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

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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. He spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger.
Here's Sam. 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.
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. The other show that Stephen Graham is in is Adolescence, one he co-created.
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. 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. 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? Is it bullying? 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? 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. They're like plays, but moving throughout different locations and scenes.
It adds an urgency to the drama. You may have first seen Stephen Graham in the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch, playing the role of Tommy, Jason Statham's sidekick.
His breakout role was playing Combo, a white nationalist skinhead in This Is England.

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. Before we start talking, let's hear a scene from adolescence.
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. Here's 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.
It's okay to be shocked and it's okay to be human. Yeah, I mean, this isn't normal, 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 for me 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, you know, 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 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 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 then they're not men you know their brains haven't been fully formed yet their physiology is not complete as yet you know the 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, 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 you're not, 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, 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 um 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 uncles 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, hardworking men who go to work, say maybe six o'clock, seven o'clock in the morning and don't manage to get back home till gone six, seven, eight at night, you know what i mean um so the kind of area that they live in is it's a really nice house in the state you know what i mean it's it's it's it's a well-to-do area in many ways it's not it's not it's far from upper class and it's you know it's it's a working class household um in a really nice area so i wanted to 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 that the mother and father primarily are doing the best for their children and his sister is a 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 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 was 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,

dark,

etyple man in many ways,

um,

who,

you know,

Thank you. and achieve and trying to accomplish with the respects to eddie is like i said that kind of old-fashioned dark 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 hug them and 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 that you know the one of the best things the best thing in my life i've ever been a part of um they really are you know what i mean look yeah steven's very soppy and i wear my heart on my sleeve um i'm almost you know look even 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 that house. But what I wanted to do was to play the polar opposites of that.
And one morning when Alfie and some of his mates were in his house, I was giving Alfie a cuddle because they were going out for the day day and I give him a cuddle I give him a kiss on the cheek and I said be good have a good day do you know what I mean and his friend started to cry a little bit and I was like you okay and Alfie jumped in and said his dad never hugs him and his dad's never told him that he loves him and it just broke my heart a little bit do you know what i mean and i've seen him with his father and and you can see the love his father has for him and and for me it was completely alien i thought there was no way that that 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 so just talking about the 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 we go through the script like we're about to do a play because they are kind of like little players i mean yeah yeah of course and that's the beauty of it you know but we rehearsed that we rehearsed 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 look me and jack are not 14 year old boys but we could ask owen what would he say in these particular situations owen is owen cooper who plays who plays. 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.
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 theater but you have the technical ability and the kind of nuance 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 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 yeah 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 in the second week we work with all of the crew all of the crew come on set and we 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 um so sometimes you know hopefully at the minimum we will have 10 takes 10 10 complete takes yeah so we shot 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.
I did on the first one. I knew it was the second take.
I just knew it was. And I was kind of like, can we go home now? And Phil was like, no.
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. And I was like, trust me, that's it.
I wanted to play another clip from the show, and this comes from episode four, which is really about the fallout that the family is dealing with having their son accused of murder. 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.

And you're basically trying to figure out,

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.

He has a terrible temper, but so have you.

I'll say that.

I didn't give him that, did I?

What, did I give him that?

No.

But I do sometimes think we should have stopped it.

Seen it and stopped it.

We can't think like that. Remember? It's what she said.
It's not our fault. We can't blame ourselves.
But we made it. Didn't we? When I was his age, my dad used to batter me.
Sometimes he'd take the bell to me and he'd whack me and he'd whack me. And I promised myself, I said, when I had my own kids, I'd I'd never do that.
I'd never do that to me, kids.

And I didn't, when I had my own kids, I'd never do that. I'd never do that to my kids.
And I didn't, did I? I just wanted to be better. But am I? I'm not better.
You're trying to be. We both did.
That's from Adolescence, the final episode of the show. This episode is devastating.
And the show is going to stay with me, I think, forever, 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 in this episode.
Like you have a complete breakdown at one point. Like as an actor, how hard is that to go through? I guess, like, is there an aftermath that you have to reckon with after doing that kind of performance? 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, I'm also able to jump in and jump out and decompress quite quickly now,

which is a kind of technique I've learned myself over time.

