Was Taron Egerton’s ‘Carry-On’ Really Filmed at LAX?

Taron Egerton saves Los Angeles’ famous airport from disaster Hand luggage – but in reality the movie was never even filmed there.

IN Hand luggageEgerton, 35, stars as a Transportation Security Administration officer at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) who accidentally falls victim to the scheme of a mysterious group of terrorists (portrayed by Jason Bateman and Theo Rossi) trying to smuggle a dangerous weapons onto a departing flight with carry-on luggage.

While the film takes place almost entirely inside LAX, the production was filmed in New Orleans, as its director Jaume Collet-Serra told Netflix’s Tudum.

“We were incredibly lucky to use a retired airport as our set,” Collet-Serra, known for films such as Black Adam and The Shallowssaid. “We took over the old MSY (Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) in New Orleans and redesigned/decorated it to look like LAX. It was such a thrill to have the whole space at our disposal and be able to explore all these areas of an airport that we don’t normally get to see as passengers.”

Hand luggage heavily features Egerton’s character Ethan interacting with Bateman’s character — known as the Traveler — via a headset sent through TSA baggage control. Egerton races to uncover the traveler’s attack plan and save everyone at the airport, including his newly pregnant girlfriend (Sofia Carson), while Danielle Deadwyler portrays an LA police officer investigating the situation from a different angle.

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Capturing Egerton in the role of a TSA officer checking bags as they go through security proved a unique challenge for Collet-Serra and his team.

“Our story in particular has a long section where we stay with Ethan at his post and run a TSA bag scanner, so he’s sitting in a chair staring at a screen with very little room to move,” the filmmaker said. “This was definitely a challenge to shoot, but it also really helped us create the tension and claustrophobia that Ethan feels when he’s being taunted by Travelers and can’t leave his little bubble.”

The filmmaker also said the production used the knowledge of two TSA advisers familiar with LAX. “They put our actors through proper TSA training before we shot the movie, and they were on set to advise us if something didn’t look realistic,” he noted.

Hand luggage streaming on Netflix now.