Is Jamie guilty? Adolescence explained by Stephen Graham

The Netflix mini-series leaves no one indifferent. With his coscenarist, Jack Thorne, Jamie Miller’s dad decrypts for first the springs of a story that will remain.

It is already the number 1 series of the moment, on Netflix France. Adolescence does not leave anyone indifferent and the story of Jamie Miller will mark the public for a long time. But what should be understood at the end of the four episodes? What is the mini-series trying to say? And how to explain Katie’s death? The screenwriter Jack Thorne and the actor Stephen Graham (who plays Eddie Miller) – Also co -creator – Decipher for first the challenges of their powerful criminal chronic in an ordinary family.

First :: Adolescence is a very intense series to live. Was that the goal? Create something that affects the heart of the public, a story that we can all identify with?
Jack Thorne : Clearly, that was the idea. This is what we tried to do, Stephen and me. We wrote that with a parent look. There is this desire to emphasize parents’ responsibility, as for the darkest content to which our children have access to the Internet today, on networks. Things we did not have access, we were as a child. You have to be very careful about what these contents can generate as a reaction and you should not look away by thinking that it only happens to others, thinking that it only happens in distant countries. No way. It can affect all families.

Where did the idea come from? How did this project emerged?
Stephen Graham : The idea of ​​the series comes from an article that I read in the newspaper on a young boy who stabbed a young girl to death. A few weeks later, in TV info, there was another story of the same kind. They were not at all linked. One had taken place in the north of England and the other in the south. But it deeply touched me. We don’t understand how it can happen. With us, we say that it takes a whole village to raise a child. So we are all responsible for these acts, in a way: parents, of course, but the education system too, the community too. We do not imagine that a little boy can go so far. When Jamie is in his room, her parents think that everything is fine, that nothing can happen to him. But it is no longer true today with technology, networks.

Me, when I was little, all I could do in my room was drawing and playing on my Casio keyboard. Nothing more! Jamie grew up with a PlayStation in his room. He plays online games with his friends. Parents have little impact on what’s going on in this room, which becomes a kind of microcosm towards the digital world. Suddenly, with the Internet, our children can be influenced, guided by others.

How did you address the complexity of a role like that of Eddie Miller, a loving father but overwhelmed by events?
Stephen Graham : Jack (Thorne) writes so strong characters! He knows how to build ordinary characters so well, he understands Mr. everyone. At one point during writing, we changed the name of the father to Eddie, because it echoed my uncle Eddie in my home that I knew well as a child. I come from a family of hard to evil. My father, my uncle, they were hard workers. They got up early and came back late. My uncle Eddie lived in Liverpool and he went to do the sites the week in London. On weekends, he was rinsed. Suddenly, his relationship with his sons was distant. They loved him, but he was rarely at home. He worked hard to eat on the table and no longer really had the strength to be affectionate with his children. The character of Eddie that we built for the series is based on this idea. He deeply loves his son, but he is not very demonstrative, he is not very cuddly. He had to express his feelings, but he is a very normal type at the bottom.
Jack Thorne : He is a vulnerable person too, who is not certain, in this crisis, to have what it takes to support his son. It is the portrait of a worker, a solid man, who finds himself in a situation that exceeds him. It is a different painting that I wanted to make the working class of our country, which it is sometimes difficult to understand.

Each episode is filmed in sequence plan. What does it bring to the story?
Jack Thorne : In fact, the series was thought like that from the start. And we tried to think the sequence shot in a lot in different ways. It is very different in episode 1, where we are in action, and in episode 3, where it is thought of as a needle intended to unravel the soul of the characters.

How would you describe Jamie? His personality?
Jack Thorne : He is a very impressionable boy, who lives with all kinds of emotions inside. He is both a little boy who fights with the man in the making. And this man begins his relationship to the world with these things he sees on the internet.

We understand (in episode 3) that it is online humiliations and access to “incel” propaganda, via networks, which led him to the worst …
Jack Thorne : Yes and the thing is that many people could have helped him, stop him in time. But they didn’t do it. We showed that he was not a bad guy, not someone cruel. He just sank into a bottomless well where he lost foot. We really feel Jamie’s tragedy in this series. How hard it is for him, for his family. And the most terrible is that you feel less, suddenly, the pain of Katie. The victim cannot express himself and we do not shed light on him. We film the other aspect of this story. In a more classic criminal drama, we would certainly have mentioned both sides. But we had to decide who to point the camera and we chose Jamie.

For you, has Jamie always been guilty?
Stephen Graham : Yes. Since the start, he was guilty and has never been a question that he was otherwise. Adolescence has not been designed as a “whodunit” (A kind of Cluedo where we are looking for who was shot). The real question is to understand why he did that. And I think we are quite honest in our answer: we don’t really know why he did that, in the end. We don’t have all the answers. But we wanted to make something understand to the public …

What exactly can be understood?
Stephen Graham : We would like the series to be a spark that opens up dialogue at home. Or even at school. Even within the government. Because there are subjects in the series that go beyond the family framework and deserves to be legislated. We do not give a precise answer, because there is not just one answer to all this. You have to open the debate to find solutions. We have the feeling that the crisis on the networks is deep and is getting worse day by day. Our young boys find themselves delivered to themselves in the face of these networks and our responsibility is to help them.

Adolescence, mini-series in 4 episodes to see on Netflix.