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

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

The Netflix miniseries follows a 13-year-old accused of murdering a girl from his school. Co-creator and star Stephen Graham says he read about similar crimes and wanted to know: "Why is this happening?" Graham spoke with Sam Briger about the crime that inspired the show, fatherhood, and the unusual way the show was shot — in one single take. Graham also stars as a bare-knuckle boxer in the period drama series A Thousand Blows. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get special behind-the-scenes content, producer recommendations, and gems from the archive. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Penguin Random House with Everything is Tuberculosis. Best-selling author John Green tells the story of a young TB patient in Sierra Leone and systems of injustice fueling the world's deadliest infectious disease. Available where books and audiobooks are sold. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terri Gross. Our guest, British actor Stephen Graham, stars in not one, but two new shows, Hulu's A Thousand Blows and the Netflix miniseries Adolescents. 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 Adolescents, one he co-created. It's a four-part mini-series following what happens to a family when their 13-year-old son is arrested for murdering a girl from his school. It's a four-part mini-series 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 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 process, it's okay to be shocked, and it's okay to be human. Yeah, I mean, this isn't normal, do you know what I mean? No. Never even been in a police station before. You'll be fine. I just don't want to get it wrong.

For me, like, do 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 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 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 judgmental, what if it's not? And from that basis, from that premise, I just thought, well, why is this happening? Why are we in this situation where, you know, young boys, and they are young boys, they're not men, you know, their brains haven't been fully formed yet, their physiology is not completed yet, you know, the adolescence is a very difficult age, as we all know, do you know what I mean?

You 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 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 parents our children, the school system, how the education system guides

and tries to educate our children, the government, you know, how they can bring in legislation, the community and the environment of where we live. And then on top of that now, which was something that me and you never had to suffer from and our parents never had to think about, but there is now this big thing called the internet. When a child closes the door back in the day when it was me and you, we didn't have access to the rest of the world and we couldn't be influenced dramatically by other people and their theories and their thought processes. So that was what we really wanted to look at, you know what I mean? Maybe we're all accountable in some way for what is happening today in our society.

So your character, Eddie, is a successful businessman. He has a plumbing business. He's lifted himself up in the world. He's trying to be a good husband and a good father. And you say that you based him, to some degree, on your uncle's and your friend's father's. 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 until gone six, seven, eight at night, you know what I mean? So the kind of area that they live in is a really nice housing estate, you know what I mean? It's a well-to-do area in many ways. It's not, it's far from upper class and it's, you know, it's a working class household in

a really nice area. So I wanted to concentrate on the fact that they come from a good home and there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of love in that home. The mother and father primarily are doing the best for their children and his sister is an A level student. You know, she's a really hard working conscientious student because it's unconventional for us to follow the story through the eyes of the family who are 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 archetypal man in many ways who, you know, it comes from a lineage of men who are not very tactile. 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 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, they're one of the best things, the best thing in my life I've ever been a part of. They really are, do you know what I mean? Yeah, Stephen's very soppy and I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm almost, you know, look, even just thinking of Grayson Alfie is making me start to tear up and I'm just ridiculous.

They call, they, they, they said, they, yeah, 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 I, 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 gave him a cuddle and I gave him a kiss on the cheek and I said, be good, have a good day. His friend started to cry a little bit and I was like, are you okay? 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 you can see the love his father has for him. And for me, it was completely alien. I thought there was no way that his father would have never done something like that because to me, it was just such a natural thing that I don't even think about it. So just talking about the sort of technical issue, as I said, like each of these episodes is one take, there's no editing. This is similar to a movie that you did a few years back called Boiling Point, which takes place in a restaurant.

It's a great film, but it's one location. But here, like in this first episode, you start in the family home, and then you drive to the station, the camera's following you, and then you have to get all the other actors from the house to the station. Like, talk about some of the technical things that you had to figure out. IAN The beauty of this is where we have three weeks to shoot each episode.

