Inside Netflix's 'Adolescence'

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Be 21.

This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David Beincoule.
The Emmy Awards are being handed out this Sunday, and one of the shows with the most nominations is the Netflix British drama called Adolescence.

It's up for 13 Emmys, Emmys, including three for Stephen Graham, who's our guest today.

One is for co-creating Adolescence, another is for co-writing it with Jack Thorne, and a third is for his unforgettable performance, nominated as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology series or movie.

He plays the father of a 13-year-old boy who's taken by police in an early morning raid and charged with the murder of a classmate.

The son, Jamie, is being processed and examined at the police station while his father watches and sympathizes and objects.

Mr. Miller,

Mr. Miller, Mr.
Miller, I understand, but this is a serious offence. Okay, I've got scratch marks on his left arm.

I need to make sure that there's no other cuts or bruises that we need to be aware of.

I think this is a bit serious as well, don't you? I mean,

how would you have felt if you were 18 and you had two grown men looking at your bits? I wasn't accused of a crime. That's it, the homemade accused.
He hasn't been found guilty. He's been accused.

Can you not do anything about this? I'm sorry. They're entitled to underpace.

Mr. Miller, I promise.
I will be very careful. I don't know who you're from either, mate.
Mr. Miller, we want to mean that.
We really do need to

get his brain with this.

East 18. Passcode to be controlled in the courts.

Mr. Miller, Mr.
Miller. This is good for the James defense.
It's fine. You're okay? I don't mind.

Stephen Graham has two new projects coming up in October. One is the Netflix movie Good Boy, where he plays a man who kidnaps a criminal and tries to forcibly rehabilitate him.

The other is Deliver Me From Nowhere, which stars Jeremy Allen White from the Bear as Bruce Springsteen. Graham plays Springsteen's father, Douglas Dutch Springsteen.

Those roles will be added to Graham's already impressive and varied resume.

He's played a bare knuckles Victorian England boxer in Who Lose a Thousand Blows, a union organizer in Netflix's Peaky Blinders, and Al Capone in HBO's Boardwalk Empire.

And this year, the Emmy Spotlight is trained on him as the co-creator, co-writer, and star of Adolescence, the four-part drama that has become one of Netflix's most watched shows.

And with good reason. Adolescence is by far the best TV program of 2025.
It's superbly written and beautifully acted. In addition to Graham, four other actors in Adolescence are up for Emmys.

One of them is Owen Cooper, who plays Graham's son, Jamie.

And, as outstanding supporting actor in a limited or anthology series or movie, he's the youngest ever to compete in that category. He's 15 years old, and adolescence was his first on-screen role.

The intensity of the acting and writing is part of what makes adolescence so riveting.

Also, the themes it tackles are complicated and troubling. What leads some young people to acts of aggression and violence? What part does social media play?

And how responsible or culpable, if at all, are the schools and the parents?

And finally, the other thing that makes adolescence so riveting is that each of the four episodes was filmed in a single unbroken take.

Written, staged, and acted so that every hour of adolescence was captured in real time like a stage play.

It was a daring, daunting task for Stephen Stephen Graham to undertake, as co-creator, as writer, and especially as an actor.

Fresh Air producer Sam Brigher spoke with Stephen Graham about that and more last March. They began with another scene from the first episode of Adolescence.

Stephen Graham, as the father of the recently arrested Jamie, has just met his son's court-appointed lawyer, played by Mark Stanley.

Jamie has asked that his dad be present as Jamie is processed into the system, but the dad confides to the lawyer that he's not sure he's up to the job.

Excuse me, mate. Yeah.

I am.

I haven't got a clue what I'm doing here.

I don't.

What do I say? Just

don't answer for him. All right.

Just...

Just be yourself.

They know you're his dad. We know you're his dad.

It's okay to... process, it's okay to be shocked, and it's okay to be human.

Yeah, I mean, this isn't normal, do you know what I mean? No.

Never even been in a police station before. You'll be fine.

I just don't want to get it wrong. If you land, you know what I mean? You'll be fine.

That's a scene from Adolescence starring my guest, Stephen Graham. Stephen Graham, welcome to Fresh Air.
Thank you. What a wonderful introduction.
Thank you very much.

