The Newberry was transformed into a Hollywood set for the filming of an episode of the Apple TV series “Dark Matter” in early 2025. Now that Season 2 has made its debut, we can share details of a thrilling experience that included a visit by Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly and Golden Globe nominee Joel Edgerton.
“Dark Matter” is a sci-fi series based on the best-selling book by author and showrunner Blake Crouch. In the show, physicist Jason Dessen (Edgerton) is abducted into an alternate version of his own life. Jason then travels through alternate realities as he strives to return to his wife (Connelly) and son (played by Oakes Fegley).
Location scouts for the program first visited the Newberry in Fall 2024. For Season 2, they were looking for a location that would mimic an analog world where humans hadn’t walked on the moon and computer technology never existed. It turns out the third floor reading room was just the site they needed. A production crew prepared a microfilm machine for a scene involving the Dessens looking up information in this unfamiliar world. The scene appears early in Episode 2 of the new season.
Nearly 100 crew members took over the first and third floors of the Newberry for multiple days to make the scene a reality. It’s not the first time the library has served as a filming location. The 2022 HBO series “The Time Traveler’s Wife” also filmed scenes at the Newberry.