BEHIND THE LENS

By Heather Turk

No trip to Southern California is complete without visiting a working film/TV studio, and arguably no studio offers guests a more comprehensive behind-the-scenes experience than Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank.

Guaranteed to have something for everyone, Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood was revamped in July 2021 to give visitors even more to enjoy. Each tour now begins in a state-of-the-art welcome center where guests will learn about the studio’s history and its four namesake founders, who created the company in April 1923. Guests will then board a tour cart to go on an intimate, hour-long guided tour of the studio lot. Not only are there plenty of photo opportunities along the way, including one with the famous “Friends” fountain, but depending on the day’s filming schedules, visitors may actually get to step inside of a working sound stage when it’s not in use to see some TV sets up close.

Once the lot tour is complete, guests will be able to experience the final two parts of the tour at their leisure. At “Stage 48: Script to Screen,” guests can take photos on the actual Apartment 4A set from “The Big Bang Theory” and Central Perk set from “Friends;” visit the newly expanded Central Perk Café and Friends Boutique; and even re-record lines from some of their favorite shows in the Automated Dialogue Replacement Studio. Guests can also interact with props, costumes and recreated sets from the DC Universe and Wizarding World of “Harry Potter” and “Fantastic Beasts” at the all-new finale, “Action and Magic Made Here,” and take a picture holding a real Oscar statuette.

For those interested in projects produced at Warner Bros. from the 1930s through the 1970s, a Classics Tour is also available. Regardless of which tour visitors book, they’re in for an unforgettable experience. wbstudiotour.com