On Location peels back the curtain on some of your favourite films, television shows, and more. Here, we go behind the scenes of The Testament of Ann Lee.
Here’s something I learned recently: Budapest is a really good place to film a movie, especially if you’re focused on recreating an 18th-century landscape. On the complete flip side, it’s not an ideal destination for sourcing Shaker furniture. These two facts came smashing together for The Testament of Ann Lee, a movie released on December 25 2025, that highlights the life and legacy of Mother Ann Lee, played by Amanda Seyfried, one of the more well-known leaders of the Shaker movement. And did I mention this is a musical? Though I would only lightly lump it into the category, as the song and dance feel beautifully balanced with the spoken storytelling and tightly woven into the increasing intensity of Shaker devotion.
While the movie was filmed in a small handful of places, its acts spill out into a grand epic. Beginning in Manchester, England, and ending in New York, there are treacherous moments at sea and a particularly humorous scene where one of the travelling Shakers finds their plot of land after his finger takes on a life of its own and directs him to the very spot (seriously). And while the Shaker ethos may be simple, getting to the root of its aesthetic was far from straightforward. Condé Nast Traveller sat down with Sam Bader, the film’s production designer, to get the full story on how the crew created such a specific world.
Understanding the Shakers and their craft
Before we dig into where this opera was filmed, it’s important to understand just what an undertaking creating this universe proved to be. “I knew the style, I knew the aesthetic, and I knew the significance to early American history, but I did not really know the substantive undercurrent of their history or the finer points of the religiosity,” says Bader. Let’s dig in: the group was named after its very active state of worship, which included dancing, trembling, and – yes – shaking. The high-level belief was that God was both male and female, meaning there was no specific gender assignment to who could carry his message. There were a few lifestyle basics followed as a whole: men and women lived separately but held equal authority, labour was shared, music was the heart of worship, and members practised celibacy (the three active Shakers living presently can all be found in Maine).
