That Wild ‘Adolescence’ Audition Tape—and the Debate the Netflix Hit Has Sparked

Netflix has released the audition tape of Adolescence’s youthful lead, Owen Cooper, and fans are fascinated to see the breakout star trying out for the part of 13-year-old Jamie Miller, who, in the series, gets arrested on suspicion of the murder of a female classmate. Here, Cooper, with an even younger face and sporting a swoopy version of the broccoli cut, can be seen dropping lines similar to what ends up in the final series, which debuted March 13 and immediately became the most watched Netflix show in dozens of countries, according to the streamer.

In the clip, Cooper’s delivery is effortlessly natural and convincing, demonstrating why cocreator and cowriter Stephen Graham, who plays Jamie’s father, Eddie Miller, told Vanity Fair that Cooper “blew my mind.” In the clip, Netflix intercuts the audition with scenes from the final series, revealing how rehearsals and repeated takes got Cooper to an even bigger, more chilling performance that has left audiences grappling with why a youthful boy from a good family could do something like this.

The show’s unflinching look at incel culture has launched quite a few think pieces on the deluge of violent, misogynistic content shaping how youthful boys and men understand sex, power, and their place in the world. Said pieces have pointed at every buzzy culprit: Andrew Tate and online misogyny, the manosphere, incel culture, lack of male role models, clueless parents, the dangers of social media.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer is so worried about toxic masculinity that he’s said the UK “may have a problem with boys and young men that we need to address.” Adolescence cocreator and cowriter Jack Thorne believes the series needs to be shown in schools and to parliament, and Adolescence is fueling urgent debates about banning smartphones for minors.

On Reddit, it’s clear the series has forced this issue into some corners of the public consciousness with clarity and nuance. “As a dad, the last 15 minutes wrecked me,” one commenter said. “That’s all I’m gonna say.” Another said, “We are overprotecting the children in the real world and not protecting them in the virtual world.”

Graham told Vanity Fair that the show’s creators don’t have the answers to why this stuff is happening. They just asked us not to look away. But now it’s time for the strenuous part of understanding what this is really all about: how we teach men to think about women.

The result is also not fresh: Not everyone is interested in interrogating that. In men’s rights subreddits, the comments are less hot. “Ah yes…men/boys bad, as usual,” one wrote in response to news that some British schools are now hosting anti-misogyny lessons because of the series. “It’s ridiculous how much this ‘show’ has been in the news.”

“Is their [sic] really no question as to why their [sic] is a backlash in the first place?” another chimed in. “What do they think changed? The boys keep being told they are the problem because women want to act one way but be treated another.”

One suggested additional seasons of the series, but probably not in the way its creators imagined. “It should be balanced by a series called ‘Young Adulthood’ showing the effect of false accusation on young men,” a commenter suggested. “And then ‘Middle Age’, where a bloke loses everything he’s built, home & family, through no fault divorce.”

As a parent, Adolescence left me reeling, but I didn’t see an entirely fresh crisis. I saw an vintage one, scaled up. But the reach, speed, and target demographic? That feels terrifyingly fresh.

It reminded me of a college argument I had with a guy in the mid-1990s. We spent an entire night debating whether we lived in a male-dominated society. Women, he argued, had the real power, because they controlled sex. It didn’t matter that this “power” was precarious and entirely dependent on male desire. To him, it was the one place men didn’t have control, so it became the ultimate injustice.

The script was already familiar then. Every era hands boys a playbook on how to “get” the girl through charm, pressure, manipulation, or force. From The Game to rom-coms featuring stalker-ish leads, from pickup lines to negging, the tactics shift but the premise holds: Women are there to be won and deserve to be had.

What we have now is that same ideology, algorithmically sharpened and sold as truth. The tone is darker. The age of indoctrination is younger. The threat is louder.

Girls are socialized into it too. In the ’90s, we had The Rules—a manual on how to appear rare and desirable enough to “earn” a man. The nippy girl, the pick me, the manic pixie dream girl: different aesthetics, same lesson. Perform value. Seek male approval. Your worth is in what men want from you.

Now, more women earn degrees, delay marriage, assert autonomy. It hasn’t resulted in more respect. And some of these boys—still impulsive, still cognitively developing—are absorbing it all. Their role models aren’t correcting course. They’re doubling down. They’re rising to power for saying the tranquil part louder.

I also now have a teenage daughter. I expected innuendo and puberty jokes eventually, but they came far earlier—fifth or sixth grade. Boys on 4chan are already parroting pornified ideas of sex, calling girls sluts, and joking about breasts. Some girls in my daughter’s school have shared porn too. Lockdown slowed some milestones, but accelerated others.