Daniel Craig was a late auditionee for the role of Geordie. At the audition, he performed the Geordie accent very poorly, however, he won the part and it came to be regarded as his breakthrough role. Mark Strong worked on the Geordie accent by studying episodes of the 1980s comedy series "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet", which featured lead characters from Newcastle. Strong later claimed that Christopher Eccleston took a dislike to him, and outside of their scenes together, the pair did not speak for the entire period that "Our Friends in the North" was filming.