Shelter Island has absorbed summer people for a century without much fuss. Next month it absorbs a movie studio. Women Like Us, a Netflix comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg, Jenifer Lewis, Vanessa Williams and Vivica A. Fox, is preparing to film on the island from September 1 to about October 1, and the location list reads like a local's mental map: Crescent Beach, the Pridwin, the Sunset Beach hotel, possibly the South Ferry crossing itself.

The production's plans came before the Shelter Island Town Board at its August 18 work session, where the film application sits right on the town's published agenda. For a town of roughly 3,200 year-round residents, reachable only by boat, a monthlong feature shoot is not a routine Tuesday. And it is not even the only camera crew headed over: the same morning, the board took up a permit for a commercial shoot by the clothing brand Anthropologie that arrives the week before. More on that below.

A Hamptons story with a heavyweight cast

Netflix announced Women Like Us in late July. The comedy follows a recently widowed woman whose sister and lifelong best friends bring her out to the Hamptons on what would have been her 30th wedding anniversary. The getaway becomes a reckoning with grief, marriage and the sisterhood that has carried the four of them for decades.

The names attached are substantial. Goldberg, one of the few performers to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, leads a cast that includes Jenifer Lewis of Black-ish, Vanessa Williams of Ugly Betty and Vivica A. Fox of Kill Bill. Tasha Smith directs. The screenplay comes from Ali Kinney, whose credits include Ginny and Georgia, writing with Tracy Oliver, the writer behind Girls Trip. The film is produced by MACRO Film Studios together with Higher Ground, the production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, and Michelle Obama executive produces alongside MACRO founder Charles D. King.

In other words, the sort of production that could have parked itself anywhere in the Hamptons chose the island in the middle instead.

Where the cameras will point

Representatives for the production walked the Town Board through the plan at the August 18 session. Filming is expected to run from the start of September to about October 1. Crescent Beach anchors the list, along with the Pridwin, the hotel that has stood above that beach since 1927, and Sunset Beach, the Shore Road hotel a short walk down the same stretch of sand. The South Ferry, the crossing that has linked the island's south end to North Haven for generations, was mentioned as a possible location as well, which makes sense: there is no more Shelter Island shot in existence than the view over a ferry railing.

The mechanics the production described are the mechanics of filming somewhere you cannot drive to. Crew vehicles are slated for the Sunset Beach parking lot, with the Perlman Music Program campus discussed as overflow. Drones will handle arrival and departure aerials. The production plans to supply its own security, including boat coverage on the water off the beach while cameras roll, with the town's police coordinating on shore. The police chief told the board he saw the production as a good thing for the community, and floated a town permit fee of ten thousand dollars, which would put the cost of hosting on the studio rather than on taxpayers.

Why Shelter Island can play the Hamptons

The film is set in the Hamptons, and Shelter Island sits in the crook between the North and South forks, a few minutes by ferry from Sag Harbor money on one side and Greenport working waterfront on the other. Crescent Beach faces west over the water, which is why locals have spent a hundred years watching sunsets from it, and why a cinematographer will like it for exactly the same reason. The island offers the weathered-shingle, rose-hip-and-gravel version of the East End that reads as the Hamptons on screen without a Route 27 traffic jam anywhere in the frame.

The other shoot on the calendar

The Netflix feature is the marquee booking, but the town's paperwork shows September opening with a double feature. At a special meeting on August 18, the board took up a resolution approving a filming permit for Li Productions, shooting a commercial for Anthropologie at a private property at 60 Peconic Avenue from August 31 through September 2, with September 3 held as a weather date. That production expects 20 to 25 people a day working roughly 7:30 in the morning to 7:30 at night, and asked to use portions of the town-owned West Neck Preserve and the town landing at the end of Brander Parkway, subject to the board's conditions. Even the parking is spelled out: vehicles along Peconic Avenue must sit on the shoulder, facing the direction of travel, out of the way of traffic.

What it means if you live here

For about a month, the quietest township on Long Island will have base camps, boat patrols and at least four household names somewhere between the ferries. Expect activity around Crescent Beach and Shore Road through September, the occasional drone overhead, and equipment trucks queuing for the boats. The permits carry fees and conditions, so the town is compensated for the disruption rather than simply absorbing it.

And there is a longer payoff. When Women Like Us eventually lands on Netflix, the Hamptons that millions of viewers see will be, in large part, Shelter Island: the beach where locals learned to swim, the hotel porch where they had a first drink, the ferry ride they take without looking up from their coffee. The rest of the world is about to be shown the place. Long Islanders will get to say they knew it first.