Owen Cooper On Finding Jamie’s Unpredictable Anger for ‘Adolescence’

Owen Cooper delivers the most remarkable performance of the year. One of the reasons why Adolescence became a phenomenon was because we could not believe our eyes. When you look at the perpetrator of this crime, you see your son or your brother or maybe even just the neighbor kid who lives down the street. When you look at Jamie Miller, you might just see a young boy, but the anger inside him–caused by a confusing, demanding world–is threatening to bubble to the surface.

I spoke with Cooper via Zoom on a break from a family trip to Portugal. Even though the Netflix limited series was filmed in the fall of 2024, you can hear a noticeable difference in Cooper’s voice. I automatically wondered if he gave any thought to how his character, accused to stabbing a female classmate to death, but the Emmy nominee reveals that he hasn’t given it much thought.

“I am not sure that I can,” Cooper says. “But now that you bring that up, I might have to think about it.”

The series debuted quietly but grew like a shark pursuing a victim. Evevn with some distance, the young star recalls it blowing up.

“Everything went crazy when it debuted,” he says. “We were not expecting that at all, but, I have to admit, that I haven’t really paid much attention to it since. I know it’s very popular, but I try not to hold onto that very much.”

Near the end of episode one, Stephen Graham’s Eddie, Jamie’s father, asks his son, point blank, if he committed the crime. Jamie repeats his innocence. Did Jamie ever think that he could get away with it? It’s not that simple.

“That’s what he wants,” Cooper admits. “But he knows he’s never going to get away with it. It’s on CCTV. If he ever tried telling his dad, he knows that he’d be furious with him. Eddie wouldn’t look at Jamie the same way ever again.”

Across its four episode, Adolescence reveals a world that lives parallel to the one we think we are living. Are all young men at risk of tapping into their own anger? Is there anything that we can do to prevent it from becoming murderously toxic? In episode three, Jamie is interviewed by Erin Doherty’s Briony, and one of the most memorable moments is when Jamie, sick of the direction of her questioning, flies off the handle and stands over her. It’s terrifying and hearbreaking in the same moment, and Cooper says that getting to that level of anger took some getting used to.

“I love the smack in the hot clip,” he says. “I could feel it building up. I don’t enjoy it–it would be strange if I admitted that I enjoyed it. Standing over Erin, that took me a while to get used to in rehearsals. About a week, I think. Phil talked to me a lot about tapping into the anger. It wasn’t easy, and I can admit that I couldn’t bring myself to it at first.”

Adolescence is streaming now on Netflix.