Trivia / Waterloo Road

• Dawson Casting: Considering UK laws on child filming and the fact that the pupils are a major part of the show, it's pretty much a given.
  • A possible Lampshade Hanging in the third season when a teacher successfully passes herself off as a student for a football match.
  • Jenna Coleman, who prior to Doctor Who appeared in a story arc as a teenager named Lindsay James while she herself was in her early 20s, is on record as describing the experience of playing a teenager as "surreal".
  • Taken to the extreme with the casting of 28-year-old Roxanne Pallett as a 17-year-old. [1]
• Fake Nationality: Francesca Montoya is played by an Indian actress of British extraction, born in India.
• Money, Dear Boy: Why Neil Morrissey took the role of Eddie Lawson, and left as quickly as he could. Justified, as a few of his businesses failed just around the time he was offered the role and needed some quick cash.
• Playing Against Type: Sarah Hadland, known for her comedic roles in shows like Miranda (2009), The Job Lot, and Moving Wallpaper, appears in Series 7 as an unstable Yandere who runs Michael over.
• Real-Life Relative: Steph and Dave the security guard are played by actors who were married to each other in real life when they worked on the programme, but divorced in 2012.
  • Taken a step further when you realise their eldest son- now of The 1975 fame- appears as an extra in several episodes, particularly during season 4.
• Reality Subtext: A few times.
• You Look Familiar:
  • Daniella Denby-Ashe played an incompetent substitute teacher in one episode and returned at the end of Series 7 in a full time role as businesswoman Lorraine Donnegan.
  • Reece Noi first appears as a one shot character named Noel. He returns as a main student Earl Kelly and plahs a similar role to Noel in his connection to Maxine.
  • Naveed Choudhry plays a minor character Shahid Kapoor who is Bolton's Asian friend. He later returns as Tariq Siddiqui as the big man/bad boy on campus.
  • In Series 6 Neil Fitzmaurice plays Mr Downing, a man whose convincing his son to believe a Polish man got the school's caretaker job ahead of him provoked a racist hate campaign. In the 2023 reboot he comes back as a history teacher.

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