Adolescence Star Stephen Graham on Incel Influencers, How the Series Found Its Jamie, and Playing Bruce Springsteen’s Dad

The drama touches on the influence of online firebrands like Andrew Tate. Were you aware of his impact before you came to do Adolescence?

I wasn’t completely. Our Alfie [Graham’s son] sent me this training thing, and I was like, Oh, that’s good. And then obviously, I must have been involved in the algorithm somehow, or in some way, and all of a sudden, this fella is popping up, and expressing his views and opinions. Which he’s entitled to, that’s fine.

But I was like, Whoa, okay, I don’t quite think like that. And Grace [Graham’s daughter] goes, “Daaad. That’s Andrew Tate.” And I was like, Well, I don’t know him. And she’s like, “Well he’s…” And I was like, Oh, wow, really, okay. And then I thought, Well, I’m a semi-put-together 51-year-old man who knows a little bit of who I am and what I’m about. So what if I was a 13-year-old boy who didn’t have the greatest relationship with my father, didn’t really have that solid connection with a role model, and was finding my feet out there?

Because I was a young lad of 13. Girls, a little bottle of Merrydown Cider round the back of the school… Couple of tokes of a little spliff. But at least when Kenny Everett came on the telly, and there was a bit of a nipple, my mum would go, “Right you, bed!” Now, you say “bed”, and that — [Graham holds up his smartphone] — parents more than we do these days, in many ways. They can find anything or do anything with this.

When I was a kid, when I was in my bedroom, my mum knew I was safe. There wasn’t really much I could be doing that would bring me to harm. But in today’s day and age, these phones are very dangerous. And these so-called influencers, I think there’s a huge responsibility there.

I also wanted to ask you briefly about Owen Cooper and how you found him—the work he does in the show is remarkable, especially that third episode.

That third episode, let me tell you this: he turns up and he was off page. Erin [Doherty] is a master, and a consummate professional—her background’s theatre, she’s unbelievably amazing. And that kid turned up and he was off book. And he’s only ever done a school play. He was phenomenal.

How that process worked was that Shaheen Baig, who to me is one of the finest casting directors out there—she’s magnificent at finding young kids. Phil [Barantini], Shaheen and Joe Johnson, our amazing producer, they shifted through I think five or six hundred kids for that role, and we got it down to four, and then we did a workshop.

I just want to say this: we did something that is never normally done in these situations, those four boys we got it down to… We offered those four kids four roles. Four integral parts. Because normally in our industry, they get to that far, and then it’s like, “Look, it didn’t work, goodbye.” But I want to do that, because none of our kids had ever worked in the profession before, so I wanted them to know that their talent had got them to this place, and we still believed in them. It’s just that we were going a different way with the main role.