Most of the attention paid to the Netflix limited series “Adolescence” has gone to the men in the cast. In particular, kudos have been given to star, co-creator and co-writer Stephen Graham, who plays working-class father Eddie Miller; and 15-year-old actor Owen Cooper, playing his son Jamie, who kills a female classmate after succumbing to the misogynistic mindset of the incel subculture. Graham and Cooper were both nominated, as was Ashley Walters as a police detective investigating the murder.
But the women of “Adolescence” deserve just as much recognition, and two of them earned noms in the supporting-actress category. Christine Tremarco plays Manda Miller, Eddie’s anguished wife and Jamie’s mother, caught in a parent’s nightmare and refusing to believe her little boy could have knifed a classmate to death. Erin Doherty portrays Briony, a psychologist sent to evaluate Jamie at the facility where he’s being held. Both have key roles in the series, which shot its four hour-long episodes in single takes.
“I knew from the moment I read the scripts, and also knowing the team that was involved, that it was a special piece,” Tremarco told TheWrap. “But I had no idea that it would reach the levels it has. That’s been absolutely amazing.”
Doherty, best known for playing Princess Anne in the third and fourth seasons of “The Crown,” was one of the first actors to learn about “Adolescence” and one of the first on the job. She had been working with Graham on the British TV series “A Thousand Blows,” and during a break, he told her he had an idea for a show about the recent spate of knife killings by teenage boys. He wanted to involve writer-producer Jack Thorne and shoot the series in single takes, as he did in “Boiling Point,” his 2021 film with Thorne and director Philip Barantini.
“I had no idea that there would be anybody in it that I would be even eligible to play, let alone that he’d been thinking of me for it,” she said. “But a couple of months later, he got in contact and said, ‘I want you to be a part of it.’”
Doherty had been aware of the rash of knife violence but less informed about the ugliness of incel culture, where men and boys who consider themselves “involuntarily celibate” turn their anger and frustration on the women they think will never like them. “But the minute that Stephen told me about the premise of this episode and who Briony, my character, was, I was absolutely over the moon that I got to embody that part of this story.”
The character only appears in Episode 3, most of which consists of a lengthy and charged conversation between Briony and Jamie, who swings from sullen silence to childish pleading to blistering rage that settles the question of whether this mild-mannered boy has it in him to kill a classmate.
Because Graham was away shooting another project, the episode was the first one on the shooting schedule, with Doherty and the then-13-year-old Cooper, on his first professional job, thrown into the deep end, with two weeks of rehearsal followed by a week of filming two complete takes every day.
“It was genuinely exhausting,” Doherty said. “I’ve got a background in theater, so it kind of felt like doing a two-show day. But doing two every day for a week, Owen and I were both on the floor with exhaustion by the Friday. It just took every ounce of focus and compassion and empathy in my bones to get through it. Bringing that level of care to a take for an hour, you felt like you were an athlete, really.”
And yet, looking back, she doesn’t focus on the hardships. “It was such a gorgeous experience to have,” she shared. “I would shoot this way for the rest of my life if I could.”
If Doherty came into “Adolescence” early, it was nothing compared with Tremarco’s connection with Graham. “My mom and Stephen’s mom were best friends since they were kids, so I’ve known Stephen since we were babies,” said Tremarco, who, like Graham, grew up in Kirkby, just north of Liverpool. “We were on the same TV series called ‘Little Boy Blue’ [in 2017], but we didn’t get to dance together with dialogue. ‘Adolescence’ is the first time we got to go on that journey.”
She said the hour-long takes made her nervous at first. “When it came time to shoot the episodes, that fear and excitement, there’s not a feeling like it. But we all had each other’s backs, and we were passing the ball, almost like the synchronicity of a dance. You feel like you’re in such a safe space, and that makes all the difference.”
She was particularly impressed with Cooper and Amélie Pease, who plays his sister. “We’d be shooting quite heavy stuff, and then at lunchtime they’d be playing ball, just being kids,” she said. “It was astonishing.”
One of the most shattering scenes in the entire limited series comes in the final episode, where Eddie and Manda sit in their bedroom and try to figure out what they did wrong and how to move on. After Manda leaves to make breakfast, Eddie walks into his son’s empty room, clutches a stuffed animal and breaks down.
“Stephen is an actor who raises you higher, because he’s so real and so present,” Tremarco said. “And because we’ve known each other and been friends for a long time, that definitely lent itself to Eddie and Manda’s relationship. I remember going downstairs when we did that final scene, and I could hear Stephen upstairs. It makes me emotional to think about it. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it, and it just broke me.”
This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Drama issue of TheWrap’s Awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
