Westville in Columbus reopens. How to be an extra actor in a TV series there
A popular Columbus tourist attraction that closed two years ago has reopened — and people are invited to the venue to be background actors for the filming of a promotional reel to help sell a TV series to a major network.
It all adds up to a busy and exciting time for Historic Westville Village, the living history museum at 3557 South Lumpkin Road, where interpreters and artisans in period wardrobe explain and demonstrate 19th-century culture and crafts.
“It’s fantastic,” Westville executive director April Kirk told the Ledger-Enquirer. “A lot of people have really put in a lot of time behind the scenes, and now to see people on site enjoying what we’re doing, it’s just a fantastic feeling.”
Westville closed in 2023 due to financial problems stemming from the decreased ticket sales amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the $9.5 million cost of moving from Lumpkin, about 40 miles south of Columbus. The relocation project was completed in 2019.
The L-E reported last year that Westville had raised approximately $750,000 to jump-start its reopening. With an annual budget of nearly $500,000, the money will be enough for a full year of operation. This spring, Westville board chairman Thornton Jordan told the L-E an anonymous donor pledged to match every donation up to $5 million for a Westville fund at the Community Foundation of the Chattahoochee Valley.
So, with finances in good shape, Kirk now has a staff comprising a full-time director of education programs, a part-time visitor services director and 13 part-time interpreters and artisans.
On the 27-acre property, with 17 historic buildings predating 1850, Westville demonstrates a variety of crafts, such as blacksmithing, spinning, weaving, sewing, quilting, woodworking, basket-making and boot-making.
Westville has been operating in its “soft opening” phase for about a month and plans to continue this phase until a yet-to-be-scheduled grand opening celebration in January.
As of now, Westville is open Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but “we’ll add more days and hours as more programs are scheduled,” Kirk said.
Admission is:
- $12 for adults
- $10 for ages 65 and older, active-duty military and veterans
- $8 for ages 17 and younger.
What’s different about the reopened Westville
Kirk emphasized the reopened Westville has more hands-on activities and educational opportunities than the previous version.
“Our interpreters are not just demonstrating, but they’re really sharing the history of the structures and the time period and the people that lived there,” she said. “They’re also very much incorporating the history of the region, so you’re getting a lot bigger conversation about the history of the craft but also the people in the structures and the location.”
Westville will feature special events as well. For example, on Dec. 13, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Westville will host a workshop titled Repair, Flair or Share. Participants can bring items that need some more love (loose seams, small holes, missing buttons) or items that could be decorated with embroidery or needle-felting.
Then participants can learn basic stitching skills and exchange items at the give-and-take corner.
“So we’re not only demonstrating and preserving these traditions,” Kirk said, “but now we’re teaching a new generation.”
The reopened Westville also has a climate-controlled visitors center to warm up in the cold weather and cool off in the hot weather. The center also contains a gallery to present Westfield’s history, a museum story for souvenirs and a children’s room for story times and crafts.
How to be an extra actor in ‘Side Trails’ TV series filming at Westville
The revival of Westville coincides with the revival of a proposed Western-themed TV series that was planned for filming at Westville before it closed.
The prospective series, titled “Side Trails,” is a project by Blue Heron Films, headquartered in Canton. “Side Trails” is based on the novel with the same title by Joyce Southern Bennett of Pickens County.
Set in 1865, near the end of the Civil War, the story follows a family heading West to seek better job prospects. A disaster along the way leaves the parents dead and the three teens and a baby struggling to survive on their own. A traveling preacher, heading West to establish a church, finds a different mission when he discovers the orphans.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 Hollywood strikes by unions representing writers and actors delayed the project, but now it is ready for the next step.
And that will be Dec. 11, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Westville, where Blue Heron will film a demo reel of the proposed “Side Trails” series to sell it to a network. Sue Ann Taylor, the project’s writer, director and producer, told the Ledger-Enquirer it has a $6 million budget to film 10 episodes for its first season, and Blue Heron has a meeting with “a major network” to broadcast the series and get approval by February for filming during the summer.
Taylor declined to name that network and the two others she said are interested, “but there is almost no chance we wouldn’t get one of the three,” she said.
Blue Heron invites people of all demographics to come to Westville dressed in period costume to be extras for the filming on street scenes.
“It’ll be a rotation of people,” Taylor said. “We’ll meet in the parking lot, and we’ll have about 25 people on the street at any one time. We’ll be continuously filming, so we will swap people out to make it look like multiple days.”
Although the extras won’t be paid, Taylor said, no previous acting experience is necessary. The production company, however, will pay a rental fee to anyone who brings a horse or carriage to be used in the filming, but arrangements should be made in advance by sending an email to sidetrails6@gmail.com. More information about the project is at sidetrails.tv.
Blue Heron Films chose Westville, Taylor said, because “it’s a spectacular Georgia jewel, and we’d love to celebrate it.”
Westville benefits from the rental fee it receives for allowing “Side Trails” to be filmed on site (Kirk declined to disclose the amount) and the exposure to a wider audience. Kirk noted after viewers watch a movie or TV show filmed at a real location, they sometimes visit it for themselves.
“This is something we absolutely want to do more of,” she said.
This story was originally published December 5, 2025 at 10:20 AM.
