Owen Cooper on What’s Next After His Star-Making Turn in ‘Adolescence’

It’s not just the content of Adolescence that’s captured people’s attention, but also the technical brilliance of its filming. Each hour-long episode was shot in a single take, meaning the action unspools in real time. For the audience, there’s zero let-up. How on earth did Cooper learn such long scripts? “I still question how I did that, to be honest,” Cooper admits. “I had two weeks to really learn them and I was in my room every single day just going mad on that script. There was so much highlighting you could barely read the lines.”

Did he come up with a backstory for Jamie, I wonder? A theory of what happened and why, in order to give such a striking performance? “I think what Stephen and Jack have done brilliantly is that Jamie is just a normal kid,” says Cooper. “You know? His family, everything. That shows that the power of social media can change anyone. It doesn’t matter what class you are, how you look; it can happen to anyone. Jamie is a normal kid getting harassed on social media and so his head spirals into stuff. He commits this horrendous act that changes his life, and his family’s life, and everyone around him, forever.”

Does he, Cooper, think that we need to completely reconsider how we treat phones, especially for young people? “Some kids are getting phones at, like, seven years old. I think I got my first one at 11 or 12. It’s high school when that addiction to phones really comes in, because it’s in your blazer all the time.”

Advice on childrearing isn’t something I’d normally solicit from a 15-year-old boy on Zoom on a Friday night, but Cooper is clearly a thoughtful, considerate, and level-headed person. So I go for it: What can I do to make my son kind and safe? Maybe even happy? “My advice for parents is: You can’t keep an eye on your children at all times,” answers Cooper. “So don’t let them have social media until they’re older; stick to the advised age restrictions. And then you’ve got to check social media and see what’s going on with them. Because bad things are happening, clearly, all over England.”