'Adolescence' Co-Creator/Actor Asks Not Whodunnit, But Why

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Our guest, British actor Stephen Graham, stars in not one but two new shows, Hulu's A Thousand Blows, and the Netflix miniseries Adolescence.

Speaker 2 He spoke with fresh air producer Sam Brigger. Here's Sam.

Speaker 3 In the historical drama A Thousand Blows, Stephen Graham plays a bare-knuckle boxer in Victorian London, prone to rage and more likely to beat you up than have a conversation with you.

Speaker 3 The show was created by Stephen Knight, who also created Peaky Blinders, something you may have caught Stephen Graham in in its final season, playing the character of Union Man Hayden Stagg.

Speaker 3 The other show that Stephen Graham is in is Adolescence, one he co-created.

Speaker 3 It's It's a four-part miniseries following what happens to a family when their 13-year-old son is arrested for murdering a girl from his school.

Speaker 3 It's a devastating show, very difficult to watch and very difficult to stop watching. Graham plays the father Eddie, trying his best to be a good parent, but maybe not doing enough.

Speaker 3 Adolescence as a show is not interested so much in who is guilty, but why do these kinds of things happen? Is it the family's fault?

Speaker 1 Is it bullying?

Speaker 3 Is it part of a kind of toxic masculinity young boys can find on social media while they're sitting alone, supposedly safe, in their own bedrooms?

Speaker 3 The show is remarkable in many ways, but one of them is technical. Each episode is a one-take.
There are no edits. The camera is turned on at the beginning of the episode and turned off at the end.

Speaker 3 They're like plays, but moving throughout different locations and scenes. It adds an urgency to the drama.

Speaker 3 You may have first seen Stephen Graham in the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch, playing the role of Tommy, Jason Statham's sidekick.

Speaker 3 His breakout role was playing Combo, a white nationalist skinhead in This Is England.

Speaker 3 He's been in lots of other movies and TV shows, but some recent memorable ones were his portrayal of Al Capone in Broadway Empire and as a mafia and union head in Martin Scorsese's movie The Irishman, where he steals some scenes from no less an actor than Al Pacino himself.

Speaker 3 Before we start talking, let's hear a scene from Adolescence.

Speaker 3 This is from the first episode where the police have raided the family's home, arrested the son Jamie, and taken him to the police station.

Speaker 3 Here, Stephen Graham, who is in shock, is asking Jamie's court-appointed lawyer, played by Mark Stanley, what he can do in this moment of crisis.

Speaker 1 Excuse me, mate. Yeah.
I am.

Speaker 1 I haven't got a clue what I'm doing here.

Speaker 1 I don't. What do we say? Just

Speaker 1 don't answer for him, all right?

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 be yourself.

Speaker 1 They know you as dad, we know you are his dad.

Speaker 1 It's okay to process, it's okay to be shocked, and it's okay to be human.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, this isn't normal, you know what I mean? No.

Speaker 1 Never even been in a police station before. You'll be fine.

Speaker 1 I just don't want to get it wrong. If you land, you know what I mean? You'll be fine.

Speaker 3 That's a scene from Adolescence starring my guest, Stephen Graham. Stephen Graham, welcome to Fresh Air.

Speaker 1 Thank you. What a wonderful introduction.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 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?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And it just made me feel quite cold. And I was stunned by what I I was reading.
And then about three or four months later, there was a story

Speaker 1 on the news, on television.

Speaker 1 And I was watching it. And it was, again, it was about a young boy who had stabbed a young girl to death.

Speaker 1 And this incident was 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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 physiology is not completed yet.

Speaker 1 You know, adolescence is a very difficult age, as we all know. Do you know what I mean? You go through a lot of different things physically, mentally,

Speaker 1 and even spiritually

Speaker 1 in the greater scheme of things. Do you know what I mean? But my main question was: why? Why is this happening?