So the show Adolescence was actually your idea. You came to your co-creator Jack Thorne, with the idea.
What was it that you were thinking about that you wanted to explore on the screen?

It happened a while ago, to be honest with you, Sam. I read an article in a newspaper, which it was about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death.

And it just made me feel quite cold. And I was stunned by what I was reading.
And then...

About three or four months later, there was a story on the news, on television.

and I was watching it and it was again it was about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death and this incident was as the opposite end to the country to the first incident that I'd read about and at that point if I'm completely honest it really hurt my heart but in that moment I judged the parents

And I instantly said to myself, you know, it's got to be down to the parents. And then I stopped myself and tried to be mindful and

questioned the fact that what if it's not maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental what if it's not and from that basis from that premise I just thought well why is this happening why are we in this situation where you know young boys and they are young boys they're not men you know their brains haven't been fully formed yet their their physiology is not completed yet you know the adolescence is a very difficult age as we all know do you know what I mean you you go through a lot of different things physically physically, mentally,

and even spiritually

in the greater scheme of things, you know what I mean? But my main question was, why? Why is this happening? And I guess that one of the things is that you're exploring why, but

it's not a didactic show. You sort of let

the feelings and the issues sort of stew there, but you're not resolving them. No, not at all.

And, you know, ultimately, I think that's one of the main themes of the show is that they can't be resolved. And we don't have the answers.

There's a wonderful saying which is it takes a village to raise a child

and within that kind of complexity of what that says to me within what we are doing it's kind of like maybe we're all accountable and that comes down to you know the parenting maybe how we parent our children the school system how the education system guides and tries to educate our children, the government, you know, how they can bring in legislation,

the community and the environment of where we live.

And then on top of that, now, which was something that me and you never had to suffer from and our parents never had to think about, but there is now this big thing called the internet.

When a child closes the door back in the day when it was me and you, we didn't have access to the rest of the world.

And we couldn't be influenced dramatically by other people and their theories and their thought processes. So that was what we really wanted to look at.
You know what I mean?

Maybe we're all accountable in some way for what is happening today in our society. So your character, Eddie, is a successful businessman.
He has a plumbing business.

He's lifted himself up in the world. He's trying to be a good husband and a good father.
And you say that you based him to some degree on your uncle's and your friends' fathers.

What was it about them that you took?

For me, Eddie...

the character that I played, I wanted to make him more like that kind of archetypal man in a way, the kind of men that I was brought up with, like my uncles, and like I've said, you know, my friends, fathers, and stuff like that, who are beautiful, wonderful men, hard-working men who go to work, say maybe six o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning, and don't manage to get back home until gone six, seven, eight at night.

Do you know what I mean?

So

the kind of area that they live in is a really nice housing estate. Do you know what I mean?

It's a well-to-do area in many ways.

It's far from upper class, and

it's a working class household in a really nice area. So I wanted to concentrate on the fact that they come from a good home and there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of love in that home.

The mother and father primarily are doing the best for their children. And his sister is an A-level student.

You know, she's a really hard-working, conscientious student because it's unconventional for us to follow. the story through the eyes of the family who are the from the perpetrator.

normally as you can imagine it would be the victim side of it and rightly so. Do you know what I mean? In that conventional drama, that's what we would see.

But also, what I wanted to try and do with this process was eliminate the possibilities of pointing the finger and saying, well, this is why.

So I didn't want it to be like dad raised his hand and hit his boy. So normally would be, we could be able to point the finger in that direction and say this is why he did it.

But we wanted to eliminate that and start with a clean slate

so eddie is an interesting character because he can be very emotional but he's also not really in touch with his emotions like they kind of have their way with him

yeah

yeah and that's there's a lot of pain inside eddie you know when after he realizes what his son has done because what it is as well is what i wanted to try and try and achieve and try and accomplish with the respects to eddie is like i said that kind of old-fashioned archetypal man in many ways um

who you know it comes from a lineage of of men who are not very tactile.

Um and and that kind of comes from the process of with my son and with my daughter, you know, I'm very blessed to have two beautiful children.

Uh and I and I'm and I hug them and and cuddle them and I tell them I love them every single day. Every single day,'cause I adore my kids, I really do.

