Happy Face filming locations: Where was the Paramount+ series filmed?

The latest from Paramount+ Happy Face premiered on March 20, 2025, with its first two episodes. The true-crime show will follow a weekly release schedule, with new episodes dropping every Thursday.

Based on Melissa Moore’s 2018 podcast titled Happy Face and her 2009 autobiography titled Shattered Silence and co-written with M. Bridget Cook,

“The series follows Melissa and her incarcerated father, known as the Happy Face Killer. After decades of no contact, he finally finds a way to force himself back into his daughter's life.”

Talking about why she wanted to tell her story to a larger audience, Melissa Moore said at SXSW

“The reason why I wanted to tell my story is because I felt alone. We don’t really see about serial killers’ families. We see serial killer documentaries, and it really focuses on the offender, but there’s a lot of other people affected by the criminal … I just never felt seen in any true crime films, and so for me, it was really important to put my story out there to connect with other families.”

Despite providing a fictionalized account of Melissa’s experience, the show remains truthful to the trauma and shock that she had to endure because of being the daughter of a serial killer. The filming, which was totally done in Vancouver, British Columbia, served as a wonderful background with its atmospheric beauty and elevated the narrative told throughout Happy Face.

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Happy Face filming locations

New Westminster City Hall

The courtroom scenes, municipal office settings, and interiors of the police department have been shot at the New Westminster City Hall. Located at 511 Royal Avenue in New Westminster this is not the first time that this setting has been used as a filming location. Given the kind of architecture it features, it has also served as a shooting location for shows like The X-Files and Watchmen.

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Stanley Park

While Happy Face mainly focuses on Mellisa’s adulthood journey, it includes flashbacks from her childhood. Some of those flashbacks take place at Stanley Park. It also serves as the setting for brooding moments by the lake. Some conversations with confidants also take place in this park. The greenery and natural beauty that the park offers stand as a contrasting element to the rather grim nature of the show.

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Vancouver Public Library – Central Branch

The Vancouver Public Library – Central Branch serves as the location for serious moments in Happy Face including meet-ups with journalists, research sessions, and digging up archival information. This location has also been featured in other projects like The Flash and The Sixth Day prior to this Paramount+ show. Its futuristic design makes it a lucrative spot for filming important scenes.

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Gastown District

Since Happy Face tells the story of Mellisa’s journey in the pursuit of truth, a significant amount of investigative scenes were bound to feature in the show. The Gastown District serves as the perfect spot for that. A lot of Mellisa’s investigative journey takes place here as she conducts street interviews and confronts media people.

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East Hastings Street

A true crime documentary dealing with a serial killer mandatorily provides investigations conducted on the backgrounds of the victims and their families, and East Hastings Street serves as the location for that. Evidence searches and conversations with local people are shot, especially between Main Street and Clark Drive. Films like The Man in the High Castle and The Butterfly Effect also made good use of this location for their stories.

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Kitsilano Beach

Kitsilano Beach serves as a vital filming location for Happy Face as introspective moments, light-hearted conversations, and meetings with trustable people take place here. The beach and its natural beauty help further elevate the scenes, and the ambiance that it provides essentially makes the show aesthetically better.

Besides these locations, some other scenes were also shot at places like Pacific Central Station, Burnaby Mountain, Riverview Hospital, and Pacific National Exhibition Agrodome. The carefully selected filming locations have helped to make Happy Face an engrossing watch as every background further intensifies the things that happen on screen.

Happy Face can be streamed on Paramount+.

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