Inside the ‘painful’ reason one of Netflix’s Adolescence cast nearly had to quit the show

Adolescence has been out on Netflix for literally a day and it’s already getting hailed as the best TV of the year – with a perfect score of 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. The harrowing drama is four episodes long which are all one shot, continuous takes – and tells the story of a family dealing with their 13 year old son arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate. One of the cast members, Top Boy’s Ashley Walters, has revealed how he nearly had to quit Adolescence on Netflix whilst shooting the show because of one significantly painful reason.

Ashley Walters plays DI Luke Bascombe in Adolescence, and when attending press carpets for the show’s premiere on Netflix he opened about how he nearly had to quit.

“Stephen told me about this project and was like, ‘This is like a role you’ve never done before. It’s completely different’. I was like, ‘I’ve played a cop! I had a cop show’, but he said, ‘Nah, it’s not the same, man'”, he told the Mirror.

“I took it for granted, I’m not gonna lie. Because I wanted to do the one-shot process so much. And I turned up to set with a bad back, by the way. My back had gone. I’d just been playing basketball with my daughter before I got on the train and my back was completely gone. I suffer with sciatica.

“It was really bad. It nearly didn’t happen, but we found a good chiropractor and it worked.”

He did however overcome the back difficulties and thankfully was able to continue with the show. But Ashley Walters continued to open up about how it was a challenge making such an emotionally charged show operating in the one-take format.

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“When I got there… I f****** regretted it,” he joked. “Every day, Phil [Barantini, director] will tell you, I was in tears! Every day I was going home, crying in my script. Rocking, you know. It was the hardest thing in the world. No, no it was. I was so insecure. I was so insecure, and it’s a lot. I had to learn the whole script. And I had a lot to say in that first episode. And you’re leading a lot of it, as well. A lot of it is police jargon and whatever.”

Thank god Ashley Walters didn’t have to quit Adolescence – the Netflix show would have SORELY missed him in the cast. What a series.

Adolescence is on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.