Speaker 3 And I guess that one of the things is that you're exploring why, but

Speaker 3 it's not a didactic show. You sort of let

Speaker 3 the feelings and the issues sort of stew there, but you're not resolving them.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 There's a wonderful saying which is, it takes a village to raise a child.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 the community and the environment of where we live.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And you say that you based him to some degree on your uncle's and your friend's fathers. What was it about them that you took?

Speaker 1 For me, Eddie,

Speaker 1 the character that I played, I wanted to make him more like that kind of archetypal man in a way.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the kind of area that they live in is a really nice housing estate. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 It's a well-to-do area in many ways.

Speaker 1 It's far from upper-class, and

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 The mother and father primarily are doing the best for their children. And his sister is an A-level student.

Speaker 1 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 from the perpetrator.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 But we wanted to eliminate that and start with a clean slate.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And that's...

Speaker 1 There's a lot of pain inside Eddie, you know, when after he realizes what his son has done.

Speaker 1 Because what it is as well was what I wanted to 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.

Speaker 1 Who, you know,

Speaker 1 comes from a lineage of men who are not very tactile.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I hug them and cuddle them and I tell them I love them every single day. Every single day, because I adore my kids.
I really do. You know,

Speaker 1 they're one of the best things, the best thing in my life I've ever been a part of.

Speaker 1 They really are. Do you know what I mean? Look, yeah, Stephen's very soppy, and I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 They call, they, they, they say, they, yeah, they laugh at me all the time because I'm very teary in arrows. Um, but what I wanted to do was to play the polar opposite of that.
And

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I said, be good, have a good day. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And his friend started to cry a little bit. And I was like,

Speaker 1 are you okay?

Speaker 1 And Alfie jumped in and said, his dad never hugs him. And his dad's never told him that he loves him.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I thought there was no way that

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 So, just talking about the sort of technical issue, as I said, like each of these episodes is one take. There's no editing.

Speaker 3 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

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Like, talk about some of the technical things that you had to figure out.

Speaker 1 The beauty of this is, well, we have three weeks to shoot each episode.

Speaker 1 But what we do within that context is for the first week, we rehearse the script script and we go through the script like we're about to do a play.

Speaker 3 Because they are kind of like little plays.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, of course. And that's the beauty of it.
But

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And in the same respect, you know, look, me and Jack are not 14-year-old boys. But we could ask Owen

Speaker 1 what he would say in these particular situations.

Speaker 3 Owen is Owen Cooper, who plays, who plays your son, Jamie.

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, that's right. Owen Cooper, who's phenomenal in the piece.
But within that context, we could get to use the real authentic language.

Speaker 1 It's such a gift because you're able to marry both disciplines.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 Which was an actual location with hundreds of kids walking around.

Speaker 1 Yes, yeah, it really was. And it was actually, you know, for I think about a hundred and fifty of our extras, of the supporting artists, it was their school.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And that's when you have everybody about. So, you know, you can, then the sound department, they can plant mics here and there.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 So sometimes, you know, hopefully at the minimum, we will have 10 takes.

Speaker 3 10 complete takes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So we shop for five days and you do two takes a day.
But

Speaker 1 as is with episode one, the take you see is take two.

Speaker 1 With episode two, the take we used was take 14.

Speaker 3 Would you know after doing all your takes that you were kind of leaning towards one that you would eventually use? Or?

Speaker 1 Well, I did personally.

Speaker 1 I did on the first one. I knew it was the second take.

Speaker 1 I just knew it was.

Speaker 1 And I was kind of like, Can we go home now?

Speaker 1 And Phil was like, No, look, we're being paid to be here for the rest of the week. And I said to Phil, it's not going to get better than that.
And he was like, You never know.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Trust me, that's it.

Speaker 3 I wanted to play another clip from the show, and this comes from episode four,

Speaker 3 which is really about the fallout that the family is dealing with, having their son accused of murder.