They're you know, they're they're one of the best things, the the best thing in my life I've ever been a part of. Um they really are, are.
Do you know what I mean?

Look, yeah, Stephen's very soppy, and I wear my heart on my sleeve. Um,

I'm almost, you know, look, even just thinking of Grace and Alfie is making me start to tear up, and I'm just ridiculous. They laugh at me all the time because I'm very teary in our house.
Um,

but what I wanted to do was to play the polar opposite of that. And

one morning when I had Alfie and some of his mates were in his house, I was giving Alfie a cuddle because they were going out for the day, and I give him a cuddle and I give him a kiss on the cheek, and I said, be good, have a good day.

Do you know what I mean? Um, and his friend started to cry a little bit. And I was like,

Are you okay? Um,

and Alfie jumped in and said, His dad never hugs him, and his dad's never told him that he loves him.

Um, and it just broke my heart a little bit. Do you know what I mean? And I've seen him with his father, and you can see the love his father has for him.
And for me, it was completely alien.

I thought there was no way that

his father would have never done something like that. Because to me, it was just such a natural thing that I don't even think about it.

The show is going to stay with me, I think, forever, or a very long time. And

it's really hard to watch. It's really well made.
It's really compelling. But you go through a lot of very intense emotions.
Like, you have a complete breakdown at one point.

As an actor, how hard is that to go through?

Is there an aftermath that you have to reckon with after doing that kind of performance?

um

for a lot of people it is yeah um and i understand it and i get it and and to some extent i i think maybe there is for me i'm also able to to jump in and jump out and decompress quite quickly now which is a kind of technique i've learned myself over so you do have tools for that

yeah yeah and those tools are well the biggest tool for that is my wife hannah on many levels um you know if i phone her and say it's been a really tough day at work today love you know, I had to cry and stuff, she'd be like, oh, really?

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I go, oh, my,

do I sound like a d?

And she'd be like, yes.

She'll go, well, I'll tell you what, the dog had diarrhea.

Of course, yeah, but she understands it. And she does it.
And, you know,

if there's anyone that can dive into emotions when they're on set, it's Hannah. She's unbelievable, Annie.
She's great.

So when I try and do it, Sam, she just goes, oh, well, the dog had diarrhea all over the carpet this morning. And I'm like, oh, and she went, and I had to go shopping.

And the car ran out of petrol petrol while I was on the motorway and I'm like oh

Crimea River Steven yeah exactly that's kind of where she goes but again you know and I got and I know look for me family is the most important thing to me it's it's it's them they're my rock that they they make me the man who I am do you know what I mean I am here because of them mainly as well

and just to share this with you And these are the tricks of the trade. On that last scene, on that episode, it was the very last take.
I think it was like take 12 or something like that.

But it was the very final take.

Oh, was it take 16? Wow. A lot of takes.
Okay, God. Yeah, we had to stop a couple of times.
One, the door wasn't open when he was trying to back into the door with the camera.

And so he just hit the window.

There was a couple of times the car wouldn't start

as we got it and as we set off. So there was a, yeah, oh, then we got stuck at the traffic lights.
That's right.

So take 16. And what happened was, again, it was the last day, and it was the very last day of filming.

So again, my kids, kids, both Grace, my daughter, and Alfie were there, and Hannah was there for that day. And for that last take, when I go into the bedroom, I had no idea, Sam, that they'd done it.

Honestly, I didn't. And I had gone into that bedroom, obviously, 15 times.
And so, I had a kind of idea of what I was going to do and what I was going through.

And Philip came up with a beautiful idea when we were in rehearsals. He said, I'm just going to put a teddy bear on the bed.
And I was like, Why? And he was like, Just see what happens.

So, all the maternal instincts he felt for that teddy bear kind of just come from nowhere. Do you know what I mean? In many ways, because it's a replacement for his son.

But anyway, when I came into the room, what Hannah and the kids had done, and this is the take that you see. So this is where it comes from as well.
What Hannah and I'm already in the moment.

Don't get me wrong. I'm completely in the moment.
But what my kids and Hannah had done, they put photographs.

on the on the wall of of them and me and they just put we're so proud of you dad we love you so much, and and obviously, then you can imagine.