But what we do within that context is for the first week, we rehearse the script and we go through the script like we're about to do a play. Because they are kind of like little plays. I mean, yeah, yeah, of course. And that's the beauty of it, you know, but we rehearse the script and we go through the script and it was great because we had myself there and we had Jack the writer. So it was a beautiful position that we were in where we could tweak the language, we could adjust what was happening to our environment.

And in the same respect, you know, look, me and Jack are not 14 year old boys, but we could ask Owen what would he say in these particular situations? Oh, and is Owen Cooper who plays your son, Jamie? Yes. Owen, what would he say in these particular situations? We always- Owen Cooper who plays your son, Jamie. 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 in 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. But then also because of the technique of it

being a one-shot, you're able like in episode two to travel all around the school. Right. 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 a hundred and fifty 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, 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 negotiate and we begin to walk through our pathway of what we're going to do and where we're going to go and how we're going to get there. And that's when you have everybody about so you know, you can then the sound department, they can plant mics here and there so we really really meticulously go over and over and over and over our movements and the third week is when we begin to shoot so we do two takes a day so sometimes you know hopefully at the minimum we will have ten takes ten 10 complete takes. Yeah.

So we shop for five days and you do two takes a day. But as is with episode one, the take you see is take two. 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? Well, I did personally. I did on the first one. know after doing all your takes that you were kind of leaning towards one that you would eventually use or? Well, I did personally. I did on 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? No. 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 Tramarco and like you're basically trying to figure out like how do 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 mean... I'll say that. Well, I didn't give him that, did I? Well, 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 he said. It's not our fault. We can't blame ourselves. But we made them, didn't we? When I was his age, my dad used to lie to me.

Sometimes he'd take the belt from 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 never do that. I'd never do that to me kids. And I didn't, did I? I just wanted to be better. But I'm not.

I'm not better. You're child 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 me I think forever or a very long time and and it's 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 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 and say, it's been a really tough day at work today, love. You know, I had to cry and stuff. She'd be like, oh really? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I go, oh my, do I sound like a d***?

And she'd be like, yes. She'll go, well, I'll tell you what, the dog had diarrhea. It's so comforting of her. 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, Hannah, she's unbelievable. Yeah, 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, oh, oh. Cry me a river, Steven. 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, it's, it's them. 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 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. It was take 16. Oh, was it take 16? Wow. I think it was a lot of takes. Okay, God. Yeah, we had to stop a couple of times. One, the door wasn't open when he was trying to back into the door with the camera and so he just hit the window. There was a couple of times the car wouldn't start as we got it and as we set off. So there was it. Yeah. Oh, then we got stuck at the traffic lights, that's right.

So take 16 and what happened was, again, it was the last day and it was the very last day of filming. So again, my kids, 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 gonna 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 put photographs on the wall of them and me. 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 me up too. And I just went, do you know what I mean? It was like, it just all came out. And then when I'd finished that particular scene, yeah, they grabbed hold of me,

and yeah, they didn't let go of me for a while. 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, Adolescents on Netflix and A Thousand Blows on Hulu.

He'll be back after a short break. I'm Sam Brigger and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from Wise, the app for doing things in other currencies, sending or spending money abroad, hidden fees may be taking a cut. With Wise, you can convert between up to 40 currencies at the mid-market exchange rate. Visit wyze.com. TNCs apply.

This message comes from Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right. They offer premium wireless plans for less, and all plans include high-speed data, unlimited talk and text, and nationwide coverage. See for yourself at MintMobile.com slash switch. Hi, this is Molly C.V. Nesbitt, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terri Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights

from the archive. It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. 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. 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. And when you're fighting him, it looks like you're gonna 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 this,

the fact that you thought you were gonna lose, so you wanna 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.

What's the price? 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 were 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 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 winst you, Kite. I am just as strange as 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 he's, something will click in 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, to 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 so 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 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 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 diitian as well Rob He you know we 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? The 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 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. Yeah, because it was just unbelievable. But I think I've never eaten so much broccoli and spinach. Probably like just chicken breast, like chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, this chicken, that chicken. And it's like, can I have a bit of flavor? I love real good spices. No flavor for you.