Speaker 3 It's a really devastating episode, and I wanted to play a part of a scene between your character and your wife, who's played by Christine Tremarco.

Speaker 3 And like, you're basically trying to figure out, like, how did we get here? How did things go so wrong? And what could you have possibly done differently? So, let's hear that scene.

Speaker 1 He has a terrible temper, but two of you.

Speaker 1 I didn't give him that, did I?

Speaker 1 But I do sometimes think we should have stopped it.

Speaker 1 Seen it and stopped it.

Speaker 1 We can't think later.

Speaker 1 Remember, it's what she said.

Speaker 1 It's not our fault.

Speaker 1 We can't blame ourselves.

Speaker 1 But we'd made it up.

Speaker 1 When I was his age, my dad used to batter me.

Speaker 1 Sometimes he'd take the belt to me and he'd whack me and he'd whack me.

Speaker 1 And I promised myself,

Speaker 1 I said, when I had my own kids, I'd never do that.

Speaker 1 I'd never do that to my kids.

Speaker 1 And I didn't, did I?

Speaker 1 I just wanted to be better.

Speaker 1 But am I?

Speaker 1 I'm not better.

Speaker 1 You child to be

Speaker 1 about it.

Speaker 3 That's from Adolescence, the final episode of the show.

Speaker 3 This episode is devastating, and

Speaker 3 this show is going to stay with me, I think, forever, a very long time.

Speaker 3 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 in this episode.
Like,

Speaker 3 you have a complete breakdown at one point. Like as an actor, how hard is that to go through?

Speaker 3 I guess like is there is there an aftermath that you have to reckon with after doing that kind of performance?

Speaker 1 For a lot of people it is, yeah. And I understand it and I get it.
And to some extent I think maybe there is for me.

Speaker 1 I'm also able to jump in and jump out and decompress quite quickly now, which is a kind of technique I've learnt myself over.

Speaker 3 So, you do have tools for that?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And those tools are, well, the biggest tool for that is my wife, Hannah.
On many levels,

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 do I sound like a d and she'd be like, yes. She'll go, well, I'll tell you what.
The dog had dying.

Speaker 1 Of course, yeah. But she understands it.
And she does it. And, you know,

Speaker 1 if there's anyone that can dive into emotions when they're on set, it's Hannah. She's unbelievable, Anna.

Speaker 1 So when I try and do it, Sam, she just goes, Oh, well, the dog had diarrhoea all over the carpet this morning.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, Oh, and she went, and I had to go shopping, and the car ran out of petrol while I was on the motorway, and I'm like, Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Speaker 1 Exactly. That's kind of where she goes.
But again, you know, and 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.

Speaker 1 They're they they make me the man who I am.

Speaker 1 Do you know what what i mean i am here because of them mainly as well um and just to share this with you and these are the tricks of the trade on that last scene that 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

Speaker 1 oh was it take 16 wow

Speaker 1 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 um there was a couple of times the car wouldn't start uh as we got it and as we set off.

Speaker 1 So there was a yeah, oh then we got stuck at the traffic lights. That's right.

Speaker 1 So take 16 and what happened was again it was the last day and it was the very last day of filming.

Speaker 1 So again my kids both Grace

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I had gone into that bedroom, obviously, 15 times. And so I had a kind of idea of what I was was going to do and what I was going through.

Speaker 1 And Philip came up with a beautiful idea when we were in rehearsals. And 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Don't get me wrong. I'm completely in the moment.
But what my kids and Hannah had done, they put photographs on

Speaker 1 the wall of

Speaker 1 them and me.

Speaker 1 And they just put, we're so proud of you, dad. We love you so much.
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 up.

Speaker 1 And I just too.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 and yeah, they didn't let go of me for a while. 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.

Speaker 3 If you're just joining us, we're speaking with actor Stephen Graham, who stars in two new shows: Adolescence on Netflix and A Thousand Blows on Hulu. He'll be back after a short break.

