Trust the Man filmed in Montclair and Seaside Park. Here is what is confirmed.
New Jersey Monthly put a reporter and photographer on the Seaside Park shoot in late July 2026. Two municipalities are confirmed, and the Ocean County beach was standing in for Hawaii.
Trust the Man, a Vietnam War-era thriller starring Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff, filmed in Seaside Park and, earlier, in Montclair. In the Seaside Park material the Jersey Shore was standing in for Hawaii. Both are completed shoots.
What is confirmed
New Jersey Monthly reported from the location and published its own photographs. Will Graham writes and directs, following A League of Their Own, Mozart in the Jungle and Daisy Jones & The Six. The story centres on an Army intelligence officer examining a decorated soldier’s record. Radcliffe and Groff previously played opposite each other in the 2023 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along.
The Seaside Park work ran overnight, into the early hours, at the Charlroy Motel on Ocean Avenue near the boardwalk, with beach filming as well. Radcliffe was photographed in period costume, and the production dressed the location with vintage cars. New Jersey Monthly also reports that Trust the Man filmed in Montclair before the Ocean County work.
The Charlroy Motel is a publicly operating business named directly by the reporting, which is why it appears here. That is a record of where a shoot happened, not an indication that the property is available for filming, and it should not be contacted as though it were a location service. Nothing here implies current availability.
Why the Jersey Shore can pass for Hawaii
It sounds absurd until you think about what the camera is actually being asked to sell. A period exterior needs a mid-century motel typology, palms or dressed substitutes in the near ground, open sky, sand and water — and crucially, no modern skyline, no recognisable signage and no contemporary vehicles in frame. The Jersey Shore’s surviving motor-court architecture supplies the first list. Careful framing removes the second.
Night helps considerably, which is likely part of why this material shot overnight. After dark, the tells that would give away the Atlantic — light quality, horizon colour, vegetation at distance — simply are not in the shot. What remains is architecture, costume, vehicles and sand, all of which are controllable.
This is ordinary doubling, not a trick. New Jersey’s density of preserved period building stock inside a short radius is the actual asset, and it is the same reason the state has stood in for 1950s and 1960s settings repeatedly. What it does not mean is that the whole film is a New Jersey film. Two municipalities are confirmed. A production of this kind will have shot elsewhere too, and we make no claim about the complete location list or about which scenes ended up in the finished cut.
Sources
- ReportingNew Jersey Monthly, the Jersey Shore standing in for Hawaii, reported from the Seaside Park location (July 31, 2026)
- ReportingDeadline, Jonathan Groff joining the project (June 2026)
Information checked August 16, 2026. Municipality confirmations, the Hawaii substitution, cast and the creative team come from New Jersey Monthly’s on-location reporting. Seaside Park does not have a researched town guide on this site and one was not created for this note. We do not publish a complete location list for this production because no source establishes one. Spot something wrong? Send a correction.
Related research
This guide is researched and reviewed by Sam Moskowitz, a New Jersey-based producer and DP who runs BLL Films. Sam’s production and cinematography credits include work for Netflix, History Channel, Hulu, the NFL and Google. Every changing fact on this page carries a verification date; see how this site is researched for the full process.