Behind the Scenes: Where does the Cohen staircase really lead to?

Where does the Cohen staircase actually lead to? This is a trick question. No it doesn't lead to the stairway to heaven but A+ for the comedic creativity. For the viewers, the stairs in the Cohen house of course lead to one place - Seth's room and possibly the infamous mystery guest rooms we never get to see! But truthfully the staircase leads somewhere far stranger...

As you can see from this rare behind the scenes photo above the stairs lead to, well, nowhere really, look to the top right, the wall just cuts off. You walk up, you walk down in a deep depression - I mean look at the expression on Adam Brody's face, even he's bummed that his room isn't actually up there! 

As you see from this super duper RARE external house photo (1of 2 that exist), the stairs go up into blank nothingness kind of like Summer Robert's step mothers brain, not much going on up there! There is no second floor just various lighting and scaffolds. If you are having trouble locating where the stairs would be - they are located on the opposite side of the rounded wall on the right (right of the rightest front door white pillar).

The Cohen O.C. mansion's interior set was actually built indoors within stage 28 at the Raleigh Manhattan Beach Studios in Manhattan Beach, CA (now called MBS Media Campus). The set was actually built to scale of the original pilot interiors/exteriors. Seth's room was located in another area within stage 27 which also housed other O.C. interior sets such as Summer's room and Marissa's room as well as the harbor school. Stage 27 also housed O.C. sets like Harbor School interiors, The Crab Shack and Sandy's beach office!

Mind blown? Your welcome. 

Lovable Props From The O.C.: Harbor School Flag Banner Fan Submission!

We are very excited to announce that we have our very first fan submitted super legit O.C. prop!
This one submitted by @ToddHebert (Twitter link). Todd is an O.C. super fan from Mansfield, TX and is just a really cool dude! Here is what Todd has to say about his amazing Harbor School Flag Banner O.C. TV prop!

I am a big O.C. fan. I loved the show and watched it from day one to the finale and many times since. I loved the way it looked, sounded and connected emotionally through music and the score. The first season of the show was like a great John Hughes movie imo. I think its brilliant.

I am always on the lookout for anything from the show just to have a little piece of it. One day a few years ago on eBay I saw an ad for the Harbor School flag used on the show. I assumed it was fake and sent a message asking about the background. It turned out it was real and the person selling the flag was the nephew of a guy who worked at Manhattan Beach studios. He somehow had the flag since the show ended and was looking to sell it, so I bought it! It’s pretty cool to have a little piece of history from the show.

I am not exactly sure which episodes the flag was used in but it is visible many times. In the episode “The L.A.” it is clearly visible. It is a really large flag and I imagine was used only in the hallway scenes. 

I have a few other things like a O.C. Coffee mug, Key Chain, a couple scripts and a pretty cool 92” advertising banner from fox that was in a mall in Indiana. The flag was used on the show though and it really is the most fun thing I have found so far. 

Wow amazing story Todd, this was a real treat for fans to see! We would also like to say that this could quite possibly be the rarest prop out there right now! In conversation Todd and I agreed that props from The O.C. are very hard to come by! I mean look at the flag details, they are impeccable! A few things we noticed previously never been able to see - the word "fiducia" around the anchor means confidence. Is this an obscure Anna Stern throwback? We'd like to think so! The other 2 words "scientia" and "honos" mean knowledge and honor. Also the date MCMXXXVI means the school fictitiously opened in 1936, the same year that "Gone With The Wind" novel was written. Once again thanks Todd for submitting we'd love to see more in the future! Cheers!

Follow Todd on twitter!

The O.C. Fan Art: Best Sandy Cohen coloring contest submission!

There was a handful of submissions but this one took the whole bagel! Thanks Shelby for submitting! We will be reaching out to you for your prize! Oh yeah and The Sandman says Thanks!!