Speaker 3 I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 Stephen, I wanted to talk briefly with you about A Thousand Blows. You're playing actually a real-life person named Henry Sugar Goodson, who was a bare knuckle boxer in Victorian London.

Speaker 3 And I just wanted to play a scene from the show. You have been undefeated, but there's this newcomer from Jamaica named Hezekiah Mosco.

Speaker 3 And when you're fighting him,

Speaker 3 it looks like you're going to lose, but someone in your corner trips him, and you're declared the winner, even though it was unfair.

Speaker 3 But you're really shaken by

Speaker 3 the fact that you thought you were going to lose, so you want to fight him again. So, in this scene, Hezekiah, who's played by Malachi Kirby, comes into your bar.

Speaker 3 You're training in the back, and he talks to your brother, who says, Look, if you fall in the third round, I'll pay you. And Hezekiah doesn't like that, so he calls to you out in the back.

Speaker 1 Your brother just offered me five pounds to take a foul in the third round

Speaker 1 I asked my brother to make arrangements because my heart cannot be trusted

Speaker 1 and there were devils that pull the carriage I ride

Speaker 1 I am able to speak to you long enough to invite you to meet me in combat this Saturday night at eight o'clock in that there ring

Speaker 1 and I promise you

Speaker 1 we'll be a fair fighter

Speaker 1 and should you win this pub

Speaker 1 will pay you 50 pound

Speaker 3 but should I predominate

Speaker 1 should I break you

Speaker 1 And I promise I will not stop until you're dead.

Speaker 1 Then your body body

Speaker 1 will be sent back on that bunch of whence you came.

Speaker 1 I'm just a stranger to you.

Speaker 1 Why would you want me dead?

Speaker 1 Because it's like looking in the mirror.

Speaker 1 There can't be two of us.

Speaker 3 That's Stephen Graham in the show A Thousand Blows. Steven, you know, this character you're playing, Sugar Goodson, is an incredibly closed-off person, prone to rages.
Like, he's

Speaker 3 something will click on him and he'll beat people to death, even if they're people he loves.

Speaker 3 And, you know, this could have been a pretty one-dimensional character, like, to like play them as just a monster. But you bring out

Speaker 3 some humanity in him. And just, can you just talk about finding the complexity of the character?

Speaker 1 I had an an idea and a vision of where I would like to take this particular character and this man. And that began, if I'm completely honest with you, Sam, that began for me

Speaker 1 really in the beginning was the physical aspect of it. You know, I wanted to look like I was a fighter.
I wanted to look like I was a brawler.

Speaker 1 I wanted to look like I was capable of getting in a ring and fighting.

Speaker 3 Well, you're built like a tank in the show.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm not normally like that in real life.
But I mean, I've managed to keep that physique to an extent.

Speaker 1 So for me, it was more the physical aspect at the very beginning and setting off on that journey.

Speaker 1 And I, you know, when we got green lit, I had six months and I knew I had six months to prepare before we began to shoot. So I really trained and I trained like an athlete.

Speaker 1 I trained, you know, I trained like a fighter.

Speaker 1 I had a wonderful, wonderful coach

Speaker 1 who was my physical coach, who who was also my dietitian as well, Rob. He, you know,

Speaker 1 we used to, we'd do five days a week. And on top of that, I was boxing three, four times a week with my boxing coach, who's a really good friend, Graham.

Speaker 1 So I immersed myself completely into that whole kind of physical aspect of it.

Speaker 3 So you said you were training for six months with someone who was also a dietitian.

Speaker 3 I imagine that you were probably on a very restrictive diet, probably like a lot of proteins and stuff like that, and eating the same things, you know, day after day.

Speaker 3 It sounds like you've kept your physique up, so congratulations on that. But when you were done filming, do you remember like the first thing you ate that was like a milkshake or something like that?