No, but I did, but I did get away with it. I couldn't do what I have to do. I had to just spread sriracha all over it. You know what I mean? Personally. You've 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. And I just, I love that kind of the, 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 they'll be like, I'll go, look, is this a good walk? And it'd 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. I was great. And I'll go, you're not looking properly. Watch, tell me now.

So yeah, I had 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, Adolescents, and the other on Hulu, A Thousand Blows. We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

Stephen, I wanted to go back a little bit to one of your early successes, which is the movie, This is England England from 2006. And you play a racist and violent prone skinhead named Combo. And there's a pretty famous speech in the movie that's like heavily infused with white nationalist ideology. We're not going to play it because I think there's an F word in every sentence, so there'd just be like lots of leaps. 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 you have a multiracial background and one of your grandfathers is from Jamaica. Did that make playing this character particularly difficult for you? It didn't make it particularly difficult, but what it did make me want to do and as well when I explained to Shane because originally when I went to 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. And Andrew Shim, who plays Milky, who's the black character, who's part of the gang as well, we'd enjoyed the improvisation, as you can imagine. I went to some extremes with the language that I used. And I never said anything to anyone, but that night I managed to get Andrew's phone number and I phoned him up and I said, look, I just want to apologize for the language and for

the things that I said to you today. I want you to know that that's not the way I think. It's not me at all. And I hope you can understand. I said, and to be completely honest with you, I'm mixed race. And he was like, really? I said, yeah. He went, I 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, look Shane, I just wanted to say, I've just told Shimi, 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. And then we did. We really worked on it. And what it became about was it became more about an abandonment issue from his father and kind of not being accepted or not being a part of the identity of his self and the black part of his family.

So we added such a complexity to it then. You grew up just outside of Liverpool in Kirby, and did you have to deal with issues of racism as a child coming from a mixed family? Yeah, yeah. And if I'm honest, yeah, from both sides. I had a little struggle of my own back then, trying to find the sense of where and how I belong.

You mean your identity, sort of, your racial identity? Yeah, completely, culturally, racially, in many ways. You know what I mean? Because there was certain elements of my white cousins and on that side of my family who said some horrible things and 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, things were said to me and said to my mother as well in a horrible sense from both

sides of it. So it did take a while and it kind of, you know, it's maybe in my early teens. I'm not saying that that's what my life was like all the time because it was very happy and joyous, you know, my household, my living with, it was just me and my mum for the first 10 years. And I adore my mother. God bless her soul. She was, you know, God bless us all. 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. But he raised you. Yeah, he raised me. He raised me. And he's mixed race as well. So he really taught me about my sense of identity and who I am and where I'm from, and taught me about the likes of Marcus Garbi

and Toussaint Louboutin and Malcolm X, Martin Luther King. So he filled me with the history and the knowledge of who I was, do you know what I mean in many ways? And then he also inspired me and led me to believe that anything is possible and to follow

my dreams. But as a kid growing up, there was, you know, at times it was difficult. And it took a little while for me to find my sense of self. And for me to be completely comfortable with who I am really, do you know what I mean in that respect? Which I, you know, I sit with inside myself of who I am today and I'm completely comfortable with myself But it takes a long time. I think You said your stepfather helped you sort of with your cultural and racial identity. He also

Helped you when you told your family you wanted to be an actor Do you have this great story of him taking you to the video store and renting like all these great movies? Like, yeah, like, yeah, he did. Taxi driver and your taxi driver, the deer hunter, and the godfather. And it was kind of that's where my the beginning of my love affair for filmmaking started and the art and the craft of what it is. And then he introduced me to the likes of David Lynch and Kuri Sauer and Martin Scorsese, all of these great directors.

Ken Loach as well, Alan Clark, you know, I got a real great education from my pops because my pops has always loved film. And that's kind of where it began for me. And then, you know, me and my mom used to always go, we'd go like to the Tate and to art and he made me look at art and things differently. You know, my childhood was beautiful. I loved it. You know, we'd go, we'd go to the galleries and stuff like that Me and my mom, you know what I mean? I'm a mom 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 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 lived in a public housing apartment. Yeah 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. Did it seem like an impossible stretch to you

that one day you would be on a Martin Scorsese movie set with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro? Of course. The people you're watching on your television. Yeah. So my wall, most of my mates had soccer players, you call them, football players, we call them over here. Most of my mates had football players on their walls.

