Tag Archives: Adolescence

Kemi Badenoch Has Repeated A Conspiracy Theory About Adolescence Denied By Its Creator

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Kemi Badenoch has repeated a conspiracy theory about Adolescence which has been denied by one of the programme’s creators.

The Tory leader told GB News that the Netflix drama is “based on a real story, but my understanding is that the boy who committed that crime was not white”.

In the show, a white boy is arrested after a young girl is stabbed to death.

Posting on X, the right-wing commentator Ian Miles Cheong told his 1.2 million followers: “Netflix has a show called Adolescence that’s about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer.

“So guess what. They race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement.

“Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.”

X owner Elon Musk replied the post saying: “Wow.”

He told the News Agents podcast: “They’ve claimed that Stephen and I based it on a story, and another story, so we race-swapped because we were basing it on here and it ended up there, and everything else. Nothing is further from the truth.

“I have told a lot of real life stories in my time, and I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real life story and put it on screen and the people aren’t expecting it. There is no part of this that’s based on a true story, not one single part.”

He added: “We’re not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys.”

Stephen Graham told the Radio Times that his inspiration for Adolescence came from a series of different killings he had read about.

He said: “Where it came from, for me is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why?

“Then there was another young girl in south London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up north, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?”

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This Is How Ashley Walters ‘Screwed Up’ 1 Take Of Adolescence Halfway Through

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Ashley Walters had a bit of an on-set nightmare while filming the Netflix drama Adolescence, which required everyone to go back to square one.

Much has already been made about Adolescence’s unique filming style, which saw each hour-long episode of the hard-hitting drama being recorded in one continuous shot.

To accommodate this, both the cast and crew were put through weeks of rehearsals, with each episode being filmed straight-through, twice a day, over the period of a week.

On Monday morning, Stephen Graham and his wife Hannah Walters – both of whom worked as executive producers on Adolescence, while Stephen was also its co-writer and one of its stars – paid a visit to Radio X, where they were asked about how it all worked.

“Why would you do that?” host Chris Moyles asked of the straight-through technique. “Because what if you’re 53 minutes in and someone goes, ‘John… Bob… Oh, God damn it…’?”

Stephen responded: “Well, that’s the risk that you take, isn’t it?”

Chris then asked: “What if you’re, like, halfway through and someone goes, ‘Stephen… I mean…’.”

“That happened!” Stephen teased, with Hannah confirming: “It happened in Ashley’s episode. Ashley screwed up.”

Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters at the premiere of Adolescence last week
Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters at the premiere of Adolescence last week

via Associated Press

“Oh you’ve grassed him up,” Stephen then remarked, to which she insisted: “He won’t mind me saying!”

Since Adolescence’s release, Netflix has shared plenty of behind-the-scenes tidbits about how it was made – including what happened when the cast and crew made mistakes.

Last week, Ashley admitted that he’d already been through one major headache before production had even begun, when he turned up to set with a sports injury after an impromptu basketball game with his daughter.

“I took it for granted,” Ashley revealed. “I’m not gonna lie. Because I wanted to do the one-shot process so much.

“And I turned up to set with a bad back, by the way. My back had gone.”

He even went as far as saying “it nearly didn’t happen” for him, were it not for a last-minute appointment with a chiropractor who was able to sort him out.

The Chris Moyles Show Radio X airs every weekday from 6.30am on Radio X and Global Player. All four episodes of Adolescence are available to stream now on Netflix.

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This Brilliant Moment From Adolescence Episode 3 Wasn’t Actually In The Script

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Because of everything that went into Adolescence, the gripping new Netflix drama in which each episode was filmed in one continuous shot, it’s been well-documented that months of planning was required before shooting could actually begin.

However, that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t room for improvisation once the cameras did start rolling.

Speaking to Variety, director Philip Barantini revealed that during episode three – which sees Jamie being analysed by a child psychologist – teen actor Owen Cooper surprised everyone once he really got inside of his character’s mindset.

“Owen’s such a lovely kid so to get him to really go there and be really nasty and horrible to this character, it wasn’t in his nature initially to do that,” Barantini explained.

“So, there were moments in that episode where, during the rehearsals, I kept on saying: ‘go further, go mad, you hate her, scream at her, get it all out’. Obviously he’d never had to do that before, so he had to go there and realise the level he could take it.”

He continued: “There was one moment in one take, which I never asked him to do, where he’s talking to Erin [Doherty] and the camera’s on him and he just starts yawning.

“Everyone behind the camera was going, ‘oh my god, he’s never done that before!’ Erin being Erin just said to him, ‘I’m sorry, am I boring you?’. And he had this cheeky smile on his face.”

Owen Cooper at the premiere of Adolescence last week
Owen Cooper at the premiere of Adolescence last week

via Associated Press

Owen also spoke about the improvised moment during an interview on The One Show last week.

“It was the second take and, you know, I was tired so a yawn came to me,” he explained.

