We came across multiple posts on the social media platform X on the following topic (1, 2, 3):

The posts suggest that the creators of the new Netflix TV series portrayed one of the lead actors as a white English boy, though the show was based on a true story and the character the actor played was that of a black migrant teen.

Adolescence is a crime drama that explores the scenario of teenagers being accused of having committed a murder, and its creator have said that it inspired by true events in the UK.

The posts with the claim suggest that the creators were inspired by the incident of a stabbing murder of a teenage girl named Elianne Andam in Croydon, south London, in September 2023, in which the perpetrator, then 17, had moved to London from Uganda when he was three. His photo and the headline of his crime is used in several of these posts.

Other posts on the topic referred instead to a different incident, namely, the murder of three young girls in Southport, where the perpetrator was also black.

The incident later led to riots around the country as misinformation spread that the murderer was a Muslim asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK on a small boat, sparking unrest driven by racial and religious hatred. In reality, the murderer in the Southport cases was born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents.

Nevertheless, one such post has received engagement from Elon Musk, who replied ‘Wow’ in response.

Selective Citations

To support their claims, some of the posts suggested that the creators of the show specifically cited the stabbing murders when discussing their inspirations for it during interviews.

For example, the account that wrote the first post shown above followed it up with a second post of a screenshot with an interview with the show’s creator where he appears to specifically cite the murder in Croydon.

Using a reverse image search and a search of media articles written about the show, we traced the screenshot to an article on the news site SurreyLive, where the creator Stephen Graham, who also plays the lead actor in the show, is quoted commenting on the inspiration for the show.

A reading of the details in the article, however, actually reveals that multiple cases were cited by Graham when discussing the show as quoted in SurreyLive; besides the stabbing in Croydon, Graham was also quoted citing ‘an incident in Liverpool’.

Moreover, we found that the SurreyLive article in fact was itself citing an interview given in the Radio Times.

In the Radio Times article, Graham cited stabbing murders in Liverpool and south London. However, in contrast to the SurreyLive article, he did not list any details about these incidents that would specify which incidents he was referring to, such as the names of the victims or the perpetrators.

Graham separately referred to a specific incident, where he recalled the murder of a girl named Brianna Ghey, who had been murdered by two teenagers in a park.

Graham’s co-creator, Jack Thorne, does not appear to have referenced any specific incidents in interviews, but has indicated that he views the show as a commentary on the phenomenon of ‘male rage’ in society.

No Specific Reference

Looking through media reports from the UK, we found that though some of the incidents were not specified by Graham, the incident in south London is likely to have been a reference to the killing of Andam according to UK media outlets like the Mirror and the Daily Record.

Both publications also suggest that the incident in Liverpool is a reference to the murder of a girl named Ava White.

When we looked into each incident, we found that there was no consistency with regard to the ethnicity or immigration status of the perpetrator.

Ava White’s murderer remains unidentified due to a court order. However, while the Croydon murder was committed by a black teenager, Brianna Ghey’s murder was committed by two white teenagers.

Moreover, the show was conceived and written months before the Southport murders, though its release soon after the incident created an association among some viewers.

Politicising the Issue

Though the evidence points to a phenomenon of violence encompassing multiple incidents in which the perpetrators are from different backgrounds, the viral posts appear to have politicised the conversation around the show.

The misinformed posts about the show being inspired by the incident in Croydon, together with the creators’ comments on the show exploring the issue of male violence and radicalisation, have led to far-right and ultraconservative figures arguing that the show unfairly demonises white men.

In response to the backlash, the creators, speaking on a podcast on 25 March, reiterated, ‘There is no part of this that’s based on a true story’.

Pushing back against the claims of ‘race-swapping’, they also added that they were not making a point about race, but rather that the show was discussing problems around the culture of masculinity in boys.

As such, we find the claim that the actor portraying a teenager who had committed a murder in the show Adolescence had been ‘race-swapped’ to be false.