Last year, I had a really fun few days in Newcastle shooting for the Television X series “Freshers”, about student life, which was produced by the lovely Liselle Bailey [:)]
I was living in Wales still at the time of the shoot so had a lovely 7 hour train journey travelling up there- The carriage was pretty cramped and I paid for Wifi usage which lasted for about 10 minutes before cutting out and they wouldn’t give me my money back & told me that I would have to pay again if I wanted to try to connect again. Plus the train from Birmingham was a solid three and a half hour journey…. And there was no food or drink service at all which meant that when the train stopped at Derby for 10 minutes, I had to quickly get off the train and run to the little “Pumpkin” shop and buy some snacks and a drink- No one on the train was impressed by the lack of edible items. Fuck you, Cross Country trains- your service is shit, your staff are rude and you pretty much stole some of my hard earned cash! A few stops later though, one of the other models got on the train, and she had a bottle of wine with her, so we enjoyed that to pass the time There were also some drunk Scottish people sat near to us who spent the duration of the journey singing songs about football and calling each other fags and cunts- Really funny, if not a little tiring after having to listen to it for two hours- But hey, I’ve done worse things on a night out………. [:P]
Anyway, when we got there we were picked up from the station and taken to the house we were shooting in- It was a real life student house, just like it was meant to be in the film! It was great to meet a few industry people I had never met before and we all had some drinks and chatted. It was a lovely first evening [:)]
The next day we shot a load of straight forward “normal” acting in the house before I shot my first sex scene in a backroom of some kind of warehouse type place. I played an innocent student, and in this scene I had too much to drink at a party and ended up sleeping with a guy I met, only to then discover he was one of my new housemates…. It was a good laugh and the scene turned out pretty well if I do say so myself!
Later that night we went down the pub to shoot some more acting stuff and to have a few drinks to while we were at it, which is never a bad thing. It was so much fun, then we went back to the house and played drinking games for a couple of hours.
The next day was our last day there and I shot my second sex scene which was with a new stud called Jamie who was really sweet. In the film, we fancied each other but were too shy to do anything about it until we threw a party in the student house and finally “got it on” while another couple did the same thing in the bedroom next door. It was great fun, and we had a party that night in real life too as it was our last night filming in Newcastle- it was mental as loads of people came… The funniest part was when I went into the kitchen to get a drink & the door ope and in walked three really tall men dressed as women- they had full make up and diereses on with stockings and you could tell they knew they looked crazy but were up for a good laugh [:D]
I was outside having a cigarette with one of the studs when this guy came over to us- I don’t think anyone knew him & he seemed to have had a few too many drinks as he kept laughing randomly and seemed really excited just to have someone to talk to (Bless him). He said hello then randomly started telling us about his d*g (Adultwork won’t let me write the full word, but here is a hint… Woof woof). Apparently the d*g was a bit fucked up in the head and had twitching eyeballs that rolled around when it walked… Odd. But what’s more odd is the fact that he told us that the d*g physically couldn’t turn left and that if it tried to, it would fall over and faint. I told him that was really weird. He told me the d*g had died a few months earlier from a heart attack, so I said I was sorry to hear that then the guy said that it actually died because while it was having the heart attack it turned left. I told him it was probably the heart attack that killed it, not the fact it took a left turn, but he seemed quite happy believing that hokum, so I left it at that. It gave me and a few of the others a good laugh though as the guy clearly had more than one screw lose. We all ended up getting pretty drunk and at around 2am me and a girl I had met that night went out to try and find somewhere selling alcohol as between everyone at the party, we had drank all that we had there. We had no luck so we had a bit of a dance in the living room then most people went home or went to bed.
We had to endure a long train journey back home with hangovers the next day…. Typically I had the furthest to travel and my head was banging, but I really enjoyed my time shooting in Newcastle, and met a whole host of entertaining people- Plus I also made a few fiends up there who I have stayed in touch with… And I also got to see how friendly and welcoming most Geordie people are, as everyone I met was lovely- although I don’t think I could live there as it seems like there is always a party or a piss up going on somewhere, and I doubt I would ever have a quiet night in!