Adolescence Co-Creator Reacts to Elon Musk’s ‘Absurd’ Comments About Racism on Netflix Show: ‘We’re Making a Point...’

Adolescence co-creator responds to Elon Musk accusing him of Anti-white propaganda with the Netflix show. The showrunner claimed that the series was making a point about masculinity.

Written by Rashi Desai , Entertainment Journalist

Published on Mar 30, 2025 | 08:30 AM GMT | 14.8K

Adolescence via Netflix/YouTube

Adolescence co-creator Jack Thorne reacted to Elon Musk’s comments on an X post accusing the former of Anti-white propaganda with the Netflix show. While making an appearance on the News Agent podcast, the showrunner claimed that he, along with his team, was trying to make a point about masculinity and not about racism. Moreover, Thorne called the statements by the Tesla owner “absurd” and revealed that the show was to capture the crime of young boys in general.

While sitting down with the podcast host, Thorne, who co-created the show with Stephen Graham, stated, “We’re not making a point about race with this.” He further added, “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.”

In the previous week, Musk caught the eye of the audience as he commented, “Wow,” on a post by a user that read that Thorne “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.”

Amid the politicization of the show, Adolescence has managed to break several viewership records. The series has garnered 100 million-plus hours of viewership, and the theme of the Owen Cooper-led show brought the attention of the audience to the online radicalization of young boys and widespread reports of knife crimes.

In a past interview with Deadline, the co-creator had opened up about violence against young girls from teen boys. He said, “The big question was why is violence from young men or boys towards young women or girls going up? Why is this happening?” He continued, “Looking into it and trying to pose that question as fulsomely as possible, without providing easy answers, was the aim that Stephen [Graham] and I set out on years ago.”

Adolescence is available to stream on Netflix.