It’s not every day that you see a pharmacy featured in a blockbuster movie, but for one independent pharmacy in Hemel Hempstead, it’s starred in one of the highly anticipated box office hits of the year.

Gadebridge Pharmacy is featured as Portobello Chemist in ‘Paddington in Peru’, the third instalment of the Paddington Bear film series.

“It was very random,” says Kerry Evans, a dispenser who works at Gadebridge with her dispenser mother Steph Moran alongside the pharmacist owner Shailesh Katira.

Read more: The Poetry Pharmacy secures Pan Macmillan anthology series

Evans told C+D a location manager from the production company came in and said “we’re looking for an independent pharmacy to film a scene of the a new film – obviously she didn’t tell us what film it was”, but once the pharmacy agreed, preparations began a week later to start filming.

The production team came in to go over what and when filming was going to happen, with the shoots taking place in August 2023.

The production team “took some bits off the shelves that they couldn’t advertise on the film and replaced it with their own brand stuff,” Evans says, and had security outside to manage the crowds during filming.

Read more: Exclusive: Meet The Apprentice’s pharmacist Amina Khan

Evans and her mother ensured their regular customers were kept outside while filming took place.

“It didn’t really interfere. We told all our customers with about two weeks’ notice that prescriptions and anything, come back on Thursday afternoon,” Evans said as the pharmacy was took over in the morning to film.

Future film appearances?

The film includes some stellar actors such as Ben Whishaw, Olivia Colman, Julie Walters, and Jim Broadbent, but it was Downtown Abbey star Hugh Bonneville who acted in the scene and visited the pharmacy for a day of the filming, with Evans managing to capture some shots of the actor in character coming out of the pharmacy.

The new film sees Paddington visit Peru to see his Aunt Lucy via an adventure in the Amazon jungle, and the scene inside the pharmacy is when Paddington comes in “to get some holiday essentials, taking some bits off the shelf, getting served and then leaves”, with Evans saying he bought sun cream and sunglasses.

Evans feels proud the pharmacy is featured, and it has “people in every day now” commenting about their involvement in the film.

Read more: ITV Tonight’s community pharmacy documentary: How did the sector react?

“We weren’t allowed to say anything to any of the public until after filming, because if they’d know what it was they were filming and who was coming, then it would have been a little bit more complicated,” she says.

It’s the first time they have featured in a film but it may not be the last time, as Evans says “we have been asked since would we be interested”.

“They do a lot of filming in our town, it’s quite popular depending on what it is they need,” Evans says.

Dacorum Borough Council filming lead officer Amy Greenland said "it was lovely for the community of Hemel Hempstead to get to see a bit of the action", adding that "the impacts from having our locations used in films and TV are very positive for the local economy”.