This article contains major spoilers for the final episode of Adolescence.
Stephen Graham’s family helped make his emotional performance in the final moments of Adolescence feel even more real.
The Bafta nominee takes centre stage in the hard-hitting Netflix drama’s final instalment, as his character Eddie’s 50th birthday becomes derailed by a series of disastrous events relating to his son Jamie’s crime a year earlier.
In the closing moments of the show, Eddie ventures alone into his son’s room before collapsing into tears and tucking a teddy bear into his bed as if he were his son, telling him he “should have done better”.
Stephen told Netflix: “We knew that we wanted to end it in that room. We wanted the journey to finish where it began. This is where the person who Jamie became was created.”
What viewers didn’t see, though, is that Stephen was joined on set that day not just by his wife, who was a producer on the show, but also their teenage children.
Unbeknownst to him, director Philip Barantini had requested that the art department print off pictures of Stephen and his family to adorn Jamie’s bedroom, alongside a note that read: “We love you. We’re so proud of you.”
Netflix noted Barantini knew the pictures wouldn’t be picked up on camera, but would be in the former This Is England star’s eyeline, making for an even more heartwrenching performance.
“If you watch the scene closely, he looks over to the right-hand side, and he spots the pictures and the notes. It broke him open,” Barantini recalled.
“The other takes before that were very different. They were all still incredibly emotional. But that last take, which we used, was real, raw, and unexpected from him as well.”
Stephen agreed: “They got me to the core. So the taps just opened up.”
He also told Radio Times: “On that final take, my wife and my two kids were there as well. And so, when I go into the bedroom, what they’d done was they put some pictures on the wardrobe, and it said, ‘So proud of you, we love you, dad’. And it was pictures of my two kids, Grace and Alfie, who I adore.
“So that kind of sparked that last, final scene in that moment as well while I was thinking of [Owen Cooper, who plays Jamie], who I’ve had the most amazing experience with.”
Barantini also revealed that the original script called for a different act from Stephen, which was changed during rehearsals.
According to Netflix, Eddie was “simply meant to get inside Jamie’s bed and pull the covers over his body, like he was an avatar for his imprisoned son”.
Barantini explained: “We rehearsed it, and it was great. But I just felt like there’s something about him tucking in Jamie’s teddy.
“This is the only thing that Eddie’s got that he can touch — that’s malleable, that Jamie’s cuddled, and Jamie’s been with. And then Stephen made it his own.”
All four episodes of Adolescence are streaming now on Netflix.