Speaker 1 The first, the first thing,

Speaker 1 and again, it's not that bad really, but it's the first thing I had, which I was dying for, was I had curry goat.

Speaker 1 Curry, goat, and rice and peas. I smashed that.
We were in London and I just yammed it. I swallowed it whole.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because it was just unbelievable. But I think I've never eaten so much broccoli and spinach.

Speaker 3 And probably like just chicken breast. Chicken.

Speaker 1 Chicken, chicken, chicken. Chicken, this, chicken, that, chicken.
And it's like, can I have a bit of flavor?

Speaker 1 I love real good spices. No flavour for you.
No, but I did, but I did get away with it. I couldn't do it.
I have to do it. I have to just spread sriracha all over it.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I i mean personally you've also said that shoes are really important to your characters yeah yeah they are massively um

Speaker 1 shoes change my physicality um and they can make me walk different and i just i love that kind of

Speaker 1 the embodying the movement and the physicality of the character so i love working on the walk and sometimes i can really really really do the heads in of my family and and i can annoy my lot because i'll tell them to stop what they're doing and watch me walk in the living room.

Speaker 1 And I'll go, look, is this a good walk? And they'll be like, dad, I'm watching it. And I'll go, just give me two minutes, please.
Just watch me. Is this a good walk? Look.

Speaker 1 And they'll go, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great.
And I'll go, you're not looking properly. Watch.
Tell me now.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, them kind of physical aspects of the character I think are important. And then you create all the psychological aspects.

Speaker 3 Well, if you're just joining us, we're speaking with actor Stephen Graham, who stars in two shows right now: one on Netflix Adolescence and the other on Hulu a Thousand blows.

Speaker 3 We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 5 They care about it all. You know, and that means a lot to me.

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Speaker 3 Stephen, I wanted to go back a little bit to one of your early successes, which is the movie This Is England from 2006.

Speaker 3 And you play

Speaker 3 a racist and violent-prone skinhead named Combo.

Speaker 3 And there's a pretty famous speech in the movie that's like heavily infused with white nationalist ideology.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 But, you know, I imagine in an acting career, there's a lot of times where you have to

Speaker 3 espouse beliefs as a character that you don't hold yourself.

Speaker 3 But I was wondering if this one may have been particularly hard, obviously in part because it's just racist, but also because you have a multiracial background and one of your grandfathers is from Jamaica.

Speaker 3 Like, did that make playing this character particularly difficult for you?

Speaker 1 Uh 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 Shane Meadows, who's the Shane Meadows, yeah, who's the fantastic director.

Speaker 1 When I explained to Shane that I was mixed race, I kind of thought that he might then give the part to to somebody else because we'd we'd had auditions and we did a bit of a workshop um and andrew shim who plays milky who's the the the black character who's part of the gang as well we we'd end during the um improvisation as you can imagine you know i i went to some extremes with the language that i used um

Speaker 1 and I never said anything to anyone, but that night

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 I want you to know that that's not the way I think. It's not me at all.
Um, and I hope you can understand. I said, and to be completely honest with you, I'm mixed race.
And he was like, Really?

Speaker 1 I said, Yeah. He went, I thought so.
I thought there was something.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 He shouted, Shane, Shane. And I was like, Oh, no.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 look, Shane, I just wanted to say, I've just told Shimmy, look, I'm mixed race.

Speaker 1 You're probably going to want to give the part 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And then we did, you know, we really worked on it. And what it became about was it became more about

Speaker 1 an abandonment issue from his father

Speaker 1 and kind of not being accepted or not being a part of the identity of

Speaker 1 his self and the black part of his family. So

Speaker 1 we added such a complexity to it then.

Speaker 3 You grew up just outside of Liverpool in Kirby. And did you have to deal with issues of racism as a child child coming from a mixed family?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And if I'm honest, you're from both sides.

Speaker 1 I had a little struggle of my own back then trying to find the sense of where and how I belong.

