Jessica Chastain from ‘Eyes of Tammy Faye’ on Peninsula Club Drive

March 31. By Dave Yochum. Jessica Chastain won the Academy Award on Sunday for best actress playing Tammy Faye Baker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” but one of the scene-stealers was a scene in the film itself: A landmark home on Peninsula Club Drive. It’s where Tammy Faye brings her mom home, they walk in the front door and chat in a “relaxation room” overlooking the lake.

It’s the home of Donna and Steve Cole on Peninsula Club Drive.

Background

Chastain is unrecognizable in heavy makeup as the late Tammy Faye Bakker, who, with her fraudster husband, Jim, captured the attention of Charlotte and the country with The PTL Club from 1974 to 1987.

Their downfall was chronicled in the pages of the Charlotte Observer, which won a Pulitzer Prize for “revealing misuse of funds by the PTL television ministry through persistent coverage conducted in the face of a massive campaign by PTL to discredit the newspaper.”

The Cole’s home, on Peninsula Club between Mainsail Pointe and Westward Reach, appears at 4:04 in this extended preview, complete with period-correct shag carpeting.

Steve Cole’s statement about the experience:

“As the owner of Travel With Us in Lake Wylie, South Carolina, my wife, Donna, managed a portion of PTL’s Corporate Travel arrangements in the 1980s. She even had the chance to meet them, albeit not under the happiest circumstances. After losing their estate on Lake Wylie, they rented a house from Donna’s business partner, Walter Colvin, and Donna joined Walter to welcome them to River Hills Plantation. Our home on Lake Norman served as the backdrop for their Lake Wylie mansion in the movie. As a result, the pleasure of seeing our house on the big screen and Jessica Chastain’s Oscar triumph for her depiction of Tammy Faye added to the sweetness of the experience.”