Location and Casting of The Boat that rocked

Location

The setting of the boat that rocked was in international waters on the coast of England. The main setting is Britain. 

The Boat That Rocked is a fictitious comedy set in Britain during 1966 in an era when the BBC, the only UK mainland licensed radio broadcaster  (Manx Radio had already been licensed to serve the Isle of white), played little more than two hours of any kind of recorded music each week. In the story a pirate station called Radio Rock began broadcasting rock music twenty-four hours a day from a boat anchored off the coast of England in international waters. Hosted by a colourful band of disc-jockeys, it soon gains an audience of millions and angers the government in the process. While the story does have some relationship to real events it does not represent any specific station that was broadcasting to Britain in 1966

Filming Location

Gambardella's Cafe, Blackheath Standard, London, England, UK

London, England, UK

National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, St James's, London, England, UK

Osprey Quay, Isle of Portland, Portland, Dorset, England, UK

Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK

(studio)

Portland Bill, Dorset, England, UK

Portland, Dorset, England, UK

Roupell Street, Waterloo, London, England, UK

Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

(studio)

Squerryes Court, Kent, England, UK

(Sir Alistair Dormandy's home)

The Beach, Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK

(Seafront)

 Filming took place on the former Dutch hospital ship Timor Challenger, previously De Hoop, moored in Portland Harbour, Dorset; the "North Sea" scenes were shot off Portland Bill, while boat interior shots were filmed inside a warehouse in Osprey Quay on the Isle of portland and at Shepperton Studios. Some of the authentic 1960s-vintage studio equipment seen in the film was  ex Radio Caroline having been used on the MV Ross Revenge in the 1980s and loaned to the film's production company by the ship's current owners, along with numerous fixtures and fittings that were used for set decoration. (The ship used for exterior filming was also fitted with a dummy twin-mast aerial resembling the Ross Revenge's post-1988 antenna system, although all of the real pirate radio ships of the 1960s used single-mast antennas.)^[

On 28 April 2008 scenes were shot on Roupell Street in Waterloo, London, with the Kings Arms re-named the Red Lion for filming purposes

Casting

Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Count, "a big, brash, American god of the airwaves

"Bill Nighy as Quentin, the radio station's boss

Rhys Ifans as Gavin, Star 

DJ Nick Frost as Dr. Dave, 

DJ Katherine Parkinson as Felicity, the lesbian cook

Tom Sturridge as Young Carl, 

Quentin's godson Tom Brooke as 'Thick' Kevin, 

Carl's cabin-mate Chris O'Dowd as Breakfast DJ Simon Swafford 

Rhys Darby as Angus Knutsford, 

DJ Will Adamsdale as newsreader 

John Tom Wisdom as 'Midnight' Mark,

 DJ,Ralph Brown as Bob 'the Dawn Treader', 

DJ, Carl's father Ike Hamilton as Harold, radio assistant

Kenneth Branagh as Minister Dormandy (a loose parody of then-Postmaster General Tony Benn), who aims to shut the station down

Jack Davenport as Twatt, a civil servant

Emma Thompson as Charlotte, Carl's mother

Talulah Riley as Marianne, Quentin's niece

January Jones as Elenore

Gemma Arterton as Desiree

Sinead Matthews as Miss C

Stephen Moore as the Prime Minister. (Harold Wilson was Prime Minister in 1966.)

Olegar Fedoro as the Rock Boat Captain