Joe Cole has revealed that several stars of the upcoming BBC thriller Nightsleeper were left 'sick and needing medication' while filming the series. The real-time thriller follows a sleeper train travelling from Glasgow to London which is hacked, and a government agency's frantic efforts to intervene.
Joe stars as Joe Roag, an off-duty police officer on board who must work over the phone with Abby Aysgarth (Alexandra Roach), the Acting Technical Director at the UK's National Cyber Security Centre, as they attempt to bring the train to a halt.
Although the series wasn't filmed on an actual train journey, the realistic set left some cast members feeling severe motion sickness. 'The train was three sets of three carriages in a studio in Glasgow,' Joe told Metro.co.uk. 'From 8am every morning we were thrust into a dark studio and never left, but they had these incredible LED screens where they had filmed the journey from London to Glasgow and had the real-life world flashing past us. Some of the actors were actually getting vertigo and sickness from it.'
Joe, 35, said he was one of the lucky ones to avoid falling ill, but still felt claustrophobic. 'It was also hot and stuffy, because you've got a whole crew there too. It was… cosy. It felt really intense at times, which I think added something.' He added that the long hours in the enclosed space contributed to the claustrophobia.
Reading the script for the six episodes, Joe wondered 'how can this get any worse' for the characters. 'I thought the writers might run out of ideas, but it got progressively more bonkers,' he said. After filming concluded, Joe admitted he was unsettled about getting on a train again. 'I wasn't too keen on getting onto a train after this one if I'm honest, mainly because I spent so many hours on train carriages for about three months,' he laughed.
