Stephen Graham's Friendship With Johnny Depp Casts A Long Shadow Over Adolescence's Message

Stephen Graham on the right, Johnny Depp on the leftSmash Netflix hit Adolescence, which focuses on the violence and implied online radicalisation of a 13-year-old boy, has captivated viewers – including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has since spoken to creators Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. But Stephen, who owns Matriarch Productions, the company which co-produced the show, with his wife Hannah Walters, has recently received some backlash online about his friendship with Jonny Depp.“His schtick about how the internet perpetuates misogyny rings a bit hollow given his vocal support for Johnny Depp,” one fan wrote. Adolescence is a fantastic series and Stephen Graham is one of the best actors around, but his schtick about how the internet perpetuates misogyny rings a bit hollow given his vocal support for Johnny Depp. Not to mention the fact that he got Brad Pitt to produce the series.— ash 🍉 (@StevieNicksTD) March 20, 2025Stephen, who played Léopold Zborowski in Johnny Depp’s 2024 film Modi, also appeared in Pirates Of The Caribbean.Did Stephen Graham really “support” Johnny Depp in his Amber Heard case?Jonny Depp lost his 2020 libel case against The Sun. A judge ruled that, based on the evidence presented in the UK court, the tabloid’s description of him as a “wife beater” following his treatment of Amber Heard was “substantially true.” “I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms Heard by Mr Depp have been proved to the civil standard,” judge Andrew Nichol said. But Johnny Depp was awarded damages for his 2022 US case against Amber Heard, in which he said her 2018 Washington Post article about being a “public figure representing domestic abuse” amounted to defamation.In that trial, Johnny claimed texts he’d sent about Amber, like “Let’s burn her... Let’s drown her before we burn her”, made him “ashamed” but were “just irreverent and abstract humour.”  Following the ruling, Johnny Depp posted an image on Instagram saying the jury had given him his “life back.” The Express shared that Stephen Graham both reposted the post and wrote on his Instagram stories, “So much respect… so much love @johnnydepp.”The publication also shared an image of the couple hugging in an “emotional reunion” at the Curzon Mayfair after the trial.Modi was filmed in 2024, also after the conclusion of the trial. The pair were seen embracing after leaving the set of the movie, which Johnny directed.Should that even matter?Stephen is far from the only celeb to have supported Johnny after his trial (Winona Ryder, Sia, Kate Moss, Sam Fender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, and more did at the time too). Adolescence has had a far-reaching impact, and Stephen has said some incredibly touching things about the four-part series.His calls for the show to be seen in parliament and schools have worked, meaning secondary school-age students and their teachers can now access both the show and supporting anti-misogyny material for free. But it is hard for some fans not to feel a little let down by the connection.“I was literally about to praise Adolescence since I finished it yesterday until I found out Stephen Graham is v good friends with Johnny Depp and now it feels like an empty message he’s pedalling,” one X user wrote.“Stephen Graham [co-]writing a whole show about misogyny only be friends with Johnny Depp irl... lord let me never think a man is different ever again,” another added. Some fans have found an irony in one of the show’s central themes – online misogyny – given the link, too. Tortoise Media spoke to data experts who suggested that the online vitriol about Amber Heard during her 2022 trial, sometimes called “trial by TikTok”, may have been so extreme because it appeared to them to have been partly an organised campaign.Regardless of the origin of the online hate, it was certainly pervasive, even unavoidable for social media users. None of this is to say that important lessons can’t be learned from shows like Adolescence, or even that we know exactly what his friendship with Johnny looks like.Stephen also told Vanity Fair, “I didn’t know what [the manosphere] was until Jack [Thorne] told me all about it, and I was just blown away.” Perhaps the point is that, as some commenters have suggested on X, we’ve put too much significance on a TV show, made by complex and imperfect people. This country loves to hyperfixate on short term, minimal effort solutions to systematic, complex problems. https://t.co/wAZ0h2k1jU— Ronke Lawal (@ronkelawal) April 2, 2025Adolescence is great, but we can’t expect a TV show or any of its creators to single-handedly solve the problems of sexism. And perhaps it’s telling that some felt so deprived of other supports and materials that Adolescence began to be framed that way.HuffPost UK has reached out to Stephen Graham’s representatives for comment.Related...Netflix Doc Revisits Johnny Depp V. 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