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Joss Barrett\/ITV<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe star of a TV drama filmed in Cornwall has said he “didn’t want to leave” when the shoot ended.<\/p>\n James Norton plays the main character in the ITV series Playing Nice, in which two couples discover their children had been swapped at birth in a mix-up in a hospital.<\/p>\n The series was inspired by a novel set in London but the drama’s executive producer, Kitty Kaletsky, said “there was no more perfect place than Cornwall” for the televised version.<\/p>\n Norton credited the community around Newquay for not only welcoming the crew so warmly but for helping him learn a Cornish accent for the drama’s lead character.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “For Pete it was a gentle, quite light-touch accent, we didn’t want to go heavy-handed with it,” he explained.<\/p>\n The actor said weekends spent surfing and hiking cliff paths with local people helped him better understand the Cornish accent.<\/p>\n “The sense I got was people kind of slip in and out, there’s not one thick Cornish accent, there’s lots of different variations.<\/p>\n “They were very forgiving and encouraging and helpful in my becoming a token Cornishman,” he joked. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n As part of his role, Norton had to learn to surf, so Pete Abell, head coach of Kingsurf Surf School in Mawgan Porth, taught him.<\/p>\n Norton said the “amazing guy” had also been the crew’s “gateway into the community”.<\/p>\n “The cast were really welcomed into the community and we all hung out at Rettorick Mill in Watergate Bay, and went surfing most weekends.”<\/p>\n At Halloween, co-star James MacArdle, noticed the drama’s four main characters looked like Abba, with two of them blonde and two brunette, so they dressed as the Swedish pop group for a party at the farm with self-catering accomodation and a bar.<\/p>\n “It ingratiated us with the community as honorary Cornish people,” Norton laughed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Explaining the decision to swap London for Cornwall, executive producer Kitty Kaletsky, said: “These are people who, having discovered this catastrophic thing, are living on the edge – and in Cornwall, you are literally living on a precipice.”<\/p>\n She said the sense of a small town was important, too, in which the characters could “have an element of anonymity but also be in a landscape and a town where you can’t escape each other”.<\/p>\n “It felt like we got all of those – and some – in Cornwall,” she concluded.<\/p>\n Cornish filming locations for the series included Watergate Bay, Mevagissey, the Jubilee Pool in Penzance, Minions , Newlyn East and stretches of the north Cornwall coast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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Joss Barrett\/ITV<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n‘Living on the edge’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
‘An amazing three months’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n