Netflix Adolescence star ‘watched police handcuff a man to the floor in a real raid’

To play a detective in Netflix crime drama Adolescence, Ashley Walters went the extra mile… joining the police on a real raid in Liverpool that was ‘crazy’.

The gripping new series, which launches today and is filmed in ‘one-shot’, follows a 13-year-old boy called Jamie (Owen Cooper) who’s arrested when accused of murdering a girl from his school.

In addition to Owen,15, making a star-making turn in his first ever acting role, the cast also boasts Stephen Graham as Jamie’s dad Eddie, Erin Doherty as the teenager’s psychologist Briony and Ashley as DI Luke Bascombe, who’s in charge of investigating the case.

Ahead of the release date, Metro spoke to Ashley and Erin to delve further into roles, which is when the Top Boy star revealed the extreme lengths he went to when preparing to play a police detective in the thick of the action.

‘I went on a raid,’ the 42-year-old shared, while Erin, 32, expressed her shock over her co-star’s revelation while she was sitting next to him in the London hotel.

‘With the police in Liverpool, they arranged a trip for me. Phil [Adolescence director Philip Barantini] came and we literally went on a raid.’

Ashley explained how he first went to the police station to set up with the officers in the morning, and was able to watch the conference where the lead detective ‘is telling the officers who we’re going for, why, what’s going on’.

Then, he ‘jumped in the van with loads of armed police’ and drove to the person’s home.

Unlike in Adolescence, when the police batter down the door of Jamie’s family home, in real life, the man who the police were apprehended opened the door for them.

‘I kind of stayed back, because obviously I was thinking, I shouldn’t be allowed to go inside. And the police were like, no, come in with us,’ Ashley recalled.

‘So literally, they had this guy handcuffed on the floor, and I’m walking around his house, and they’re looking for whatever they’re looking for. It was really crazy.’

While it was a fascinating experience for Ashley to have, he explained that when the time came to film Adolescence, he put all of the information that he’d learnt out of his mind so that he could focus solely on playing Luke.

‘There were a few things I picked up, maybe body language and mannerisms and stuff. But Luke is… in this he’s a man that has a son that really wants to know why this is happening. And that was the most important thing to embody, for me,’ he stated.

‘The rest of it, it all came together by itself. That was the heart of who this character was, in my opinion.’

Ashley admitted that he wasn’t scared when he went on the raid, prompting him to ‘wonder’ about how he approached the situation.

‘I do wonder about myself sometimes. Why is this stuff so entertaining to me? I was really eager to do it, but it did hit home that where the world is and what’s going on in people’s lives,’ he shared.

‘The area [the raid] was, you wouldn’t have expected this situation to be happening there. So it did make me think, that could be my next door [neighbour]. That could be happening anywhere in the world.’

The third episode of Adolescence sees Erin make her debut as Briony, a psychologist assigned to Jamie’s case.

During their hour-long interaction, their conversation flits between a friendly back-and-forth to Jamie unleashing an unnervingly intimidating side of his personality.

When doing her own research for the character, Erin reveals that she spoke to her previous therapist to find out what a day in the life was like for them and to ‘try and get in that head space’.

‘But other than that, I just really wanted to be present,’ she added.

Knowing that the episode was going to be filmed in one shot – without cutting away once – the A Thousand Blows actress knew that ‘the only way that you’re going to get something electric is witnessing people alive in a room’.

‘So I didn’t actually really want to bring too much,’ she explained.

‘I think particularly psychologically, people who are in that line of work are very in the moment. I was conscious that what you needed to see was someone who was present, rather than having that context. So I basically did my research and then let it all go, in order to serve the piece as best I could.’

Adolescence is available to stream on Netflix.

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