Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs in the world, and its importance is often overlooked. Netflix’s new limited series, Adolescence, comes to add to the story that, as much as some parents try, it’s important to remember outside influences could shape a child’s life negatively despite the ongoing effort.

Adolescence follows a 13-year-old boy with a normal life and family. However, it all comes crashing down when the police come to arrest Jamie for murdering his classmate, Katie. Following the limited series’ release, Adolescence has become a worldwide sensation and Netflix has just revealed a mind-blowing detail on X that makes the story even sadder.

The footage, released on Mar. 19, shows a clip at the end of Episode 2, where co-creator and star Stephen Graham’s Eddie Miller, Jamie’s dad, goes to put flowers at Katie’s murder site. The scene comes with a voiceover from the creators, revealing that the choir heard at the end of the episode features Emilia Holliday’s voice, who plays Katie, the victim.

“There’s a beautiful song at the end and Phil [director Barantini] had this wonderful idea from the very beginning. He said what he wanted to do was have a choir and the voices of young kids singing this particular song that he had in his head from the get-go, actually.”

“But the beautiful process of it is, is that we used the choir from the actual school and the kids in the area. The girl singing this is the girl who played the girl that got killed,” the co-creators revealed.

This is only one instance of beautiful filmmaking from Adolescence. The show was co-created by Jack Thorne, who recently premiered another successful limited series on Netflix, Toxic Town, and Stephen Graham. They worked with 2021’s Boiling Point director Philip Barantini. Using his signature one-shot experience, Adolescence was all shot in one take.

Netflix UK revealed several behind-the-scenes details in a Q&A thread on X on Mar. 15, several days after the series’ release on Mar. 13. One of them was about filming the one-shot episodes. “They absolutely did!” the social media for the streaming giant revealed about the filming. “If you can’t see the joins, it’s because there aren’t any. Each episode was genuinely filmed in real-time in one continuous shot. We promise!”

Further detailing how it happened, Netflix further explained that they had to film each episode more than once. “A lot more. It was initially planned that they would film each episode in full 10 times (once in the morning, once in the afternoon, across five days) – but in reality a few attempts had to be abandoned and restarted, so some episodes had many more than 10 takes.”

They detailed that they started rehearsing “segments of the script” and adding more material every day, “so by the end of the week they would be doing full run-throughs.” To avoid having the crew around, they were “dressed in costume so that they could blend into the show to serve as extras in the shot.”

Adolescence Had a Stunning Reception

Adolescence debuted with stunning reviews from the critics. It has a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, a Certified Fresh 98% score. The audience also enjoyed the film, giving it an enthusiastic 75% rating.

The limited series was a major success on Netflix, debuting at No. 1 in its first week globally with 24.3 million views globally and 93 million hours viewed. Adolescence was in the top 10 in 91 countries. It also became the number-one show in 71 territories, including the U.S.

Adolescence is streaming on Netflix.