The Toronto locations that show up in Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game

The Toronto locations that show up in Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game

Though Molly’s Game is set almost entirely in New York City and Los Angeles, the film’s true roots are in Toronto. Writer-director Aaron Sorkin filmed it here in late 2016, and it premiered at TIFF last fall. The movie recounts the real-life exploits of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain, no stranger to the GTA after shooting Miss Sloane and Crimson Peak here), a world-class freestyle skier who became a hostess of ultra-exclusive poker games after an accident ended her athletic career. Molly’s Game is up for two Golden Globes this Sunday—one for Sorkin’s screenplay and the other for Chastain’s performance—and could soon get an Oscar nod or two. Here, some of the GTA locales that show up onscreen.

The skiing accident that ended Bloom’s Olympic prospects took place in Utah. But the filmmakers managed to capture everything they needed at the Beaver Valley Ski Club:

The dingy office where Molly first plies her trade, taking orders from the exploitative owner of the fictional Cobra Club, is supposed to be in L.A. Apparently there’s something Hollywood-like about Leaside, because the scene was filmed at an unimpressive commercial building at the corner of Bayview Avenue and Belsize Road:

When Molly needs a lawyer, she finds Manhattan hotshot Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba). For the most part, his office seems to be a set, but the lobby, looking out over the PwC building and the Royal York, is in the TD Centre:

The film’s sets, such as the courtroom presided over by Graham Greene, took over three sound stages at Pinewood Studios:

The characters also spend time in some swanky restaurants, such as Bloom’s meeting with a literary agent at Katana (formerly Blowfish’s Bay Street location):

They also frequent some steakhouses, including Bardi’s and (though it’s tough to tell by the surroundings) Hy’s, where some mobsters make Molly an offer she tries to refuse: