The co-creator of Netflix‘s hit drama Adolescence has responded to accusations that the show is “anti-white propaganda.”
Jack Thorne said the allegation was “absurd” in an interview on The News Agents podcast.
The accusation began with a post on X by Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysia-based right-wing commentator, who claimed the series is “about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus, and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer.”
“So guess what,” the post continued. “They race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement. Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.”
The post gained wider attention when Elon Musk responded, “Wow.”
Talking on the News Agents podcast, Thorne was asked by host Jon Sopel about the conspiracy theory that asks “why was it the portrayal of a white boy who commits a knife and it’s mostly black kids who commit knife crimes in this country?”
Thorne, who created the show with 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.
“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 this 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 this is about boys.”
Adolescence made U.K. TV history earlier this month, becoming the first streaming program to top Britain’s weekly TV ratings. Its first episode was watched by 6.45 million people in the first week of release, according to ratings body Barb. It’s the biggest audience for any streaming TV show in the U.K. in a single week, leapfrogging Fool Me Once, also on Netflix, which accrued 6.3 million in its first week.