San Francisco local returns to the city to shoot a Netflix rom-com

When the duo finally meet, they do so on a bench overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Filming these sequences proved to be particularly poignant for its writer and director Leah McKendrick, who was born in San Francisco, raised in the Inner Richmond and attended Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory high school in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood.

“There’s nowhere like San Francisco,” she tells SFGATE over Zoom. “My hope with the bench is that she’s looking at this beautiful, iconic sparkling city, but she’s removed because she’s somewhere between heaven, where her sister is, and the real world and life happening. I feel like the Golden Gate Bridge is that crossroads because so much life happens there, from people getting engaged, to commuting, to working out. And she’s just watching it all happen.” 

McKendrick said she was only able to shoot in San Francisco for three days, as production predominantly took place in Vancouver. When they were in California, they managed to film at Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Square, Lombard Street, the Haight, Ghirardelli Square, Chinatown and the Palace of Fine Arts: “I also got to go back and shoot a couple blocks from my parents’ house, plus my mum, dad and sister came and were extras on a tour bus. It was all just a dream.”

From the start, McKendrick wanted “Voicemails for Isabelle” to celebrate how San Francisco’s rich diversity had shaped her. 

“I’m just a little bit of a smorgasbord, because I grew up in one,” says McKendrick. “I grew up surrounded by immigrants and LGBTQ members. Every type of food was available to me. I didn’t realize everywhere wasn’t like that. I was in a bubble of diversity and open-mindedness. It shaped me. It gave me a wild taste in art, music and film that I wanted to show in this.”

But while McKendrick is well on her way to establishing herself as a director, her dream job as a child was actually in another creative field. “I always thought I was going to be a pop singer. That was the dream,” she says. McKendrick didn’t just want to be any pop singer. She had her eyes on being the next Britney Spears. She would write music, perform, and was so insistent about becoming a pop star that she repeatedly insisted she wasn’t going to go to college.

Unsurprisingly, McKendrick’s parents heavily disagreed with her stance. “They were like, ‘Please give up this dream. This terrifying, horrific dream of being a pop star.’ They just wanted me to go to college and study anything,” she says. McKendrick finally acquiesced to their request and attended Chapman University, where she put her creative frustrations into writing, producing, directing and acting in various short films and stage plays. 

McKendrick did actually land a record deal, only for the label to fold. “That’s when I found my way into filmmaking,” she says. McKendrick rose to prominence with the 2014 web series “Destroy the Alpha Gammas,” which won two International Academy of Web Television awards. She then wrote, produced and co-starred in her feature debut, “M.F.A.” It premiered at SXSW to strong reviews. But it was her 2023 comedy drama “Scrambled” — which she wrote, directed and starred in, and which was based on her own experiences of egg retrieval — that really established her as a captivating new cinematic voice. 

Netflix was so impressed by her output that they hired McKendrick to direct “Voicemails for Isabelle,” the spec script she had actually previously sold back in 2019. It had spent several years in development until May 2025, when the streamer announced McKendrick would finally be bringing the film to life. 

While “Voicemails for Isabelle” was initially set in both New York and Los Angeles, it was decided that too many projects had recently unfolded in those cities. That’s when McKendrick started fighting to place “Voicemails for Isabelle” in San Francisco, as she knew she’d be able to add a greater level of detail to the film that would make it even more romantic and impactful. 

McKendrick might have won the fight to set “Voicemails for Isabelle” in San Francisco, but even she knew that it would be too expensive to film there. “That’s the problem with San Francisco. It’s so expensive. It’s so expensive to live there and shoot there. But I wanted to shoot there so badly because it’s so specific and romantic,” she says.

McKendrick was just as eager to depict her complicated relationship with the city, too: “I wanted to treat San Francisco the way that it felt for me growing up. It’s cold and foggy. I always wanted to be in Los Angeles pursuing my dreams. I wanted to be in the sun. I always felt a bit like a fish out of water. But then as soon as I left San Francisco I just wanted to get back. I missed my home. It’s my heart. It’s my everything. Getting to go back and film there was so special.” 

Zoey Deutch proved to be the perfect partner in crime for McKendrick while filming in San Francisco. The filmmaker says Deutch is “hilarious, sweet, vulnerable, open-hearted and emotional” as Jill, while it’s clear from speaking with McKendrick that she has the same gregarious and warm personality as the actor and character, too.

“Zoey was the only person that could have done it,” she says. “Our collaboration was so easy. We’d end up discussing and changing moments, all with the goal of making the best version of the film as possible. I’m just so proud of her performance and who she is as a woman.”

With “Voicemails for Isabelle” now finally out in the world, McKendrick has her eyes fixed on her next projects. It’s already been announced that she’s writing and directing “Shania,” a biopic on the iconic Canadian singer-songwriter Shania Twain.

But the San Franciscan in McKendrick means she doesn’t want to stop there. She wants to dabble in as many different genres and types of movies as possible.

“I’m very excited to continue to do music-driven work. But I’m also very interested in horror. I want to see more risks in every genre. I want to see stories from filmmakers of all ages and backgrounds,” she says. “I really think we’re headed in that direction, too. Even with ‘Voicemails for Isabelle.’ It’s an original idea, made by a female filmmaker, with a female producer, cinematographer and a very female-driven team. I’m just so proud to have been a part of it and I want to see more of it.”