As “Harlan Coben’s Shelter,” which was released this past August on Amazon Prime Video, wraps up its first season run, the prolific author andNew Jersey Hall of Famer talked to the Tribune about the series, which was partially filmed in Livingston. Coben had been unable to promote the show as it was airing due to the Writers Guild of America strike, which occurred during the length of the season. The season one finale came out in late September and all eight episodes of the series are now available to stream.
Based on Coben’s 2011 young adult novel of the same name, “Shelter” is set in the fictional town of Kasselton, New Jersey. Livingston High School is Coben’s alma mater, and the author has set many of his books in Livingston. Filming took place, in part, right here in town, where LHS substituted for Kasselton High School. The pilot was shot in 2021, with filming for the rest of the series taking place in 2022.
The series also shot elsewhere in New Jersey, including Paterson’s Great Falls, the Sterling Hill Mine in Ogdensburg, the Jersey Shore, and more. Filming took place in nearly two dozen locations throughout the state.
The series centers on a boy who arrives in a new town to live with his aunt following his father’s sudden death. After a student at his high school disappears, he and his new friends set out to find out what happened. Coben, who has had several of his books adapted for television and film, developed the show himself, alongside his daughter Charlotte Coben.
The show debuted to positive reviews in August, and the season ended on a cliffhanger. Fans are now eagerly awaiting the announcement of a second season.
The Tribune’s interview with Coben, discussing the show and its deep ties to Livingston, may be seen below.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It contains light spoilers for the first season of “Shelter.”
• • •
Thanks for taking the time to speak today.
Sure, the West Essex Tribune was the first paper I was ever in.
Surely, you’re aware that people in town take a big interest whenever there’s a Harlan Coben book or TV show. Especially when one films in Livingston, people in town are obviously very excited about it. Was it your choice to shoot this one in Livingston?
I said [to the producers] when we first met that I would love for it to be [filmed] in Livingston, but I understand that we probably can’t. But through our locations guy, and help from some of my local friends, like Steve Santola and some of the other people in town that I knew, I spoke to [town and school officials]. They said they don’t normally allow filming there, but with schools closed and everybody kind of wanting to do it, win-win, we were able to do it.
Why was filming at Livingston High School important for you to do?
Well, I set the book at Livingston High School. I changed the name to fictional Kasselton just so I could play around with geography a little bit, and so there wouldn’t be actual murders in Livingston High School itself. But in my mind, that is the place that the story took place. So, to be able to actually film there was a bit of a dream come true.
And going back there to film, how did it feel compared to when you were here growing up going to the school?
It felt really cool. The school looks great. The students that I got to meet were really great.
It’s a very strange, nostalgic trip as people who were slightly older would imagine. Being 61 and going back to the place where I graduated when I was 18. And seeing both the changes and the things that were the same was really interesting. When we first [started filming at the high school] they sent us someplace, and I was walking by remembering which room actually was Mrs. Friedman’s (in the show, Didi Conn played Mrs. Friedman, based on a beloved LHS history teacher with the same last name, spelled slightly differently). And so it was a lot of nostalgia, a lot of people from town stopped by to say hi who I haven’t seen in years. It’s been very cool to hear people talking about Livingston.
We first became aware of the show right before the pilot was shot two years ago in fall 2021 because production reached out to us asking to use old basketball photos that were in the paper. It was cool for us to even just play a small part as background setting props.
Yeah, to use both in the old gym, which is where I had played my basketball back in the day, and still has a lot of the same signage that was there when I played, and we also used the new gym that wasn’t around in my day.
Setting the story in town, is that more of a “write what you know” situation, or do you enjoy drawing a spotlight to it?
I think Livingston is really a cool town, and on the surface, it’s the bastion of theAmerican dream, right? So people move and they get the picket fence and kids and a two-car garage and dreams come true. So I want to play that very calm background, that very calm place that I know so well, what was hidden underneath.
When I was growing up, there were two rumors about our town. One was there was a house on Beaufort Avenue where a famous mobster lived, and the second was that behind Riker Hill and those “No Trespassing” signs, there was a Nike nuclear missile base. And when I grew up, I found out both were true.
