It’s safe to say Adolescence has been a mega hit for Netflix, and a lot of that is down to Owen Cooper – the rising star acting talent who had never acted professionally before this role. What a way to kick off your career – a harrowing, acclaimed and very layered role with much to say about society. It’s big stuff to juggle for any young person, and Owen Cooper took to it like a natural. So whilst we know and love the work of Stephen Graham, Jack Thorne, Erin Doherty and Philip Barantini – it’s Owen Cooper who blew everyone away. And even more so – because Netflix just revealed that the first day of filming for Owen Cooper was the spectacular Adolescence third episode. That was his first EVER day acting.

For those who need a context reminder, episode three is a highly intense two hander between Jamie and his child psychiatrist Briony. Because of the nature of the one shot take style of Adolescence on Netflix, that huge third episode where Briony and Jamie trade back and forths was the first day Owen Cooper had ever been on set. Wow.

It’s the most talked about episode of the show

Speaking to Netflix to go a bit deeper into how it was shooting this masterpiece episode, Owen Cooper and Erin Doherty explained how if they had a choice the two of them would always opt to shoot in the one take format “for the rest of our lives.”

Owen says “When you’re like cutting and stopping and stuff you wouldn’t get the full emotion.” Doherty agrees saying “You won’t get the build up. By that point [referring to the explosive end of episode three] you had to explode. And I had to explode in my way. There’s no other way. And you only get that from being in that for an hour.”

Via Netflix

Owen continues: “What gets Jamie in that bit is that now he’s fully alone. In the back of your mind you’re thinking ‘oh he’s done a bad thing’ – but at the same time you’re thinking he’s just a 13 year old lad in a place where he doesn’t wanna be.”

Adolescence is on Netflix now.