I've told you, I'm a very soppy person, I wear my heart on my sleeve. That's tearing

too, just listening, yeah,

and I just went. Do you know what I mean? It was like it just all came out.

And then, when I'd finished that particular scene, yeah, they grabbed hold of me, and yeah, they didn't let go of me for a while. Uh, and I, and I did cry for quite a bit of time after that, actually.

But we all cried on that set after that particular scene when we'd finished it.

So, just talking about the sort of technical issue, as I said, like each of these episodes is one take. There's no editing.

This is similar to a movie that you did a few years back called Boiling Point, which takes place in a restaurant. It's a great film, but it's one location.
But here, like, in this first episode, you

start in the family home and then you drive to the station, the camera's following you, and then you have to get all the other actors from the house to the station.

Like, talk about some of the technical things that you had to figure out. The beauty of this is where we have three weeks to shoot each episode.

But what we do within that context is for the first week, we rehearse the script and we go through the script like we're about to do a play. Because they are kind of like little plays.

I mean, yeah, yeah, of course. And that's the beauty of it.
You know, but we rehearse the script and we go through the script. And it was great because we had myself there and we had Jack the writer.

So it was a beautiful position that we were in where we could tweak the language. We could adjust what was happening to our environment.

And in the same respect, you know, me and Jack are not 14-year-old boys. But we could ask Owen, what would he say in these particular situations? Owen Cooper, who plays your son, Jamie.

Yes, yeah, that's right. Owen Cooper, who's phenomenal.
But within that context, we could get to use the real authentic language.

It's such a gift because you're able to marry both disciplines so you have that spontaneity and the live kind of feeling and exhilaration of theatre but you have the technical ability and the kind of nuance and the and the realism of film and television acting right but then also because of the technique of it being a one-shot you know you're able like in episode two to to travel all around the school right uh which was an actual location with hundreds of kids walking around yes yeah yeah, it really was.

And it was actually, you know, for I think about 150 of our extras, of the supporting artists, it was their school.

So that was great because they, you know, they know the place and they really felt at home. So in that first week, we work on a script.
And then in the second week, we work with all of the crew.

All of the crew come on set and we negotiate and we begin to walk through our pathway of what we're going to do and where we're going to go and how we're going to get there.

And that's when you have everybody about. So, you know, you can, then the sound department, they can plant mics here and there.

So we really, really meticulously go over and over and over and over our movements. And the third week is when we begin to shoot.
So we do two takes a day.

So sometimes, you know, hopefully at the minimum, we will have 10 takes.

10 complete takes. Yeah.
So we shop for five days and you do two takes a day. But as is with episode one, the take you see is take two

um with episode two the take we used was take 14.

would you know after doing all your takes that you were kind of leaning towards one that you would eventually use or

well i did personally i did on i did on the first one i knew it was the second take i just knew it was um and i i was kind of like can we go home no and phil and phil was like no look we're being paid to be here for the rest of the week and i i said to phil it's not going to get better tonight.

And he was like, you never know. And I was like, trust me, that's it.

Actor Stephen Graham speaking to Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger last March.

Graham is co-creator, co-writer, and star of the Netflix show Adolescence, which is nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including three for Graham. I'm David Biancoole, and this is Fresh Air.

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Stephen, I wanted to go back a little bit to one of your early successes, which is the movie This Is England from 2006.

And you play

a racist and violent-prone skinhead named Combo.

And there's a pretty famous speech in the movie that's like heavily infused with white nationalist ideology. We're not going to play it because I think there's an F-word in every sentence.

So there'd just be like lots of bleeps.

But

I imagine in an acting career, there's a lot of times where you have to

like espouse beliefs as a character that you don't hold yourself.

But I was wondering if this one may have been particularly hard, obviously in part because it's it's just racist but also because you have a multiracial background and one of your grandfathers is from Jamaica like did that make playing this character particularly difficult for you

it didn't make it particularly difficult but what it did make me want to do and and as well when I explained to Shane because originally when I went to the shop

who's the Shane Meadows yeah who's who's the fantastic director when I when I explained to Shane that I was mixed race, I kind of thought that he might then give the part to somebody else because we'd had auditions and we did a bit of a workshop.

And Andrew Shim, who plays Milky, who's the black character, who's part of the gang as well.