Do you have tools for that?

Yeah, yeah.

And those tools are, well, the biggest tool for that is my wife, Hannah,

on many levels.

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, 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, honey. 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 while I was on the motorway and I'm like oh cry me a river Steve exactly that's kind of where she goes but again you know and I know look for me family is the most important thing to me it's they're my rock. 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.
That's a 16 oh was it take 16 wow 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 camber 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 so there was yeah oh then we got stuck at the traffic lights that's right um. 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, 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 come 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 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.
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 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 and I just yeah and I just went do you know what I mean it was like it just all out.
And then when I'd finished that particular scene, yeah, they grabbed all of me 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. 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.
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Steven, 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.
And I just wanted to play a scene from the show. You have been undefeated, but there's this newcomer from Jamaica named Hezekiah Moscow.
And when you're fighting him, 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. But you're really shaken by 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. You're training in the back and he talks to your brother who says, like, 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.

Sugar, good son. Your brother just offered me five pounds to take a fall in the third round.
I asked my brother to make arrangements

Because my heart cannot be trusted

And there are devils

That pull the carriage I ride

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

I'm going to go. enough to invite you to meet me in combat this Saturday night at 8 o'clock in that there ring.
And I promise you we'll be a fair fight. And should you win this pub will pay you 50 pound.
But should I predominate? Should I break you? And I promise I will not stop until you're dead. Then your body will be sent back on that boat to when you came.

I am just a stranger to you.

Why would you want me dead?

Because it's like looking in the mirror.

And there can't be two of us.

That's Stephen Graham in the show A Thousand Blows. Stephen, you know, this character you're playing, Sugar Goodson, is an incredibly closed-off person.
He's prone to rages. Like, something will click on him, and he'll beat people to death, even if they're people he loves.
And, you know, this could have been a pretty one-dimensional character, like play them as just a monster. But you bring out some humanity in him.
And can you just talk about like finding the complexity of the character? I had 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, that began for me 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.
I wanted to look like I was capable of getting in the ring and fighting. Well, you're built like a tank in the show.
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. So for me, it was more the physical aspect at the very beginning and setting off on that journey.
And I, you know, when we got greenlit, 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.
I trained, you know, I trained like a fighter. I had a wonderful, wonderful coach who was my physical coach, who was also my dietician as well.
Rob, he, you know, 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.
So I amazed myself completely into that whole kind of physical aspect of it. So you said you were training for six months with someone who was also a dietitian.
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.
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? first the first thing and again it's not that bad really but it's the first thing i had which i was dying for was um i had curry goat curry goat and rice and peas i smashed that we were in london i just yammed it i swallowed it whole um yeah because it was just unbelievable but i think i think i've never eaten so much broccoli and spinach and probably like just chicken breast like chicken chicken chicken chicken chicken this chicken that chicken and it's like can i have a bit of flavor i i i love uh real good spices flavor for you no but i did but i did get away with i couldn't what I had to do. I had to just spread sriracha all over it, you know what I mean, personally.
You also said that shoes are really important to your characters. Yeah.
Yeah, they are massively. Shoes change my physicality and they can make me walk different.
I kind of, 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 I can annoy my lot

because I'll tell them to stop what they're doing

and watch me walk in the living room.

And I'll go, look, is this a good walk?

And they'll be like, dad, I'm watching.

And I go, just give me two minutes, please.

