The star of `adolescence ” Stephen Graham on whom is responsible for the violence of young people: NPR

Netflix mini-series Adolescence tells the haunting story of a 13 -year -old boy named Jamie who is arrested for the murder of a girl from his school. Although the series is fictitious, Stephen Graham, who co-created the show and also plays Jamie’s father, Eddie, says he is based on similar crimes that have occurred in Great Britain in recent years.

“I read an article in the newspaper, who spoke of a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death. And … I was amazed by what I read,” said Graham. “And then, about three or four months later, there was a story in the news … On a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death, and this incident was the opposite end to the country at the first incident that I had read.”

Graham says that his initial reaction was to blame the parents of the boys, but then he began to reconsider: “Adolescence is a very difficult age, as we all know. You are going through a lot of different things, physically, mentally and even spiritually in the biggest plan of things,” he said. “My main question was why: why is it happening?”

As Adolescence Watch, there is no easy answer to this question. The series portrays a portrait of young people drifting in chaotic schools where intimidation is endemic. Jamie’s parents, although well intentional, ignore the degree to which social media, internet culture and toxic masculinity influence their son.

“There is a wonderful saying, that is to say that you need a village to raise a child. And in this kind of complexity … It’s a bit like, maybe we are all responsible,” says Graham. “When a child closed the door at the time when it was me and you, we did not have access to the rest of the world (via the Internet), and we could not be influenced spectacular by other people and their theories and their processes of reflection. This is what we really wanted to look.”

In addition to AdolescenceGraham is also played as a naked point boxer in the historical drama Thousand strokes On Hulu, which takes place in Victorian London.

Strengths of the interview

On the process of capturing each of the four episodes of the show in a long plug

We have three weeks to shoot each episode, but what we do in this context is for the first week, we repeat the script and we go through the script as we are about to play. … So, it was a great position in which we were in where we could modify the language, we could adjust what was going on in our environment and in the same regard, me and (co-creator) Jack (Thorne) are not boys of 14, but we can ask Owen (Cooper, who plays Jamie) what he would say in these particular situations. … We could be able to use the true authentic language. But it is such a gift because you can marry the two disciplines. So you have this spontaneity in the kind of feeling and joy of the theater live. But you have the technical capacity and the kind of nuances and the realism of cinema and television. …

Then, the second week, we worked with the whole crew … (and) we start to go through what we are going to do, and where we are going to go and how we will get there. … The sound department, they can plant microphones here and there, so we really go, really meticulously, and our movements and the third week is when we start to shoot. So we take two taken per day, so I hope at least, we will have 10 sockets. … With episode one, the grip you see is to take two. With episode two, the band we used was taking 14.

On the emotional final scene in which Eddie sobs on her son’s bed

On this last scene, in this episode, it was the very last take. … So take 16 … and it was the very last day of the shooting. So, once again, my children, Grace, my daughter and Alfie were there and (my wife) Hannah was there for this day. And for this last take, when I entered the room, I did not know that they had done it honestly, I did not do it and I had gone to this room obviously 15 times and therefore I had a kind of idea of ​​what I was going to do. … But what my children and Hannah had done, they put photos on the wall of them and me and they just put: “We are so proud of you, dad. We love you so much.” And obviously, you can imagine, I told you that I am a very soppy person, I wear my heart on my sleeve. … Everything was out. And then when I finished this particular scene, they grabbed me and did not drop me for a while. And I cried a little time after that in fact. But we all cried on this set after this particular scene when we finished it.

By showing that Jamie has a good family life

I wanted to do (Jamie’s father) more like that … a kind of men with whom I was raised, like my uncles and the fathers of my friends and things like that, who were beautiful wonderful men, men who work hard who go to work, may say at 6:00 am, 7:00 am. The kind of area in which they live is a very good accommodation. … It is far from the upper class and it is a cleaning of the working class in a very beautiful region.

So I wanted to focus on the fact that they come from a good house and that there is a lot of love in this house. The mother and the father are mainly their best for their children, and her sister is a level A student. She is a conscientious student who works really hard. Because it is not conventional for us to follow history through the eyes of the family who are the aggressor. Normally, as you can imagine, it would be the side of the victim, and rightly so. In this conventional drama, this is what we would see. But also what I wanted to try to do with this process is to eliminate the possibilities of pointing my finger and saying: “Well, that’s why.”

By playing a kind of male father who is not very affectionate

There is a lot of pain inside Eddie after achieving what her son did. What I wanted to try to achieve and try to accomplish with respect to Eddie is this kind of old -fashioned archetypal man in many ways, that you know how to come from a line of men who are not very tactile. … I am very blessed to have two beautiful children and I hug them and hugs and I tell them that I love them every day. … But what I wanted to do was play the polar opposite.

In training to play a bare handle boxer in Thousand strokes

I wanted to seem to be a fighter. I wanted it to look like, I was a brawler. I wanted a look as who was able to get into the ring and fight. … I had six months to prepare before starting to shoot. So I really trained and trained like an athlete. I trained like a fighter. I had a wonderful coach who was my physical trainer, who was also my dietician. … We do five days a week. And in addition to that, I boxed three, four times a week with my boxing coach. … So I completely immersed myself in all this kind of physical aspect.

Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and published this interview for Broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth November adapted it for the web.