And during the improvisation, as you can imagine, you know, I went to some extremes with the language that I used.

And I never said anything to anyone, but that night

I managed to get Andrew's phone number and I phoned him up and I said, Look, I just want to apologize for the language and for the things that I said to you today.

I want you to know that that's not the way I think. It's not me at all.

And I hope you can understand. I said, and to be completely honest with you, I'm mixed race.
And he was like, really? I said, yeah. He went, I thought so.
I thought there was something.

And I was like, but can you do me a favor? And he went, what? I went, please, don't. And I was about to say, don't tell Shane.
He shouted, Shane, Shane. And I was like, oh, oh, no.

And then he gave the phone to Shane. And Shane was like, hello, hello, mate.
And I was like, all right. And he went, what is it? And I was like,

look, Shane, I just wanted to say, I've just told Shimmy, look, I'm mixed race.

You're probably going to want to give the bar to somebody else now. And I understand that.
And he was like, are you kidding me? I went, no, I'm just, he was like, this is amazing.

He said, imagine what we can do with it now. I went, what do you mean? He went, well, we can take it somewhere else now.
We can take it somewhere else that we never thought of taking it.

And then we did. You know, we really worked on it.
And what it became about was it became more about

an abandonment issue from his father

and kind of not being accepted or not being a part of the identity of his self and the black part of his family. So we added such a complexity to it then.

You grew up just outside of Liverpool in Kirby, and did you have to deal with issues of racism as a child coming from a mixed family? Yeah, yeah.

And if I'm honest, you're from both sides.

I had a little struggle of my own back then, trying to find the sense of where and how I belong. You mean

your identity, sort of, your racial identity?

Yeah, completely, culturally, racially, in many ways, you know what I mean? Because there were certain elements of my white cousins and

that side of my family who said some horrible things. And, you know,

even other family members said some horrible things and said some really horrible things to my mother at the time.

And then on the side of the black family, you know, things were said to me

and said to my mother as well in a horrible sense from both sides of it. So it did take a while and it kind of, you know, it's maybe in my early teens.

I'm not saying that that's what my life was like all the time because it was very happy and joyous, you know, my household, my mom living, but it was just me and my mum for the first 10 years.

And I adore my mother. God bless us all.
She was, you know,

she was the strong matriarch and she was a wonderful woman. And my pops came into my life when I was 10.
Your stepfather. Yeah, my stepfather.
He is my stepfather.

Well, he raised you. He was.
Yeah, he raised me. He raised me.

And he's mixed race as well. So he really taught me about my sense of identity and who who I am and where I'm from

and taught me about the likes of Marcus Garby and Toussaint Lobature and Malcolm X

Martin Luther King so he filled me with the history and the knowledge of who I was do you know what I mean in many ways

and then he also inspired me and led me to believe that anything is possible and to follow my dreams But as a kid growing up, there was, you know, at times it was difficult.

And it took a little while for me to find my sense of self

and for me to be completely comfortable with who I am, really. Do you know what I mean in that respect? Which I, you know,

I sit with inside myself of who I am today, and I'm completely comfortable with myself. But it takes a long time, I think.

You said your stepfather helped you sort of with your cultural and racial identity. He also helped you when you told your family you wanted to be an actor.

Do you have this great story of him taking you to the video store and renting like all these great movies? Like, yeah, like, yeah, he did.

Um, taxi driver, and dear hunter, taxi driver, the deer hunter, uh, and

the godfather.

And it was kind of that's where my the beginning of my love affair for filmmaking started and and the art and the craft of what what it is, do you know what I mean?

And then he introduced me to the likes of David Lynch and Curry Sauer, um,

and yeah, uh, Martin Scorsese, do you know what I mean? All of these great directors, Ken Loach

as well, Alan Clark.

You know, I got a real great education from my pops because my pops has always loved film.

And that's kind of where it began for me. And then, you know, me, him and my mum used to always go, we'd go like to the Tate and to art.
And he made me look at art and things differently.

You know, my childhood was beautiful. I loved it.
You know, we'd go, we'd go to the galleries and stuff like that. Me and my mum.
Do you know what I mean?

We'd walk around and we'd look at paintings and they just filled my head full of culture. Do you know what I mean?