Just watch me. Is this a good walk? Look.
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. So, yeah, them kind of physical aspects of the character that I think are important.
And then you create all the psychological aspects. 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.
We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
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Plus, you'll get access to over 1,000 airport lounges 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 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 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 just racist, but also because have a multi-racial background and one of your grandfathers is from jamaica like did that make playing this character particularly difficult for you 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 shane

meadows who's the shane meadows yeah 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 we'd had auditions and we did a bit of a workshop um and andrew shim who plays milky who's the black character

who's part of the gang as well

we'd enduring the improvisation as you can imagine you know i went to some extremes with the language that i used um and i never said anything to anyone but that night i managed to get 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. 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? 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 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 uh look shane i just wanted to say, I've just told Jimmy, look, I'm mixed race. 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.
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. Um, 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, um, and kind of not being accepted or not being a part of, of the identity of his, of his self and, and, and the black part of his family.
we 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 uh and if i'm honest here from both sides um 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 your identity sort of your racial identity yeah completely um culturally racially uh in many ways you know what I mean because there were certain elements of my my white cousins and on on that side of my family who who said some horrible things 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 of you know it's maybe in my early teens uh look 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 mom for the first 10 years and i adore my mother god bless her soul she she was you know 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 uh but you know he raised you he was yeah he raised me he raised me he you know and he's mixed race as well so he really taught me about my sense of identity um and who i am and where i'm from um and taught me about the likes of of Marcus Garby and Toussaint Louberture 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, as a kid growing up, there was, you know,

at times it was difficult.

Um,

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

Um,

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'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.
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 Like, yeah, like, yeah, he did. Um, taxi driver and your 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 mean and then he introduced me to the likes of david lynch and curry sour um and yeah martin scorsese do you know what i mean all of these great directors ken loach as well uh alan clark you know i got a real great education from my pops because my pops has always loved film um 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 to the galleries and stuff like that me and my mum do you know what i mean i'm my mum 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 that.
You lived in a public housing apartment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where I kind of grew up in the very beginning.
Well, we need to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, we're speaking with British actor Stephen Graham.
His newest shows are A Thousand Blows, which you can find on Hulu and Adolescents on Netflix. This is Fresh Air.
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Not available in all states. 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? Of course.
The people you're watching on your television. Yeah.
So my wall, most of my mates had, you know, soccer plays, 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 winning side Liverpool with Kenny D'Aglise. 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 Day-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 that 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 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. Yeah, it's traffic.
Wasn't it traffic? Give me traffic. It was traffic.
What do you want for us? It was bumping a bumping. Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's bad, 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.
10's not enough. You have to take traffic into account.
That's what I'm doing. I'm taking traffic into account.
That's why it's 10. I still say 15.

No, 10.

Fine, we disagree on that.

How about 12 and a half minutes?

There we go.

12 and a half.

The middle, right in the middle.

Beautiful, beautiful.

More than 10 is saying something.

Are you 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.

He 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 in the ice cream like some king that was an ethnic slur you people did you know what he said no i mean i heard i heard he had an altercation in the camp but i don't know yeah yeah you people that's what you said right jim you people know i might beneath you. Definitely.
Jimmy, what are you doing? 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 Goodfellas caliber dialogue.
You, like, like, you know, you think I'm funny, like, you know, this, some of the Scorsese dialogue, like it, 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 that yeah um you're right it's you know you have these great you have the great dialogue on a script um and then it's kind of set up and you rehearse and you play with it and and with this particular scene it was um it was going good but we we cut some of the dialogue but but it was going really good, but it was lacking something.
And Marty said to me, he was like, 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 from frank so rob didn't have any dialogue um 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 this wall do you know what i mean so i'm thinking to myself i'm in a scene and 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 and i look and i and in my head my head goes oh there's 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 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, 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 he says you know yeah and the ethnic slayer and I go did you know about this and he goes well I heard you he's had an altercation so you kind of make it real and bring him into the scene and 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 no it came alive 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 spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger.
Graham is starring in two shows, Hulu's A Thousand Blows and the Netflix miniseries Adolescence. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Hilton Owls will join us to talk about his latest exhibition, which challenges the way we see art,

identity, and storytelling. He's been a staff writer at The New Yorker for over 30 years,

writing theater reviews, essays, and profiles of figures like Toni Morrison, Richard Pryor,

and Prince. 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.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Additional engineering today from Diana Martinez.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Annemarie Boudonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challoner, Susan Yekundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram.
Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper.
Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
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