The Circle creator explains why the American version is filmed in Northern England

Vulture

In fact, the Netflix reality show uses the same Northern England apartment complex set for the British, French, American and Brazilian versions. “We wanted the building to be in a nonspecific location for the U.S. version — the feeling that it could be anywhere,” says creator Tim Harcourt in an interview with Vulture. "However, it didn’t make sense to add shots of the U.K. and its cities — in fact, it was confusing — so we added U.S. cityscapes to give it an American feel for the majority of the audience who assume it is somewhere in the U.S.” In other words, as Vulture notes, The Circle was catfishing the entire time. Harcourt adds: "Finding the apartment block is incredibly difficult because what we need, really, is a completely empty apartment block, because we don’t want to be sharing it with residents who are living there. We end up sort of taking over the whole thing. We have to drill cables and put cameras up, but you also need an apartment that’s not overlooked by other people. Especially because for the British version, in particular, it goes out every night and at the same time as it’s being filmed, so you wouldn’t want anyone holding up a big sign saying 'Rebecca is actually a catfish.' It takes about four or five months and you kiss a lot of frogs and you go to a few crappy apartment blocks in your time. But we love the one that we ended up with. And then, also, we sort of help make all the apartments look really desirable and like great places that people would want to live if they were by themselves or in a couple."