“Then Erin did an amazing line, she said, ‘Am I boring you?’. So, that took me back and it made me smile, because it wasn’t in the script. I wasn’t expecting that at all, so it took me back a little bit, but it was amazing.”

All four episodes of Adolescence are now available to stream on Netflix.

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Adolescence: How Did The Netflix Drama Pull Off Its Incredible One-Shot Technique?

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There are a few things that look set to make Adolescence one of 2025’s most talked-about new shows – namely, its unsettling subject matter and the incredible performances from its predominantly British cast.

But there’s one other factor that sets Adolescence apart, too.

Much like another of Stephen Graham’s recent hits, the 2021 film Boiling Point, each episode of the chilling Netflix crime drama is filmed in one continuous shot, giving the whole show a relentless, claustrophobic feel.

And if you were wondering – no, there’s no trickery at play here. Every episode really was one filmed in one long shot which, as you can imagine, required some imaginative thinking from Adolescence’s creative team.

“Basically, that means we press record on the camera and we don’t press stop until the very end of the hour,” director Philip Barantini told Netflix. “But it’s much more complicated than it sounds.

“It takes months of preparation and weeks of rehearsals and an incredible team of people to pull it off at every stage, from the script to the locations to the production design to where exactly the camera is going to be able to shoot and from what angle.”

So, how exactly did Adolescence pull off that impressive one-shot technique on all four episodes?

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Because of the show’s unique filming style, months of meticulous planning went into making sure everything the team wanted to include would be achievable in a one-take style.

“A really fun day was working out how long the car ride takes from the house to the police station and walking that route,” co-writer Jack Thorne recalled to Deadline of just how fine the details had to be.

Barantini previously helmed Boiling Point, so he was no stranger to using long singular shots as a device.

However, where Boiling Point all took place under one roof, Adolescence was much more ambitious in its scale.

“The difference was we wrote Boiling Point with the location in mind so we would sit in a restaurant and write scripts,” he added. “This time it was all in Jack’s head then I’d have to go away and find these locations.”

Mark Stanley, Owen Cooper and Stephen Graham on the set of Adolescence
Mark Stanley, Owen Cooper and Stephen Graham on the set of Adolescence

According to the LA Times, the rehearsal process lasted three weeks for each episode.

First, the cast would rehearse on location for a full week, after which cameras would be incorporated to make sure everyone involved in the process knew where they needed to be at each moment.

After that, for the final week, the cast would film two long continuous takes a day over a five-day period, resulting in 10 takes for each episode.

Thorne would also need to be on-hand in the event that the planned dialogue or other details included in the original script didn’t quite work in the one-take style depicted on screen.

What challenges were there to overcome when doing each episode of Adolescence in one shot?

Well, it required cinematographer Matt Lewis and camera operator Lee David Brown to work closely together throughout the shoot (Stephen Graham compared their collaboration to a “ballet” to the LA Times), often passing the camera between them mid-scene to get everything right.

Stephen Graham co-created and co-wrote Adolescence, as well as playing one of its leading roles
Stephen Graham co-created and co-wrote Adolescence, as well as playing one of its leading roles

Of that gripping opening scene, Barantini told The Guardian: “When the episode starts, my cinematographer Matt is holding the camera. As we’re filming the actors in the car, the camera’s being attached to a crane. The car drives off, and the crane follows.

“While this is happening, Matt has gone in another car, driven ahead and jumped out so he can take the camera into the house. When we come back out of the house, the other camera operator Lee is sat in the custody van.

“Matt would pass Lee the camera, so now Lee’s got the camera while Matt drives ahead to the police station, so he’s ready to take the camera when we go inside.”

Thorne also told Deadline: “The cinematographers thought a chase scene I had written would look like a computer game and instead I got this call from Phil who said, ‘Imagine if the cameras could fly’.

“So, we strapped a camera to a drone that took off over traffic lights and then suddenly you’re at the murder scene. Emotionally it kicks you in the stomach.”

Impressive stuff, right?

The question is… why on earth would the Adolescence team want to put themselves through such an arduous filming experience in the first place?

Ashley Walters and Faye Marsay play detectives investigating the murder of a teenage girl in Adolescence
Ashley Walters and Faye Marsay play detectives investigating the murder of a teenage girl in Adolescence

For Barantini, he said the one-shot device means viewers are more likely to be hooked by what’s going on onscreen.

“What the one-shot does is makes you sit up and you can’t take your eyes off it, because if you do blink for a second you miss something. It draws the audience in,” he told Radio Times.

“It’s like going to a play. If you go to a play, you can’t be on your phone, yeah? And so you’ve got to pay attention to everything.”

Similarly, Thorne told Deadline: “The camera doesn’t blink in this show and by being unblinking it allows for a certain rawness and honesty.

“The inability to cut away, the idea that all four episodes are partial, that allows you to tell a more complex story than if we were able to be inside the justice system.”

He added: “What has resulted is a piece that uses the technical to unlock the emotional.”

All four episodes of Adolescence are available to stream now on Netflix.

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