Adolescence Star Owen Cooper Reveals A Partly Improvised Scene

Since its premiere on March 13, Netflix’s Adolescence quickly shot to No. 1 on the streamer’s global TV chart. The limited series revolves around 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper), who is arrested for murdering his classmate, Katie.

Stephen Graham, who plays Jamie’s dad and co-created the show, told Netflix that the idea for Adolescence came from reading real-life headlines about cases like Katie’s.

“I was thinking, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening in society where a boy stabs a girl to death? What’s the inciting incident here?’ And then it happened again, and it happened again, and it happened again,” he said. “I really just wanted to shine a light on it, and ask, ‘Why is this happening today? What’s going on? How have we come to this?”

In addition to prompting discourse about toxic masculinity, Adolescence has gone viral for its unique filming method. Each of its four, roughly hour-long episodes was shot in a continuous take, meaning lots of logistics, rehearsals, and redos.

An On-The-Spot Save

As Netflix recently revealed, the show planned to film each episode 10 (!!!) times. “But in reality a few attempts had to be abandoned and restarted, so some episodes had many more than 10 takes,” the streamer said.

Fortunately, it sounds like the cast and crew did what they could to carry on when there were hiccups — or yawns, as was the case during Episode 3.

During this episode, Jamie has a pre-sentencing session with a psychologist (Erin Doherty). Cooper told the BBC that during the second take of the day, he was feeling tired. “A yawn came to me,” he confessed on The One Show. “And then Erin did an amazing line. She said, ‘Am I boring you?’ That took me aback, and it made me smile, because it wasn’t in the script. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

Fans were shocked by the revelation — with one viewer on X (formerly Twitter) saying the improv makes Episode 3 an “even more amazing” feat, and another calling for Cooper to get the BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Emmy.

Making Adolescence

For her part, Doherty credits Cooper, who makes his screen debut in Adolescence, with being an exceptional scene partner. “As an actor, he could have been doing it for 50 years and no one would have known any different,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.

She also said that weeks of rehearsals with director Philip Barantini helped the cast become comfortable making decisions on the fly.

“I think in hindsight, what Phil was really doing in those rehearsal days was collectively bringing us all together so that if anything did change or veer off of the path that we had made for each other, you would naturally all move as one to rectify that,” she said.