And yet I came from this housing estate and from a block of flats, but yet they made me dream big and they made me see. You lived in a public housing apartment.
Is that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's that's where I kind of grew up in the very beginning.

Stephen Graham speaking to fresh air producer Sam Brigger last March.

Graham stars in the Netflix show Adolescence, which is nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including Graham for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

They'll continue their conversation after a break. This is Fresh Air.
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Did it seem like an impossible stretch to you that one day you would be on a Martin Scorsese movie set with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro?

Of course. The people you're watching on your television.
Yeah.

So, my wall, most of my mates had, you know, soccer players, you call them, football players, we call them over here. Most of my mates had football players on their walls.

And I did have, I had the FA Cup win inside Liverpool with Kenny Daglies. I had them on my wall.
But then I also had posters and like little beautiful kind of postcards of

Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Daniel De-Lewis, Gary Oldman. Do you know what I mean? I had wonderful pictures of all of the William Defoe, all of these actors on my wall, do you know what I mean?

So you can imagine as a young kid, and don't forget, it's not like I'm even in America.

I'm right across the water in this little place called Liverpool, and there are, you know, and they were on my wall, these people. So can you imagine what went through my head?

One, the first time when I met Martin Scorsese, and I was lucky enough and privileged enough to be a part of Gangs of New York.

But then can you imagine what happened to my little head when I was sat at the table with Marty at the monitor?

Even saying it now, it just doesn't seem real. Martin Scorsese at the monitor, Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino sat at the table, and Marty says, Okay, are we ready? And action.

Can you just see for a split second what happened to that little kid's head? Yeah, well, let's hear that scene. Let's let's hear that.
Oh, wow. You set that up quite well, Stephen Graham.

Thank you. This is a scene from the Irishman where you play a gangster and union head, Tony Provenzano, who's known as Tony Pro.

And you have a real beef with Jimmy Hoffa, who's played by Al Pacino. You were both in prison at the same time.
You got in an argument there.

But at this point, you're both out of prison, and Hoffa's trying to become the president of the Teamsters. But he needs your endorsement, and he hates you, but he agrees to meet.

And you guys are in Florida, and Frank Sheeran, who's played by Robert De Niro, is there. And you're late, and Al Pacino does not like that.

You're late.

And it was traffic. Yes, traffic.

Wasn't it traffic? You give me traffic.

What do you want for us? It was bumping. Oh, yeah, no, no, it's better, you know.
Traffic.

I never waited for anyone who was late more than 10 minutes in my life. I'd say 15.
15's right. No, 10.

I don't think so. Ten's not enough.
You have to take traffic into account. That's that's what I'm doing.
I'm taking traffic into account.

That's why it's ten. I still say 15.
No, ten.

Fine, we disagree on that. How about 12 and a half minutes? Here we go.
12 and a half. Middle, right in the middle.
Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, more than 10

is saying something.

He's saying something to me. I'm here.

It says what it says.

So, there it is.

Where do we go from here?

What can I do for you?

I want you.

I want you to endorse me.

For you know what?

But before we get there, let's straighten that other thing out. No, the other thing is none of my business.
I can't do anything about your pension. I can't.
Not with Fitz in there.

Fitz is in there, you know. You go to Fitz.
I did. He'll help you out.
I did. Said he'll take care of it.
No questions asked. You wouldn't do that, but he will.

I meant the other thing.

What other thing?

You know.

I don't know. Your apology.

My apology.

My apology for what? For what you said when you were sitting there eating the ice cream like some king.

That was an ethnic slur. You people.

Did you know what he said? No, I mean, I heard it had an altercation in the camp, but I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you people.

That's what you said, right, Jim?

You people. Am I beneath you?

Definitely. Jimmy, Jamie, come on.

That's Stephen Graham with some other famous actors, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the movie The Irishman. So, first of all, this is like Goodfellow's caliber dialogue.
Like,

you know, you think I'm funny, like, you know, some of the Scorsese dialogue.

