Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne slammed the “absurd” backlash his new Netflix show is getting from those on the right who claim the white central character was “race-swapped.”
Netflix’s hit four-part British crime drama follows Jamie Miller, a white 13-year-old who is arrested for the stabbing murder of a female classmate. Right-wing commentators have claimed the story is based on a real-life stabbing murder perpetrated by Hassan Sentamu, a Black immigrant who was recently jailed for life for the murder of a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.
Thorne, who created and wrote the series alongside Stephen Graham, denounced that take on The News Agents podcast, where he said it’s “absurd to say that this [crime] is only committed by Black boys” and insisted that the show is not based on any one true story.
Sure enough, misogynistic knife killings by white British males have also been perpetrated and publicized recently, including earlier this month when Kyle Clifford was convicted for the murders of his ex-girlfriend, her sister, and her mother.
But naysayers have been relentless in their argument that the show “swapped” in a white protagonist for a crime they believe mostly Black immigrants commit. Wrote one X user, “This is how they brainwash us into believing white men are the problem, when in fact, it’s immigrants.”
Another accused the show creators of “making up fictional white villains” while comparing Sentamu’s case to the one in the series. Thorne said, “nothing is further from the truth.”
“We’re not making a point about race with this,” he continued, “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 this is about boys.”
Thorne previously shared his inspiration for the show to the BBC, saying, “I read an article in the paper about a young boy who’d stabbed a young girl, and then a few months later on the news, there was a piece, and it was, again, it was a young boy who had stabbed a young girl, and they were opposite ends of the country.”
That said, Thorne explained to the podcast’s hosts, “There is no part of this that’s based on a true story, not one single part.”