Speaker 3 You mean

Speaker 3 your identity, sort of, your racial identity?

Speaker 1 Yeah, completely, culturally, racially, in many ways, you know what I mean? Because there were certain elements of my white cousins

Speaker 1 on that side of my family who said some horrible things. And, you know,

Speaker 1 even other family members said some horrible things and said some really horrible things to my mother at the time. Um and then on the side of the black family you know things were said to me

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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 m living but it was was just me and my mum for the first 10 years and I adore my mother god bless us all she she was you know

Speaker 1 she was the mate 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.

Speaker 1 He raised you. He was.
Yeah, he raised me. He raised me.

Speaker 1 And he's mixed race as well. So he really taught me about my sense of identity and who I am and where I'm from.

Speaker 1 And taught me about the likes of Marcus Garby and Toussaint Lobature and Malcolm X,

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And it took a little while for me to find my sense of self.

Speaker 1 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,

Speaker 1 I'm 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 Do you have this great story of of him taking you to the video store and renting like all these great movies?

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 yeah, he did. Um, taxi driver and dear hunter, taxi driver, the deer hunter, uh, and

Speaker 1 the godfather.

Speaker 1 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 it is, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And then he introduced me to the likes of David Lynch and Curry Sauer, um,

Speaker 1 and yeah, Martin Scorsese, do you know what I mean? All of these great directors, Ken Loach

Speaker 1 as well, Alan Clark.

Speaker 1 You know, I got a real great education from my pops because my pops has always loved film.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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, him and my mum, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 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?

Speaker 1 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 sleep.
So you lived in a public housing apartment?

Speaker 3 Is that

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's where I kind of grew up in the very beginning.

Speaker 3 Well, we need to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, we're speaking with British actor Stephen Graham.

Speaker 3 His newest shows are A Thousand Blows, which you can find on Hulu and Adolescents on Netflix. This is Fresh Air.

Speaker 4 This message comes from Dignity Memorial and Memphis Funeral Home, one of their nationwide providers.

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Speaker 3 Did it seem like an impossible stretch to you that one day you would be, you know, on a Martin Scorsese movie set with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro?

Speaker 3 Of course. The people you're watching on your television.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And I did have, I had the FA Cup win inside Liverpool with Kenny Daglies. I had them on my wall.

Speaker 1 But then I also had posters and and like little beautiful kind of postcards of Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Daniel De-Lewis, Gary Oldman. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 Alpac 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.

Speaker 1 Can you just see for a split second what happened to that little kid's head? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Well, let's hear that scene. Let's hear that.
Oh, wow. You set that up quite well, Stephen Graham.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 3 This is a scene from the Irishman where you play

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 3 And Al Pacino does not like that.

Speaker 1 You're late.

Speaker 1 And it was traffic. Yeah, it's traffic.

Speaker 1 Wasn't it traffic? You give me traffic.

Speaker 1 What do you want for us? It was one of the best. Oh, yeah, no, no, it's bad, you know.
Traffic.

Speaker 1 I never waited for anyone who was late more than 10 minutes in my life. I'd say 15.
15's right. No, 10.

Speaker 1 I don't think so. 10's not enough.
You have to take traffic into account.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm doing. I'm taking traffic into account.

Speaker 1 That's why it's 10. I still say 15.
No, 10.

Speaker 1 Fine, we disagree on that.

Speaker 1 How about twelve and a half? Minute. There we go.
Twelve and a half. Middle, right in the middle.
Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, more than ten.

Speaker 1 He's saying something.

Speaker 1 He's saying something to me. I'm here.

Speaker 1 It says what it says.

Speaker 1 So, there it is.

Speaker 1 Where do we go from here?

Speaker 1 What can I do for you?

Speaker 1 I want you.

Speaker 1 I want you to endorse me.

Speaker 1 For you know what?

