Sam Brigger
speaker
1,127 appearances
24 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 6 Jun
Sam Brigger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Fresh Air · Best Of: Amanda Knox / 'Adolescence' Co-Creator & Actor Stephen Graham · 5 Apr 2025
podcast
Stephen Graham, thank you so much for coming on Fresh Air.
In the historical drama A Thousand Blows, Stephen Graham plays a bare-knuckle boxer in Victorian London, prone to rage and more likely to beat you up than have a conversation with you. The show was created by Stephen Knight, who also created Peaky Blinders, something you may have caught Stephen Graham in in its final season, playing the character of Union Man Hayden Stagg.
The other show that Stephen Graham is in is Adolescence, one he co-created. It's a four-part miniseries following what happens to a family when their 13-year-old son is arrested for murdering a girl from his school. It's a devastating show, very difficult to watch, and very difficult to stop watching. Graham plays the father, Eddie, trying his best to be a good parent, but maybe not doing enough.
Adolescence as a show is not interested so much in who is guilty, but why do these kinds of things happen? Is it the family's fault? Is it bullying? Is it part of a kind of toxic masculinity young boys can find on social media while they're sitting alone, supposedly safe, in their own bedrooms? The show is remarkable in many ways, but one of them is technical. Each episode is a one-take.
There are no edits. The camera is turned on at the beginning of the episode and turned off at the end. They're like plays but moving throughout different locations and scenes. It adds an urgency to the drama. You may have first seen Stephen Graham in the Guy Ritchie movie Snatch, playing the role of Tommy, Jason Statham's sidekick.
His breakout role was playing Combo, a white nationalist skinhead in This Is England. He's been in lots of other movies and TV shows, but some recent memorable ones were his portrayal of Al Capone in Broadway Empire and as a mafia and union head in Martin Scorsese's movie The Irishman, where he steals some scenes from no less an actor than Al Pacino himself.
Before we start talking, let's hear a scene from Adolescence. This is from the first episode, where the police have raided the family's home, arrested the son Jamie, and taken him to the police station. Here's Stephen Graham, who is in shock, is asking Jamie's court-appointed lawyer, played by Mark Stanley, what he can do in this moment of crisis. Excuse me, mate.
That's a scene from Adolescence starring my guest Stephen Graham. Stephen Graham, welcome to Fresh Air.
So the show Adolescence was actually your idea. You came to your co-creator, Jack Thorne, with the idea. What was it that you were thinking about that you wanted to explore on the screen?
And I guess that one of the things is that you're exploring why, but it's not a didactic show. You sort of let the feelings and the issues sort of stew there, but you're not resolving them.
So your character, Eddie, is a successful businessman. He has a plumbing business. He's lifted himself up in the world. He's trying to be a good husband and a good father. And you say that you based him to some degree on your uncle's and your friend's fathers. What was it about them that you took?
So Eddie is an interesting character because he can be very emotional, but he's also not really in touch with his emotions. Like they kind of have their way with him.
So just talking about the sort of technical issue, as I said, like each of these episodes is one take. There's no editing. This is similar to a movie that you did a few years back called Boiling Point, which takes place in a restaurant. It's a great film. But it's one location. But here, like in this first episode, you – Start in the family home and then you drive to the station.
The camera's following you and then you have to get all the other actors from the house to the station. Like talk about some of the technical things that you had to figure out.
Because they are kind of like little plays.
Owen Cooper, who plays your son, Jamie?
Which was an actual location with hundreds of kids walking around. Yeah.
10 complete takes.
Would you know after doing all your takes that you were kind of leaning towards one that you would eventually use or?
I wanted to play another clip from the show, and this comes from episode four, which is really about the fallout that the family is dealing with having their son accused of murder. It's a really devastating episode, and I wanted to play a part of – a scene between your character and your wife, who's played by Christine Tremarco.
Showing 861–880 of 1,127 · page 44 of 57
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