If you’ve been anywhere near a TV, newspaper or the internet over the last week or so, you’ve probably already heard of Adoloscence, Warp Films’ and Stephen Graham’s new Netflix breakout hit, which soared straight to the top of the streamer’s English-language TV chart with almost 25m watches in its opening weekend last week, taking the top spot in 71 countries.
In fact, the series only narrowly missed out on the overall global English language top spot (by less than a million views) to The Electric State – a $320m-budgeted movie starring Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt, from Marvel mainstays (and highest-grossing film-ever makers, with Avengers: Endgame) the Russo brothers – not bad box office for a one-shot indie drama whose lead is an unknown 13-year-old with no previous professional acting experience.
With a collective back catalogue that includes the likes of Warp hits Four Lions, ‘71 and This Is England (which also served as Graham’s breakout hit as an actor) and Graham, who co-wrote Adolescence as well as co-starring, and his Matriarch Productions’ Boiling Point movie and TV series, we perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised by the fact that their collaboration on a gripping drama exploring burning topics around knife crime, social media and incel culture has hit home.
Even Warp’s creative chief, and Adolescence executive producer, Emily Feller, however, admits the immediacy and extent of the success was a little unexpected: “Who would have thought that a local Northern family in Wakefield were going to make such a splash around the world?” Feller wondered aloud when Prolific North caught up with her this week.
“For us, it really solidifies our sort of passion for storytelling, which is finding those local stories,” she added. “It’s about people that we should know – about our neighbours. It’s a local story, and it has just hit that sort of interest around around the globe, which is just mind-blowing fantastic for us.”
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That Northern element was a crucial part of the film’s DNA, Feller told us. Sheffield-based Warp and Liverpudlian Graham’s Matriarch have both made a point of looking beyond the London media bubble for their stories, and the settings, crews and casts that go into telling them, over the years, and Adolescence is no exception.
“Warp is based in Sheffield obviously, and Matriarch is based outside of London too. Phil’s [Liverpool director Phil Barantini, who also helmed Boiling Point] company is outside of London, and it’s really something that is important to us. We use local crew as much as physically possible, local cast as much as physically possible. It was a really big discussion with us, making sure that each of the departments were using local people,” she explained.
“We were open to working with a number of people that might have been newer, or stepping up into roles because it meant, because they were up North, we were really wanting to work with that sort of legacy setting, so I suppose, yeah, it was a big thing for us.”
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Working with a global giant like Netflix on the series did, however, mean that, for a welcome change, the producers weren’t reliant on local screen agencies for funding to keep the project up North, although they still had their role to play: “Obviously working with a streamer means you’re not so much looking for financial support from regional agencies, but we were always talking to our partners,” she revealed. “Screen Yorkshire, who we work very closely with, we talked with them about crew and just really pushing that element, ensuring that our heads of department weren’t just working with people that they were always working with, but making sure that we were using people from across the North. It was a totally underpinning part of our crewing up.”
Perhaps the biggest Northern revelation of the show has been its 13-year-old lead Owen Cooper. Warrington native Cooper, who trains at the Drama Mob theatre school in Manchester, might be assumed to have taken on enough of a challenge by stepping up into his first major role in a high-profile production for the world’s biggest streamer, from two of the UK’s most successful indies.
In Adolescence, however, the part also sees him playing a confused child being dragged through the UK criminal justice system after being accused of the brutal stabbing of a classmate. I wonder how EP Feller even went about preparing for such a challenging casting process, although she firmly hands the credit to director Barantini, fellow producer Jo Johnson and casting director Shaheen Baig: “It was their genius of working through hundreds and hundreds of people submitting self tapes,” she modestly states.
“Shaheen had the fantastic idea of just reaching out through social media, trying to get as wide as possible to get the word out. Because it could be someone’s grandma noticing the advert, and they speak to their grandchild about putting themselves forward for it. It was really about trying to get reach, and I think we got over 500 submissions.
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“Then it became real, and we actually had a really big discussion, because it’s a really serious topic. So do we get an older child who will play down and play younger? Might that be a better way to do it? Do we want to look for that age, you know, for 13-year-olds?”
Ultimately, the production team felt that the role called for realism, and the decision was made: “It just felt that the importance of this character was the young element,” Feller confirmed. “If you have someone older, your body is going through so many changes at that age, I think you just wouldn’t maybe have quite hit the right feel of what we were trying to do. Seeing all these fantastic young actors submitting themselves really helped us solidify what we felt was really important for that part.”
The critics seem to agree. A quick Google of reviews of the show finds terms such as “harrowing,” “steals the show” and “gripping” showered on Cooper’s performance, and he’s already reportedly signed on to play young Heathcliffe in Saltburn filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, alongside Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
Adolescence may have been Cooper’s first role, but it seems highly unlikely to be his last, as Feller confirmed: “Owen’s been everywhere now, and everyone else has spotted him. It’s not just us anymore!”