And I did have, I had the FA Cup winning side, Liverpool with Kenny Douglas. 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, I had wonderful pictures of all of the William Defoe, all of these actors on my wall,, 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 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 Even saying it now, it just doesn't seem real. Martin Scorsese at the monitor, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino sat at the table and Marty says, okay, are we ready? And action. Can you just see for a split second what happened to that little kid's head? Yeah.

Well, let's hear that scene. Let's, let's see. 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. Ha ha. Wasn't it traffic? You give me traffic. It was traffic. What do you want from us? It was vulnerable. 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 ten, you're saying something. You're saying something to me. No, I'm here. It says what it says. So there it is.

Where do we go from here? So, there it is. Where do we go from here? What can I do for you? I want you... I... I want you to endorse me. For you know what? Yeah, but before we get to that, 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. Your people. Did you know what he said? No, I mean, I heard he had an altercation in the camp, but I don't know. Yeah, you people.

That's what you said, right, Jim? You people. Am I beneath you? Definitely. Jimmy, what are you doing? Jimmy, what are you doing? Come on. 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, this is like Goodfellas caliber, like dialogue, like, you know, you think I'm funny, like, you know, some of the Scorsese dialogue. I imagine if you're reading it on the page, it might seem like really banal or boring, but the way that you have these great actors doing it, it's just so full of energy. Can you talk about that? Yeah. You're right.

You have the great dialogue on a script. And then it's kind of set up and you rehearse and you play with it. And with this particular scene, it was going good, but we cut some of the dialogue, 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, can I improvise? And he went, yeah, just free it up a little bit. So previously when we'd done a couple of takes, I was chatting and there was no dialogue coming

from Frank. So Rob didn't have any dialogue. And I was kind of in my, like I said to you before, don't forget, I'm a kid who's got posters of these people on his wall. Do you know what I mean? So I'm thinking to myself, I'm in a scene and you know, so 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 talking with Al, and then I look around, and I look, 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 we carry on. And then in my head, it goes, oh, no, I'm in a scene with Robert De Niro, and he doesn't say anything. It's like, oh. And then Marty said, free it up, bring some life into it. And I was like, okay. So then that whole, and he comes up with the best line, that whole thing about 15 minutes and 10 minutes, I just turned at one point, because it's edited together

beautifully as well. And I just turned at one point and I said, what do you think Frank? And he, you know, he didn't have any lines at all in the scene And then he comes up with the finest line in the whole scene and he goes maybe 12 and a half 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 sit down And then that little bit where he says you know Yeah, and the ethnic slayer and I go, did you know about this? And he goes, well, I heard you said an altercation. So you kind of make it real and bring him into the scene. And after we'd finished, I went,

no, I'm really sorry. Was that okay? Because I just, I just threw a few things and they were like, what, you kidding me? No, it came alive. Did you feel that? And as you can imagine for me personally, I slept 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. Um, and that's the biggest lesson any, you know,

any actor can ever learn from those two masters who were there at work. Steve Graham, thank you so much for coming on Fresh Air. Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure. Steven Graham spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger. Graham is starring in two shows, Who Lose a Thousand Blows and the Netflix miniseries Adolescents. 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. 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 Meyers, Annemarie Bodonado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Cézanne Yacundy, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesbur. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.

I'm Terry Gross. At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but, we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew.

Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ira Glass. In Lily's family, there's a story everybody knows by heart. If this story had never happened, all of us wouldn't be here right now. Sammy wouldn't be here. Nina wouldn't be here. Wally wouldn't be here.

Anyone that we know wouldn't be here. Nina wouldn't be here. Wally wouldn't be here. Anyone that we know wouldn't be here. So what happens when Lily's mom tells her the story is not true? This American Life, surprising stories every week. This message comes from the Making Space with Hoda Kotb podcast. Join Hoda Kotb for real, raw conversations and inspiring stories of resilience. Search Making Space to follow now.