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Fitz is in there, you know. You go to Fitz.
I did. He'll help you out.
I did. He did.
Said he'll take care of it. No questions asked.
You wouldn't do that, but he will.

Speaker 1 I meant the other thing.

Speaker 1 What other thing?

Speaker 1 You know.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Your apology.

Speaker 1 My apology.

Speaker 1 My apology for what? For what you said when you were sitting there eating the ice cream like some king.

Speaker 1 That was an ethnic slur. You people.

Speaker 1 Did you know what he said? No, I mean, I heard it had an allocation in the camp, but I don't know. Yeah, yeah, you people.

Speaker 1 That's what you said, right, Jim?

Speaker 1 You people. Am I beneath you?

Speaker 1 Definitely.

Speaker 1 Jimmy, come on.

Speaker 3 That's Stephen Graham with some other famous actors, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the movie The Irishman. So, like, first of all,

Speaker 3 this is like Goodfellows Caliber dialogue.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 3 you know, you think I'm funny? Like, you know, this some of the scorsesi dialogue like it

Speaker 3 I imagine if you're reading it on this 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

Speaker 1 yeah um

Speaker 1 you're right it's you know you have these great you have the great dialogue on a script um and then

Speaker 1 It's kind of set up and you rehearse and you play with it. And with this particular scene, it was

Speaker 1 it was going good but we we cut some of the dialogue but it was it was going really good and but it there was there was still it was lacking something and um and Marty said to me he he was like

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 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

Speaker 1 and I 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 look around and I look and I and in my head my head goes Oh, this is Robert De Niro.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh.

Speaker 1 And then Marty said, free it up, bring some life into it. And I was like, okay.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And he goes, maybe 12 and a half. Do you know what I mean? Down the middle.
And then it became alive.

Speaker 1 I go to stand up and walk away. And they're like, no, no, no, come on, sit down,

Speaker 1 sit down. And then that little bit where he says, you know,

Speaker 1 and the ethnic slayer. And I go, did you know about this? And he goes, well, I heard you're just having an altercation.
So you kind of make it real and bring him into the scene.

Speaker 1 And after we'd finished, I went, no, I'm really sorry. was that okay because i i just i just threw a few things and they were like what you kidding me now it came alive did you feel that

Speaker 1 and as you can imagine for me personally

Speaker 1 that's like my champions league final that that particular scene being a part of that you know what i mean it 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

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 And that's the biggest lesson

Speaker 1 any actor can ever learn from those two masters who were there at work.

Speaker 3 Stephen Graham, thank you so much for coming on Fresh Air.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 2 Stephen Graham spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger. Graham is starring in two shows, Hulu's A Thousand Blows and the Netflix miniseries Adolescence.

Speaker 2 Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Hilton Als will join us to talk about his latest exhibition, which challenges the way we see art, identity, and storytelling.

Speaker 2 He's been a staff writer at The New Yorker for over 30 years, writing theater reviews, essays, and profiles of figures like Tony Morrison, Richard Pryor, and Prince. I hope you'll join us.

Speaker 2 To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Additional engineering today from Diana Martinez. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Maria Bodonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yucundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Roberta Shorak directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Tyrik Rose.

Speaker 4 This message comes from Vital Farms, who works with small American farms to bring you pastor-raised eggs.

Speaker 4 Farmer Tanner Pace shares why he believes it's important to care for his land and how he hopes to pass the opportunity to farm onto his sons.

Speaker 5 We are paving the way for a future. We only have one earth and we have to make it count.

Speaker 5 Like my boys, I want to see them taking care of the land for them to be able to farm and then generations come i really enjoy seeing especially my whole family up there working with me and to be able to instill the things that my father mother and then grandparents instilled in me that i can instill in the boys that's just the most rewarding thing that that there could ever be vital farms they're motivated for the well-being of the animals for the well-being of the land the whole grand scope of things they care about it all.

Speaker 5 You know, and that means a lot to me.

Speaker 4 To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com.