone But You starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell — boils down to two things. One, it’s not only a beautiful city, but every small neighborhood has the water right next to it. There’s beach everywhere, and even ferries as public transport. Second, the people are really, really nice — the rumors are true. They also have an amazing life-work balance — they work really hard all day, but when it’s time to wrap, it’s time to wrap. You film, but you also have a life; it was a real lesson to me.

I wanted Anyone But You set specifically in Sydney because I had really fallen in love with the city, starting back in 2018. After making Peter Rabbit in Sydney, I liked it so much that for Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, I moved my whole family down there. 

Almost every time you shoot a movie in Sydney, you have to pretend it’s somewhere else and frame out the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. For Anyone But You, I thought, “Why do that?” We actually wrote this movie 100 percent for Sydney — very specific to the destination.

The amazing thing about Sydney is that you can be in deep urban jungle, but only a 15-minute drive from forest: nothing but trees as far as your eyes can see. We lived previously in the suburb of Mosman by Taronga Zoo, and you’d take a turn and find a bush walk where you’re all by yourself. That’s the fun part, all the hikes and hidden beaches. They’re stunning, and it makes you wonder, “Why is nobody here?”

I’ve lived and stayed in all different parts of Sydney, but I think I’ve spent 50 days at the InterContinental Sydney Double Bay. It’s quiet and nice. Our favorite restaurant in all of Sydney is Cho Cho San in Potts Point. It’s Japanese with an Australian bent. My go-to are the miso eggplant sticks and pickled cucumbers — I took the cast there a few times and they absolutely loved it. The same owner also has a great Greek place across the street called The Apollo. Potts Point is a wonderful place to walk around after dinner and get gelato, too.

Sydney has not just the beaches and water but is also a real global city. I like to use all parts of the deer, as they say, and this was a good opportunity to film at the beach but also in an actual city. I wanted to film not just the landmarks but the normal neighborhoods, which we had fun doing. Because we were shooting Sydney for Sydney, the New South Wales government allowed us to shoot every place we wanted.

We flew helicopters all over — seeing the city from that vantage point is stunning — and landed one at the Opera House, shut down the Harbour Bridge, filmed at the Queen Victoria Building, and shot for two weeks overlooking Bondi Beach. We spent a week on a boat in Sydney Harbour shooting a scene where they’re stranded on a buoy, but you can’t have humans in the water without a shark cage, so we had to have one the whole time. You pinch yourself. It’s so unbelievable we were actually doing these things.

We happened to have our welcome dinner with the cast on the final night of Sydney WorldPride, so Glen and Sydney [Sweeney] and I walked around the festivities for hours. There were masses of people and it was lots of fun. The parade was so huge, we literally couldn’t cross it, so we ended up joining it for the night.

Glen and I put on scuba gear at Sea Life Sydney Aquarium and swam with the sharks — they’re monstrous. After what felt like five minutes, our guide said, “OK, time to come up.” I said, “What’s wrong?” He said, “You’ve been down there for an hour!” It was so amazing. I never would have thought swimming with sharks would have been so peaceful.

Ironically, the place we ended up shooting the interiors of our “beach house” was about an hour inland, in Terrey Hills, because we needed a really, really big house — the magic of movies. It turns out Australians aren’t ostentatious, so they don’t have gigantic beach houses. They also understand that building houses right on the beach is not ideal.

One of the best parts for me was shooting for 10 days in Palm Beach, a suburb in the Northern Beaches. Our caravans were parked right on the water, and Glen and Sydney and I decided to live there the whole time. We’d shoot all day and all the crew would go home, then we’d jump in the water and have a swim, go to our trailers and have dinner sitting outside. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world, and you normally wouldn’t be allowed to sleep there. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had filming. 

This story first appeared in the Dec. 15 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.