I imagine if you're reading it on the page, it might seem like really banal or boring, but like the way that you have these great actors doing it, it's just so full of like energy.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah,

you're right. It's, you know, you have these great, you have the great dialogue on a script.
And then it's kind of set up and you rehearse and you play with it. And with this particular scene, it was

it was going good, but we cut some of the dialogue, but it was, it was going really good, but it there was, there was still, it was lacking something. And

Marty said to me, he was like,

look, free it up a little bit. And I was like, what? Can I improvise? And he went, yeah, just free it up a little bit.
So

previously, when we'd done a couple of takes, I was chatting and there was no dialogue coming from Frank. So Rob didn't have any dialogue.

And I was kind of in my, like I said to you before, don't forget, I'm a kid who's got posters of these people on his wall. Do you know what I mean? So I'm thinking to myself, I'm in a scene.

And, you know, sometimes the strange thing about acting is your own head pops into your thought processes while you're doing the lines sometimes which is really strange do you know what i mean but it's just kind of one of those things that happen so i'm i'm talking with al and then i i look around and i and i look and i and in my head my head goes oh this robert de niro

and i'm like just carrying on doing the scene and then it and then we carry on and then and then in my head it goes oh no i'm in a scene with robert de niro and he doesn't say anything It's like, oh.

And then Marty said, free it up, bring some life into it. And I was like, okay.

So then that whole, and he comes up with the best line, that whole thing about 15 minutes and 10 minutes, I just turned at one point because it's edited together beautifully as well.

And I just turned at one point and I said, what do you think, Frank? And he, you know, he didn't have any lines at all in the scene. And then he comes up with the finest line in the whole scene.

And he goes, maybe 12 and a half. Do you know what I mean? Down the middle.
And then it became alive. I go to stand up and walk away, and they're like, No, no, no, come on, sit down,

sit down. And then that little bit where he says, You know, yeah, and the ethnic slayer, and I go, Did you know about this? And he goes, Well, I heard you're having an altercation.

So you kind of make it real and bring him into the scene. And after we'd finished, I went, No, I'm really sorry.
Was that okay? Because

I just threw a few things in. They were like, What, you kidding me? No, it came alive.
Did you feel that?

And as you can imagine, for me personally,

that's like my Champions League final, that particular scene being a part of that. You know what I mean? It blew my mind.

And what I really, really, really took away from that particular day as well was the humility of both of those men and how they conducted themselves on set and how they treated everybody with respect.

But also, when it came to doing the work, they had no ego.

And that's the biggest lesson

any actor can ever learn from those two masters who were there at work.

Stephen Graham, thank you so much for coming on Fresh Air. Thank you very much.
It's been an absolute pleasure.

Stephen Graham, speaking with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger last March. Graham stars in the Netflix drama Adolescence, which is nominated for 13 Emmy Awards.

The Emmys are scheduled to be televised Sunday night on CBS.

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Downton Abbey, the Grand Finale, is the third and purportedly last film adapted from the beloved six-season series about life at a British country estate in the early 20th century.

The movie, which opens in theaters this week, finds many changes afoot at Downton in 1930, with a large ensemble of returning veterans joined by actors Paul Giamatti, Alessandro Nivola, and Simon Russell Beale.

Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review.

Ever since the events of Downton Abbey began in 1912, The characters haven't been able to stop talking about how quickly the world around them is changing.

Paradoxically, the constant repetition of this idea has made the show, and the movies, feel comfortingly and sometimes annoyingly static.

Sure, a lot has happened over six seasons and two movies, a world war, an epidemic, inventions, revolutions, births, deaths, marriages, scandals, and an awful lot of servant turnover.

But the class constraints and gender roles of the era are still largely in effect. The winds of progress sure do take their sweet time.

And so so does the creator and screenwriter Julian Fellows, who's clearly reluctant to say goodbye to these characters or upend their world order too abruptly.

And so we have a third movie, Downton Abbey the Grand Finale, which sounds like a pretty definitive farewell, but who knows?

Either way, it's much better than the previous movie, Downton Abbey A New Era, which felt smug and preposterous even for a series that has always been, unapologetically, both.

The new movie, directed by Simon Curtis, takes place in 1930. A portrait of the recently deceased Dowager Countess, the late, great Maggie Smith, hangs on one of the house's many walls.

Even in death, she's still looking down on everyone.

Lady Mary Crawley, the superb Michelle Dockery, is preparing to take charge of Downton, while her father, Robert, reluctantly steps into retirement with his wife, Cora.

