Spooky scenes of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg’s new Amazon Prime series Truth Seekers were filmed in Welwyn Garden City.
The eight-episode paranormal comedy drama is released on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, October 30, 2020.
The cast of Truth Seekers includes Samson Kayo as Elton, Emma D’Arcy as Astrid, Susan Wokoma as Helen, Malcolm McDowell as Richard and Julian Barrett as Dr Peter Toynbee, alongside Shaun of the Dead duo Pegg and Frost, who play Dave and Gus Roberts respectively.
READ MORE: Truth Seekers cast talk about their characters
The derelict former Shredded Wheat cereal factory in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, is among the filming locations used for Truth Seekers.
It doubles for the site of the Portland Power Station in the series where Dr Toynbee performs his ritual as the eclipse nears totality,
Having appeared in Channel 4’s Victorian detective series Year of the Rabbit and recent Netflix movie Enola Holmes, Susan Wokoma plays Elton’s agoraphobic sister Helen.
READ MORE: Episode guide to Truth Seekers series
“Because Helen doesn’t really leave the flat, the majority of my scenes have been filmed in Ealing Studios because I’m indoors,” said Susan.
“But, the one exterior that I did get to film at, was the Shredded Wheat factory.
“There’s loads of these old cereal factories dotted around London where productions film, so I’ve been to a few of them.
“At night when it’s all lit up it looks really, really, really, freaky. You just know someone has definitely been sacrificed to the devil here. It’s that vibe. But nothing actually happened, it was quite jolly.”
In Truth Seekers, series co-creator Simon Pegg plays Dave, the jobsworth boss of Smyle, Britain’s biggest mobile network operator and internet service provider.
READ MORE: Graffiti artist brightens up former Shredded Wheat site
Referring to the Hertfordshire location mentioned by Susan, Mission: Impossible star Pegg says: “Yes, the guys worked on not many of the scenes I’m involved with but it’s an old Shredded Wheat factory in Welwyn Garden City.
“It’s actually my second time having a production in Welwyn Garden City, which is essentially a huge abandoned warehouse, brilliantly evocative and rundown. I think it’s served as several locations for us.
READ MORE: Danny Dyer films EastEnders scenes at Shredded Wheat factory
“It’s great when you come across these buildings that have been untouched for years because they serve really well for spooky locations and this one was just full of them.
“So yes, it’s been great, we’ve been in various basements and abandoned buildings. Locations have done a great job in terms of finding these places.”
Truth Seekers is not the first time Pegg and Frost have filmed in Welwyn Garden City.
The amateur dramatics scenes from Hot Fuzz were filmed at the Barn Theatre, while The World’s End – the third part of Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy – used four pubs in Welwyn Garden City and various town centre locations.
READ MORE: Where The World’s End pub crawl was filmed
Scenes of Truth Seekers were also shot in Aldbury Grove, Welwyn Garden City, where Frost’s character Gus Roberts drops Elton off at the flat he shares with his sister Helen.
The empty cereal factory in WGC, which is opposite the garden city’s train station, wasn’t the only derelict building used for Truth Seekers, as producers filmed at numerous locations in the south of England over nine weeks in the summer/autumn of 2019.
Emma D’Arcy, who plays the mysterious Astrid, said: “We shot in an abandoned hospital, like, an old accident emergency ward.
“There was a time when me and the stills photographer went for a little wander, and we bust into this corridor and there was a prosthetic leg just leaning up against like the hallway. No sign of the owner.”
READ MORE: Simon Pegg and Nick Frost go ghost hunting
Shooting in older locations also helped create the suspense.
“I guess what’s great is that sometimes there’s no acting required,” added Emma.
“For example, you may have to go through a spooky place and there’s just an energy.
“We went to a disused private school, and the grounds were really beautiful and there were apple trees everywhere.
“I then found out that we were going to be shooting in the dungeons of the private school.
“The dungeon had really low ceilings, it was mucky, dirty, narrow and the old rooms were scary!”
Timewasters and BAFTA-nominated Famalam actor Samson Kayo, who is paired with Nick Frost’s character Gus Roberts, felt the creepy locations “really pushes our characters”.
He said: “There was a time when we went to some bunkers, I wasn’t sure how it would look.
“There was an episode, when Nick was trapped and we went down to this dark kind of bunker-y place, there were loads of hieroglyphics, which made us feel like we were actually in there because it was so small.
“That was really exciting to me. I thought ‘yeah, this is going to be good’.”
You can see the results when Amazon Original Truth Seekers is released on Prime Video on Friday.
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