The most conflicting role of Stephen Graham’s career: “I just could not get a job”
This year, more than any year, has definitely been the year of diminutive Scouse legend Stephen Graham, mostly thanks to the earth-conquering success of Adolescence, a show that sounded like it probably would do ok, but in fact became the second most-streamed show in Netflix history, yes, even more watched than Stranger Things.
And that’s crazy when you think about it, especially because Adolescence takes place in a very ordinary British setting, featuring scenes in garden centres and secondary schools, and on paper was the kind of thing you’d usually see on a Sunday night on ITV.
But sometimes constituent parts come together to create magic, and that’s what happened with Adolescence, as Graham’s adventures into making TV in one continuous take, a premise he’d started with the incredibly tense head chef film-then-series Boiling Point, combined with a fairly staggering central performance from Owen Cooper as the teenage murder suspect to make something that was ‘must-see’ for everyone around the world.
Although Graham, who not only conceived of the show but also co-wrote it too, had been steadily gaining acclaim and fame over the past twenty years including working on Martin Scorsese movies, it felt like it took the show to finally get people to acknowledge the body of work he’d put together since his early days on Guy Ritchie films like Snatch in 2000.
This was reflected by Graham picking up not one, not two, but three Emmy awards for Adolescence earlier this year, although he’s been consistently nominated for performances as far back as Shane Meadows’ seminal This is England in 2006, the film about skinhead culture in ‘80s Britain that made five times its budget back at cinemas and spawned three TV series, This is England 86, This is England 88 and This is England 90.
But despite Graham’s sterling work on the Meadows film he struggled to be cast in anything off the back of it, as he told Square Mile recently, saying: “From me being given that opportunity by Shane to do that role in This Is England. I couldn’t get a job after that for about eight to nine months. Once that was released, I just could not get a job. It was impossible.”
Fortunately Graham had enough credit in the bank thanks to his work in the early 2000s on films like Scorsese’s Gangs of New York for that dry spell not to roll on for more than a couple of years, and by 2009 he was back in major movies with Johnny Depp’s gangster flick Public Enemies and then a role in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire for which he won consecutive Screen Actor’s Guild awards.
And he has worked consistently ever since, mixing movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with a multitude of TV roles, including hits like Line of Duty, before he teamed up once again with Scorsese on The Irishman, the Netflix-backed three hour epic with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
This year he’s been in the Springsteen biopic Deliver me From Nowhere and has completed filming on the upcoming Peaky Blinders movie starring Cillian Murphy. His historical bare-knuckle boxing drama A Thousand Blows made by Disney will also be returning for a second season on January 6th.