As succession dramas go, the Crawleys aren't exactly the Murdochs, but their plans do hit a snag when Mary ditches her absentee husband and immediately becomes a social pariah.

Divorce is still frowned upon, and soon Mary can't get a dinner invitation to save her otherwise still extremely enviable life.

In this scene, Mary commiserates with her visiting American uncle, Harold, played by Paul Giamatti. So let me guess.
Robert is furious, and Cora's sympathetic. Papa's miserable, as much as angry.

Now, Cora's a yank. She knows society can learn to live with divorce.
It'll be true here before too long. But it's not true yet.

Still, downtown keeps me busy. What are you up to there? Mainly renovating the cottages and doing up the old smoking room.

I thought a music room would be a wonderful memorial for both my grandmothers. Hmm, it's a nice idea.
Even if my mother was more Gershwin than Rachmaninoff.

It's a lot to get done, but that's where you come in. I really gotta go.
Enjoy your dinner. Good night.
Good night. Harold has problems of his own.

He's mismanaged the estate of his and Cora's late mother, plunging Downton into a fresh wave of financial uncertainty, right on the heels of the depression.

Harold has brought along an advisor, Gus Sambrook, played by Alessandro Nivola, with an oily smile that immediately puts you on high alert.

Meanwhile, there are a lot of changes going on downstairs. Carson, the butler, is finally retiring, though he has mixed feelings about relinquishing his authority.
The cook, Mrs.

Patmore, is exiting with far more grace, proudly ceding control of the kitchen to her protégé, Daisy, played by the winning Sophie McShara.

As the Crawleys are downsized and Lady Mary is ostracized, Fellows orchestrates a flurry of let's put on a show subplots.

Plans are underway for the annual county fair, and Simon Russell Beale steals every scene as a glowering local snob who resists every effort to make the event more open to the community.

And Dominic West is back as the dashing actor Guy Dexter, with his personal assistant and not-so-secret boyfriend, Thomas Barrow, the excellent Rob James Collier.

Surely the only former downtown footman ever to return to the place as an overnight guest.

Best of all, they've also brought along none other than Noel Coward, played by Artie Fruchon, who does a droll impersonation of the great playwright.

In one lovely scene, Coward sings and plays the piano for the Crawleys and their dinner guests, while the servants listen from a distance.

I was reminded of a near-identical sequence from Gosford Park, the manor house murder mystery that earned Julian Fellows a screenwriting Oscar more than two decades ago.

Gosford Park was directed by Robert Altman, whose sharp democratic sensibility kept the material's classism in check.

Downton Abbey, by contrast, has always drawn a warm bath of nostalgia for the heyday of the landed gentry.

And the movies have leaned into this, to the point of giving the downstairs characters short shrift.

Here, though, Fellows wisely course-corrects, cutting back on the convoluted plotting and zeroing in on the emotional dynamics.

Hugh Bonneville and Jim Carter have a moving moment, in which Robert and Carson acknowledge their years of side-by-side leadership.

Laura Carmichael also gets a few commanding scenes as Lady Edith, who's so often been at odds with her older sister Mary, and now becomes her strongest ally.

It's enough to make me want to see what happens next, when Mary, raised in an era when noble estates couldn't be owned or inherited by women, is now fully in charge.

I'm not asking for a fourth movie, but that could change. Things often do, as Downton Abbey always reminds us.

Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Downton Abbey, the Grand Finale.

On Monday's show, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tremaine Lee explores the devastating toll of gun violence in America in his new book, A Thousand Ways to Die.

Through intimate portraits, Lee shows how lost reverberates across families and communities, reshaping lives and futures, including his own. I hope you'll join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer.
Our senior producer today is Thea Challener.

Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Adam Staniszewski.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shurock, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Yacundi, and Anna Bauman.

Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper.

Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Biancoule.

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Support for NPR and the following message come from Home Serve. It never happens at a good time.
The pipe bursts at midnight. The heater quits on the coldest night.

Good thing HomeServe's hotline is available 24-7. Call to schedule a repair, and a local pro will be on their way.
Trusted by millions. For plans starting at $4.99 a month, go to homeeserve.com.

Not available everywhere. Most plans range between $4.99 to $11.99 a month your first year.
Terms apply on covered repairs.