Below's Rohan Campbell on Newfoundland, a Shark-Film Pitch and a Hard Accent

Netflix's sci-fi limited series Below is set in Newfoundland, and its creator has a quick way of describing it. Jesse McKeown, the show's creator and showrunner (the person who leads the writing and oversees the making of the series), called it "like Jaws Fargo." The phrase is a mash-up of two films: Jaws, the shark thriller, and Fargo, the crime story set in a snowbound corner of the United States. McKeown said it to actor Rohan Campbell, and Campbell repeated it in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published on 12 November 2026.

A limited series is a show told in one self-contained run of episodes, rather than an open-ended one. Below has a small group of central characters. Campbell plays Jay, the son of Calvin Penney. Josh Hartnett plays Calvin, a fisherman in a remote Newfoundland town. Mackenzie Davis plays a marine biologist, a scientist who studies sea life.

Campbell's route into the show was not a straight line. He said a different producer first put him in touch with McKeown about another project. The two then connected again, and Campbell was cast in Below. That kind of chain is common in the business, where a relationship made on one job can lead to a role on a later one.

The biggest hurdle for Campbell was the accent. He called learning it a "humiliation ritual," because, in his words, it is very hard, very specific, and it changes from one part of the province to another. Newfoundland, an island and province off Canada's east coast, has a range of speech patterns, so an actor cannot simply learn one version and use it everywhere. Campbell's description is a reminder of how much detail goes into a role before the cameras roll.

For viewers, the key facts are simple. Below is a Netflix title, and it is a sci-fi story. Campbell's account gives a look at how the cast was put together and what the lead actors worked on before filming.