New Delhi:
Christine Tremarco, who plays Manda Miller in Netflix’s groundbreaking drama Adolescence, recently opened up about her experience working on the mini-series in an exclusive interview with NDTV.
The show has become one of the streaming platform’s most talked about and fourth most-watched series ever. It follows the harrowing story of a 13-year-old arrested for murder and is filmed using a unique technique.
What sets Adolescence apart from other productions is its unique approach to filming -each episode is shot entirely in continuous, single takes with no cuts.
Christine described this distinctive experience with enthusiasm nd said, “It really is like shooting a play on camera. You have an hour-long episode in a single take. It’s such a wonderful way to work – though heartbreaking, given our storyline. When you have a director like Phil Barantini, who’s such a beautiful soul and a brilliant director, plus Matt and Lee on camera, and our phenomenal crew, it all comes together. It’s not just about the actors; it’s about everyone having this synchronicity.”
The pressure of this filming style created both challenges and opportunities for the cast. The actress shared, “From a performance perspective, it’s very freeing because it feels so real and in the moment. But I’d still be terrified before they called ‘take’ – my heart would be pounding and then once they said ‘action,’ off we’d go. It’s like a dance.”
When asked about the nerve-wracking possibility of mistakes requiring entire takes to be restarted, she acknowledged, “Yeah. You try so hard not to. Even if the slightest thing goes wrong, you think, ‘Don’t drop the ball. Keep going.’ Thankfully, our crew was incredible. If I stepped in the wrong place, the camera adjusted. We’d built in that flexibility because of our rehearsal time and how well we all worked together. If something unexpected happened, we’d just improvise around it.”
Similar to her co-star Owen Cooper, who famously incorporated a genuine yawn into a scene that became one of the show’s memorable moments, Christine also embraced improvisation during filming.
While she didn’t have a specific standout moment like Owen’s, she explained how the cast regularly incorporated unplanned elements.
She shared, “For me, there wasn’t anything quite that dramatic, but we definitely improvised at times. For example, in the van scene when we’re heading to Wainwright’s and there’s a song and dance moment – because of how we shoot, and thanks to the freedom given by the writers (Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham) and the whole cast, if someone said something unexpected, we’d just go with it. It made everything feel more real.”
Adolescence tackles difficult subject matter, including online radicalisation and misogyny.
When asked if she was familiar with the term “incel” before the project, she revealed, “No, I didn’t. I’d never even heard the word ‘incel’ until Steven sent me the scripts. We didn’t know about it before. I’m a mother of a six-year-old, and it really scared me.”
Her research into the topic left her deeply concerned. “When I first read the scripts and saw the word ‘incel,’ and then discovered how it tied into our story, I looked into it and was absolutely horrified. I had no idea that this level of misogyny was out there, and that children were being exposed to it. It’s horrifying,” she concluded.
