British actor Joe Layton nearly drowns in NZ

Joe Layton in a promotional photo for Tatau.

A rising British actor says he nearly drowned while filming an underwater scene that went awry in New Zealand.

Joe Layton was rushed to hospital after the incident, which occurred on the set of Tatau, a new supernatural show from the BBC set on a Pacific island.

Layton says he was shooting underwater scenes for Tatau in New Zealand when he failed to use his equipment properly, and suddenly found himself struggling to breathe.

Layton told British newspaper the Daily Star Sunday: "We were filming in a six-metre pool which doubles as a coral reef. There were oxygen tanks down there and I didn't purge the regulator properly. I took it out of my mouth and got a lungful of water."

He was taken to a local hospital where he remained for a day after developing secondary drowning, a condition in which the lungs fill with body fluids after being irritated.

He added: "I didn't tell my mum about that until I got back."

Den of Geek describes Tatau as "a youth-oriented story of two twenty-something backpackers, Kyle and Budgie, who've escaped their real lives so they can get wasted and get laid on a paradisiacal island. A supernatural mystery quickly ensues when the boys drink a traditional Maori hallucinogen and Kyle starts to see visions of a young islander's corpse".

On the show, Kyle reportedly plays a backpacker who "finds himself on the South Pacific island of Manutaki. Things get strange when his self-designed tattoo provokes bizarre reactions from the island's residents".

Tatau begins screening in the UK later today.

- AAP with nzherald.co.nz