Red Riding: How Andrew Garfield show streaming on Netflix was inspired by Leeds and Yorkshire Evening Post
A hit series now streaming on Netflix was inspired by Leeds and the Yorkshire Evening Post.
For one red-carpet regular, a little assistance from your local newspaper helped him get noticed in Tinsel Town and he has never looked back.
Andrew Garfield, better known for his role in recent years as Spiderman, shot to fame 16 years ago (in Britain at least) after starring in Channel 4’s highly-stylised adaption of Red Riding - a gritty three-part series set in West Yorkshire.
The series has only recently been added to Netflix and is already a firm favourite, landing in viewers' top-ten list.
Set more than 50 years ago, Garfield plays a reporter for the YEP’s sister paper, The Yorkshire Post. But few realise that, to help pass himself off as a hardened hack, the fledgling actor did a stint at the YEP in preparation.
Like any work experience student, he spent a week with reporters, ventured out for interviews and also spent time at Leeds Crown Court to help him become a convincing journalist for the role.
In a TV interview, he later said: “I kind-of shadowed people, I didn’t report or anything - that would have been interesting.
“I spent a lot of time at the crown court just observing court cases and shadowing a journalist who was doing murder trials and very, very big cases.
“I was trying to live the day-to-day of it, so I could go in front of a camera with some kind of idea.”
Based on the novels by Dewsbury author, David Peace, Red Riding was first screened in March 2009 and quickly attracted critical acclaim.
Garfield plays a cocky, fresh-faced junior reporter in the first of three parts.
Set in 1974, he is tasked with reporting on a series of missing girls, but uncovers an underlying current of institutional corruption that threatens his life.
Filming for the 102-minute drama took place around West Yorkshire locations including Ferrybridge, Seacroft Hospital, the Brudenell Social Club and even the exterior of the old Yorkshire Evening Post building on Wellington Street, which was demolished in 2014.
Raised by English and American parents, 41-year-old Garfield was born in Los Angeles but moved to Surrey at the age of three.
His breakout role came in 2007 for the Channel 4’s Boy A, before landing the role as Eddie Dunford in Red Riding a year later.
His Hollywood breakthrough came in 2010, when he played a leading role in The Social Network, a movie based on the birth of Facebook.
Two years later he was picked to play Spiderman, and again in a sequel in 2014. Between them, the movies made a staggering $1.5 billion at the box office world wide.