White Lines Is Available To Watch On Netflix Now
We caught up with actor Tom Rhys Harries, who talked about the joys of filming the Ibiza-set drama
New sun-soaked drama White Lines is now available to watch on Netflix - and frankly, it could not have come at a more perfect time for anyone pining after a (very unlikely) summery getaway this year.
Written by Money Heist maestro Álex Pina, White Lines stars Laura Haddock (Guardians of the Galaxy, Transformers: The Last Knight, The Inbetweeners Movie) as a woman called Zoe who travels to Ibiza to investigate the mysterious death of her brother Axel (Tom Rhys Harries), who went missing on the island some two decades before.
Axel's time in Ibiza is told through a series of dreamy flashbacks, with Pina's non-linear writing straddling two eras to weave together the mysteries behind his death - also flitting in between the Spanish party capital and Axel and Zoe's hometown of Manchester, where an iconic rave culture of its own was well underway.
After forging a passion for music back at home, holding illegal raves in disused warehouse spaces, we see as Axel moves to Ibiza and rises to the top of its superclub scene as a DJ - a storyline that Harries understandably relished, as it involved filming against the backdrop of a long, hot Spanish summer.
Speaking to LADbible, the actor explained how much fun everyone had filming the series on location in the Balearic Islands last summer and autumn - from what they remember, anyway.
Harries said: "It was carnage! I'm surprised we came out of it with a show. I don't know what wizardry the editing team have done, but they've managed to put something together.
"We just had a lot of fun. And you're asking for trouble, aren't you - if you've got the content that we were shooting, and where we were shooting it?"
He added, laughing: "And then you're going into like quite ropey territory when anything can be attributed to 'research'. Yeah, it was wild."
Harries even found himself hooked on the prop ecstasy pills used on set - though don't worry, it's not quite as it seems.
Explaining how fake cocaine was usually made out of a substance 'like cornflour or something', ecstasy pills were small white sweets.
"Any 'pills' would just be like a kind of sweet," Harries said.
"I was just trying to train a lot and I'd been put on this diet that meant I didn't eat any sugar, so then when we'd have those days where the sweets were out, I was like 'Aw yeah, banging!'
"I'd just end up p***ing the props master off because I'd eat all the eccy pills, and it was just because I hadn't had any sugar in months."
Harries said it almost felt like he was doing his own season out there, mimicking the pilgrimage that countless holidaymakers take each year for an extended hit of sunshine and music.
He added: "If I had more than say four days between shooting I could come back to London, but I didn't have a reason to come back to London, and so as shooting carried on I just spent more and more time out there.
"We shot in Ibiza, Majorca and Madrid, so I'd just hire a motorbike and when I had those days off I could just sort of explore those islands. It was just the best."
Harries was also keen to understand the other side of his role: that of the equally legendary Manchester rave scene.
Thankfully, he had a Mancunian co-star to take him under his wing... and to try and drag him into the local footballing turf war.
Harries recalled: "Before shooting, Cel Spellman, who plays Marcus when he's younger, Jonny Green, who plays David, and I stayed in Cel's family home with his parents, and he got to show us about the place.
"I don't necessarily support a football team, but Cel was trying to get me on board with Man City because he's a big City fan!"
Then, of course, there was the accent, which can be notoriously difficult to master without verging into the territory of parody.
Harries, who is originally from Cardiff, continued: "I worked with an accent coach which was fortunate because I didn't know where to start.
"I just watched a load of videos of Noel and Liam from that era - because there's a distinct difference, I think, in how the Manchester accent was back in the 90s, and what it's like now has changed a bit."
Hoping that the show can serve as a timely antidote for those missing out on big nights out and sunny getaways, Harries said people should be able to take solace in the hyper-saturated world they've created.
He said: "I mean, don't take it too seriously, go on board with it - it's mad, it's fun, these characters are bonkers, the situations that they find themselves in are insane, and if it gives anybody a kind of fix of something that we can't have right now, then that's only a good thing because it's just pure escapism."
White Lines is available to watch on Netflix now.
Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Entertainment, TV and Film, Netflix
Jess Hardiman