Intro for May 28, 2025

Dear Gossips,   

On Monday in this space, I posted about the Emmys and how even though it was Memorial Day, Hollywood would be busy this week and next before nominations voting for the Emmys begins on June 12. 

Like clockwork, here are Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper, Ashley Walters, and Erin Doherty, aka the cast of Adolescence, last night at the Television Academy to promote the show and campaign for the show. Adolescence is considered the frontrunner in the Outstanding Limited Series category. This is the series everyone was talking about when it dropped in March, prompting a push for it to be shown in schools in the UK. Many are comparing it to Baby Reindeer, not necessarily for content but for its cultural impact and virality. As we saw, Baby Reindeer went on to win pretty much everything last award season. 

For Adolescence, though, there’s also the added factor for the way it was filmed. Each of its four episodes was shot on one take – that’s an entire hour, no stopping, and in three of those episodes the characters are moving through multiple locations. Episode two in particular mostly takes place at a school as you see the characters going from classrooms to courtyards and parking lots, as hundreds (it seemed like hundreds) are passing through the halls and stairwells. It’s a breathtaking achievement, coordinating all those people, and also the crew, having to navigate such a complicated and ambitious task, making sure that everyone is where they need to be at every given moment, so that there are no exposed wires, no boom mics visible, no one bumping into each other, and the actors are framed just right. Then, of course, in that episode, the final flex – when they go from a shot inside the car with Detective Bascombe and his son to a drone that flies overhead, over the neighbourhood, and lands at the park. 

It's even more impressive when you consider how many times they would have filmed it. Because the final product of each episode, yes, was one take. But they did each take several times. Episode three, for example, which was f-cking brutal, the one where Jamie is interviewed by the child psychologist, was shot 11 times. The final take, the eleventh, is the one they used. 

This is the episode that could earn Owen Cooper, now 16 years old, his first ever acting role, an Emmy nomination – and possible win – in the supporting category. 

Stephen Graham, meanwhile, a recognisable and beloved English actor for years now, will be submitted in the lead category and he’s looking like a lock for a nomination up against Colin Farrell. Stephen Graham doesn’t just star in the show, he also co-created and co-wrote it. His performance in the final and fourth episode broke me. Because all that technical achievement with the one takes etc etc etc doesn’t matter if the show doesn’t have the heart. And it has so much heart, so much pain, so much urgency. Adolescence is about how kids are being endangered by the manosphere, about how toxic masculinity is being transmitted on the internet and infecting a generation of young males. It’s about how this epidemic is tearing families apart, a devastating but vitally empathetic watch.

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey