Wynonna Earp Set Visit

So, for those who don’t know, I won a visit to the set of Wynonna Earp in an auction for charity last year. Now that the scenes that I saw being filmed have aired during 3×03, I thought I would share a bit about the experience.

Allison (from IDW) picked me up from my hotel a little after noon and was my chaperon/tour guide/photographer for the day. The first person I met once we got there was the director, Ron Murphy, who proudly showed off his newly decorated water bottle that was one of the ones Dom had got for the entire cast and crew.
Next up was Mel, whom I had never met before. I was immediately struck by how incredibly warm she is. We shook hands while Allison was explaining who I was and about the charity auction and so on and Mel just held on to my hand the whole time, she immediately made me feel very comfortable. Honestly, meeting her just felt like getting the best hug ever. Later in the day she was walking by and like squeezed my elbow and it was such a sweet little reassuring gesture.
Kat, who I had met a few times before, noticed me next and she stopped to give me a hug and chat for a bit. At some point Dom appeared and we hugged and caught up. They complimented my outfit (which was nice considering it was just a tshirt, jeans, and chucks), later in the day they even told me that my tshirt brought out my eyes (they’re green) and asked “is that why you wore it?”, cute.

I had met most of the cast before and knew they were all super sweet and even if they weren’t I figure they were probably all told I would be there and that they had to be nice to me because I won an auction. What I didn’t expect, however was how kind and welcoming the crew were and how much they fussed over me and went out of their way to make me comfortable. Probably the coolest thing from the trip is that Patricia, who works in wardrobe, had asked Allison to find out my shirt sized so that she could make me my very own Pussy Willows shirt. I was also gifted with a blue Purgatory Sheriff Department cap that they had ended up not using on the show.

I had taken a Wynonna Travels doll with me that I planned on having Melanie sign so that I could use it as part of a charity raffle I was organizing. Melanie was nice enough to do a little photo-op with it. After taking a few sitting on the porch-swing with Dom, she decided that she wanted to do the same pose the doll was, including Peacemaker and a bottle of whiskey. While Melanie went to retrieve her gun, Dom went into the homestead to find a bottle of whiskey and came back with three bottles because they didn’t know which one to pick. A few minutes later a crew member came out looking for the missing whiskey which was not only in the shot they were about to shoot, but Wynonna picks up a bottle as she walks by. 

When it was time to shoot a scene I was given my own chair by the monitors with the director and other important people. We were set up just on the other side of a wall of the homestead because there isn’t room for everyone to be in that set. I was given a headset so I would hear everything being said on the set. You can’t actually see me in the photo below, but for reference the SyFy logo on the bottom left is where my knee is. 

The first scene I watched was the one where Waverly and Nicole are talking to the the douchey funeral guy and Wynonna tries to avoid the situation, which by the way is how I found out that Dolls dies. There was one blooper from that scene that I have to share, Dom has a line “he was your best friend.”, but in one take they 100% said “BREAST friend” and it took everything for me to keep myself from laughing.

You probably know that it takes a long time to film even the shortest scenes, so I saw this one many many times from many different angles. One time when they were coming off set, either Mel or Dom (not sure why I can’t remember) was like “Heather, how’d we do? Are we fired?”. They were nice enough to chat with me in between takes and they all took time to sign items I had taken that were going to be included in my charity raffle.

Tim got to set after I had been there for a little while. I had only interacted with Tim a little bit in the UK so I didn’t know if he would recognize me, but he did. He was really funny because he knew I wouldn’t be able to have the pictures right away with them in wardrobe he wanted to go get his own tshirt for us to take pictures. Sadly we ended up not having time to do that, but it was cute how adamant he was. He was really good about involving me in what was going on, like when they were putting his guns on him he came up to me to show me the little safety check they go through and he let me hold Doc’s big knife.

The other scene that I got to watch was the one with Wynonna, Waverly, Nicole, and Doc talking about having a wake. The directer let/made me call “action” for that scene twice, which at the time was terrifying because I was afraid I would do it at the wrong time or just the the word wouldn’t come out when I tried to yell, but of course now it’s a really cool thing that I got to do. 

I also got a tour of all the sets. So I’ve been in Shorty’s, Waverly’s bedroom, the basement of Shorty’s, the cop shop, the BBD office, Nedley’s office, the barn, and the homestead. For some random reason, Nicole’s desk was my favorite part, I was fascinated by all the details. Like there were little hand written notes and police reports totally filled out, I could have stayed in there forever. I was in awe of all the little details that go into what we see on tv.

I was there for about four hours and was getting ready to leave about the time they broke for dinner. Kat showed me around the Homestead because I hadn’t been able to go in there earlier. Melanie had disappeared, but in her defense she didn’t know that that’s when I was leaving. We were trying to decide where a good place to get some pictures was. Allison was looking for somewhere with good lighting, but Dom solved the problem by saying “let’s just do it on the bed”…not a sentence I had expected to hear that day. So we had our cute little photo shoot in Wynonna’s bed.

Funny story about the awkward placement of my left hand in the pictures with all four of us. When we were getting settle for the picture at first I put my hand down right on top of Dom’s hand, I’m sure I reacted by weirdly mumbling something then ended up awkwardly grabbing my own leg so that I wasn’t touching anyone else.

Unfortunately I managed to spend all that time there without getting a picture with Melanie, but in my defense my brain was processing a lot of feelings and information. I did however find her and get a goodbye and a hug. Aside from that oversight…and the fact that I was having the worst coughing fits of my life…seriously I thought I was going to die when they were rolling and I had to keep myself from coughing…I coughed so hard I pulled a muscle…like you don’t understand how terrible this cough was…but aside from those two things it was a wonderful once in a lifetime experience.