What a weird place to grow up. That juxtaposition kind of stuck in my head.
Also, in this case, when I was a kid, there was a rumor about a house on Hobart Gap Road – people my age will know exactly what I’m talking about – that housed the Bat Lady (a pivotal character in “Shelter”). When I was five, six years old, there were all these stories about how if you were left at the Little League field, she would come and eat you. As a little kid, I remember being terrified one night when it rained and I couldn’t find my parents for a little while. That always stuck in my head. And I grew up and started to think, well what if she wasn’t really scary? What if she was likeAnne Frank, having survived the worst? That’s how my imagination works. And so that was sort of the start of this whole book. Like, what if that lady wasn’t who I thought she was when I was growing up, and to use that to cover up something else.
And so all the legends that I grew up with in Livingston, Mrs. Freedman, the Bat Lady – both legend and true – all these things are what makes the story the story. There’s a lot more memoir than fiction sometimes.
How was it working on the show with your daughter?
She cut her teeth on some other episodes [of my past shows] and, in fact, we’re losing her because she’s getting her own TV show called “Dead Hot” that just finished filming and will be out sometime next year.
But I needed somebody young, a voice that knew this world a little better than I know it. I wrote the book in 2010. High school in 2010 is not the same as high school in 2023. [Without her] it would be the adults who don’t quite get this. Imagine if I wrote a book about high school like in 1959, and now I’m filming it in 1971. Everything would be different, right? And it’s similar here.
So I thought her voice, her insights to what would still work, what wouldn’t work, being in touch with younger people [was important]. I would say most of the writing is done by Charlotte. It’s based on my novel, but most of the actual writing was done by her. If it was a funny line, it was Charlotte’s. If there was a funny moment, it was Charlotte’s.
We are talking after the finale has aired. How has it been to finally be able to promote the show, now that the Writer’s Guild of America strike is over?
It is actually really bad that the actors still can’t [promote it due to the ongoing Screen Actors Guild strike]. People don’t really care about writers as they do about actors. It’s really bad that Jaden (Michael) and Adrian (Greensmith) and Abby (Corrigan), Sage (Linder), Brian (Altemus), Antonio (Cipriano) can’t be out there. All of them are so talented and so great and for many of them, this is one of their first big roles. They’re not able to fully celebrate online or do promotional stuff. It was hard to come out during the strike. The celebration was somewhat muted by what else is going on in our world.
What, if anything, can you say about a potential season two of “Shelter?” I know the first season took parts from all three books in the Mickey Bolitar trilogy. So, would season two be something entirely new?
There are parts of book two and three that I still want to hit, and there’s also a whole new storyline that I had already sort of developed with Charlotte. But it’s still too early to know if we’re going to get a season two. We’re probably a month away from knowing. But if we’re lucky enough to get a season two, there’s a lot of new story.
When we started the show, there were three mysteries. Is Mickey’s father dead or alive? What happened to Ashley? And what happened years ago to Dylan Shakes after his Little League game? And we answer all three of those questions. All three of those mysteries are answered. So the fact that we raised new ones, and you want to know where it goes from now is sort of gray.
In the book, we don’t find out what happened to Mickey’s father until the end of the third book. But Charlotte and I immediately decided that it wouldn’t be fair to make people watch three seasons before we really find out what happened to his father. We have a lot more stories to go. It’s a great ensemble, and there’s a lot we can do with these characters and these really wonderful actors.
Is there anything else that you think people in Livingston, specifically, should look for in the show?
What I thought was interesting, and I posted this on [the LTown Lowdown Facebook page], was that we filmed inside Livingston High School for episode one. But for the other episodes, we built a set that looks exactly the same. So, all the interior scenes that you see in hallways and classrooms after episode one, all of that was done on a set that we designed to look just like Livingston High School. It was really cool. The basketball scenes we did in the actual gyms, and the exterior scenes, of course, we did. But outside of episode one, all the rest of the interiors were actually done on a stage that we built. And we did a lot on the Oval, we had the old basketball court on top of the Oval that I basically grew up on when I was a kid.
There was quite a bit of Livingston stuff that was done in the show.
“Harlan Coben’s Shelter” is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.
