Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne has reacted to the “absurd” suggestion that the hit Netflix drama was based on a real crime committed by a Black child, a conspiracy theory that had been promoted by Elon Musk.
The four-part series follows the family of 13-year-old schoolboy, Jamie Miller (played by Owen Cooper), who is accused of the brutal murder of a young girl. Last week, a post on Musk’s social media site X claimed that Adolescence is based on “real life cases such as the Southport murderer.”
The post went on to claim that as the perpetrator in that case was Black, and the central character in the Netflix show is white, the series amounts to “anti-white propaganda.”
The post was brought to a wider audience by Musk, who commented: “Wow.”
Asked about the theory on The News Agents podcast, Thorne, who created the show with actor Stephen Graham, responded: “They’ve claimed that Stephen and I based it on a story, and another story, so we race-swapped because we were basing it on here and it ended up there, and everything else. Nothing is further from the truth.”
He continued: “I have told a lot of real life stories in my time, and I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real life story and put it on screen and the people aren’t expecting it. There is no part of this that's based on a true story, not one single part.”
Asked by host Jon Sopel how he reacted to the criticism, Thorne replied: “That it should have been a Black boy? It's absurd to say that [knife crime] is only committed by Black boys. It’s absurd. It's not true. And history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.
"We're not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another, we’re saying that this is about boys."
Writing for The Independent earlier this week, Femi Oluwole noted that misinformation about the series is being spread by the usual suspects who are missing the point entirely.
“Within less than a week, the drama has been dragged into a race row, exposing the hypocrisy of people who usually accuse others of ‘making everything about race’,” wrote Oluwole.
“The same individuals who mock concerns over cultural appropriation or complain that Hollywood casts too many non-white actors now appear to be arguing that having a white actor play the knife murderer is appropriating black culture.”
