Adolescence star Stephen Graham looked round my £230k home & joked with my family – then we had to move out for 3 months
A COUPLE has told how Adolescence star Stephen Graham joked around with them as he looked around their £230,000 home.
Before they knew it, Bethany Fletcher, 32, and Dylan Naylor, 29, had moved out of the Yorkshire home – as a film crew moved in.
The detached, 1960s three-bed had been selected by bosses as the perfect fictional home for Stephen’s character Eddie Miller and his son, schoolboy Jamie, portrayed by Owen Cooper, who is accused of murdering his classmate.
Bethany, Dylan, and their kids Theo, three, and Louis, two, vacated the house for three months last summer to allow the filming of the hit four-part drama – which is currently No 1 on Netflix in the UK.
Recalling the surreal day that Stephen came to view the house, bank worker Bethany said: “I was star struck when he walked through our door.
“A production team had been on the phone briefly asking not to share the news Stephen would be in town but I misheard what he has said.
Dylan said: “Of course Beth had no idea who the celebrity was coming round so when he walked in it was so surreal.
“He joked to us, ‘I bet you’ve seen me and TV’ and we both told him we were huge fans.”
The first thing Stephen said was that he “loved” the staircase and he loved the “natural light” coming through the windows and into the house, according to the couple.
The family had no idea their house was of interest to bosses until they received a letter of interest through the post by the Warp Films production company.
Bethany said: “We received a letter through the post from the company explaining that they were interested in using the house to film a TV series.
“I thought it was a scam a first as I had no idea that this was how it worked.
“I gave the number left on the letter a ring anyway and before I knew it an hour later around 20 people had shown up mapping it out, taking pictures, and moving stuff around.
Dylan said: “Our next door neighbours were taking registration plates thinking we were being robbed as they had no idea what was going on.”
A short time later, the couple were told their property bad been selected due to the positioning at the end of a long street, the natural light, and the short five-minute drive to the production park.
Dylan, a self-employed floor layer, said: “It was like winning the postcode lottery.”
During filming, the family were able to mingle with the star-studded cast, who they described as so “polite and friendly” – and Dylan even got a job as a marshal on set.
The floor layer recalled the surreal experience of eating his lunch with Ashley Walters, who plays DI Luke Bascombe, outside his old school, Outwood Academy Hemsworth.
Dylan said: “I was sat out front with Ashley where I used to sit as a teenager.
“We had a polite conversation and I asked him a couple of questions, but he couldn’t tell me too much about the filming.”
However, Bethany admitted she “didn’t” really “speak” to the cast until the end of filming as she was “too scared” of “getting in the way of the filming process” – though she did eventually manage to get a picture with Stephen.
The couple were in and out of their home for three months between late June and early September during the filming process.
Bethany and Dylan and their children stayed in their home for the first two weeks of the initial rehearsals which started on June 27 before being “politely” asked to move out.
Bethany said: “They were back to back shooting scenes in the morning and in the afternoon for seven days in a row, it all got a bit hectic with our different schedules.”
The family moved into Dylan’s parents house for a month before moving to Bethany’s mum’s next door neighbors house for three weeks.
The couple then moved back into their home briefly for two weeks but were then placed into a large five bedroom house in Bedsworth during the final three weeks of filming before finally moving back in on September 11.
Bethany said: “We were all over the place that summer, it really was wild.”
The house frequently features in the series though the couple revealed that the only original fitting and fixture that can be seen in the filming was their kitchen table.
Dylan said: “Everything was replaced.
“All the furniture was changed, the walls were wall papered over.
“I’m talking absolutely everything, down the the pots and pans and knives and forks.
“They even changed the garage door, took out the front garden fences, and added a plastic grey cover to our front door.”
When the design team returned their house back to normal Dylan said they had “accidently” taken a picture of him as a child thinking it was a prop picture of Owen.
The couple said Owen’s bedroom was their son’s bedroom, which had previously been Bethany’s brother’s.
Stephen was based in Dylan and Bethany’s bedroom and the only room in the house that wasn’t used was the upstairs bathroom.
They said they got to keep a couple of props including Owen’s bed, the living room lamps, the curtains, and some of the flowers.
The couple described the experience as “incredible” saying “who knew all this could happen from a letter through our front door”.
Bethany and Dylan have binge watched the show since it’s release and said they “loved every bit”.
Bethany said: “It still doesn’t feel free that our house is on TV.
“People are always surprised when we tell them.”
They have used their compensation payment towards the deposit on their home which they are currently buying from Bethany’s mum.