NEW ORLEANS - Every Tuesday night, “NCIS: New Orleans” brings the sights and sounds of the city to people all around the world.
From music, to food, to art, viewers get a taste of the Crescent City with every episode. Still, there are many scenes all filmed inside a local studio and set designers worked extra hard to make it authentic.
"It's sort of the heart of our show and we built this set because we wanted New Orleans to be another character in our show," said Kim Hayman, executive producer of the show.
"The Squad Room" of the show is where Agents Pride, Brody, Lasalle and Percy call "home", with their desks and top secret government paperwork.
While the City of New Orleans is the main backdrop, the creators of the show set up a home-base at an Elmwood studio to shoot all of the main and recurring scenes.
"We built this set as if the NCIS office is in the French Quarter of New Orleans because it exudes the flavor of this city,” Hayman explained. “It exudes the culture and the sense of history."
Next to “The Squad Room” is Agent Dwayne Pride's kitchen where all of the characters gather to talk about life, work, and of course food. It's decorated in a way Frank Davis would call "Naturally N'awlins", with artwork and knick-knacks that a true New Orleanian would collect.
"The designer and I, Victoria Paul, started with a long list of questions that we asked Gary Glasberg and the other creators of the show, as to a back story for Pride,” said Set Decorator Tim Cohn. “Like, who is this guy? Where did he grow up? This is actually a reproduction of an old insert from The Times-Picayune."
Cohn grew up in Indiana, but after attending Louisiana Tech, the Bayou State is now home, and he works with local artists to dress up the set.
"I'm really lucky in that I get to work on a crew of really talented, really creative people, they're all artists in their own way, you know, writers, musicians, sculptors, so if you look on the side of the fridge you'll see pictures that maybe Pride would have taken, but these were taken by crew members," Cohn explained.
Right outside the kitchen is the French Quarter courtyard, where there are serious talks and also fun celebrations, and a short walk away is the Jefferson Parish Coroner's Office.
"This is the morgue. This is where Dr. Loretta Wade works, played by the wonderful CCH Pounder," said Rob Kerkovich of his co-star. Kerkovich plays Forensic Scientist Sebastian Lund.
Wade and Lund are stationed at the morgue, and it's a place where they announce all of their scientific discoveries.
"Here are sort of the cooler drawers where bodies are kept, but as you can see - what?! Reality just broke wide open! There's nothing back there," Kerkovich said, laughing.
A little further away you can find the bar that Agent Pride bought; it has become another home for all of the characters after a tough day of crime-fighting.
If you walk upstairs you can also see the interrogation room, where the agents interview suspects.
While having a set as a home base is nice, everyone on the show agrees that New Orleans is the real stage.
"The real idea was to place our characters in this fabulous culture of New Orleans and keep New Orleans and the flavor of it always part of the storytelling," said Hayman.
Every story in New Orleans has complicated layers the characters continue to unravel.
The season finale for NCIS: New Orleans is Tuesday at 8 p.m.