Stephen Graham recalls wild night out with Arctic Monkeys

31 March 2025, 11:12 | Updated: 31 March 2025, 18:28

Stephen Graham and Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner. Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images, FilmMagic/FilmMagic/Getty

The Adolescence star has revealed what happened when he went for drinks with the Sheffield rockers after appearing in their When The Sun Goes Down video.

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Stephen Graham has looked back at a night out he had with Arctic Monkeys.

The actor starred in the band's When The Sun Goes Down video, where he plays the role of a unsavoury "scummy man" who controls the life of a sex worker (played by Misfits star Lauren Socha).

Now, the Adolescence creator has talked about going out for drinks with the young band once they'd wrapped on the video, which saw them getting into a fight at Sheffield venue The Leadmill and having to flee a house party.

“When we finished they asked me for a drink, it was when I used to drink. I was like ‘Yeah, sure, go ahead then’,” he told The Mirror.

However, things started going awry at the grassroots venue as the band were "on the rise" and getting a bit of unnecessary attention.

“We were having a laugh and then it went a bit strange,” the Help actor recalled. “They were on the rise. It was a student night. And this big, massive, tall student just came over and started giving them loads of jib.

"For no reason, from nowhere. He’s pushed Alex [Turner] and he’s gone to slap [Matt] Helders. And this little Scouser went ‘That’s not on’ and so I threw this punch and it hit the lad and he fell back and then it all went a bit… The lad ended up getting kicked out.”

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That's not where the night ended though, as the band took Graham to a house party, where frontman Turner was getting some attention from a young woman.

This lovely girl, she was being very friendly with Alex. We went back to the place where they lived and Alex went upstairs with this girl, explained the Scouse star.

"Then he comes running down saying ‘We’ve got to go’. We were like ‘What’s wrong?’ and he said “Please, let’s go.’ Me and Helders snuck upstairs and there was posters of them all over the wall.”

Watch Stephen Graham in the official video for When The Sun Goes Down, and find out more about the Scummy Man short film here.

Arctic Monkeys - When The Sun Goes Down (Official Video)

It's not the only time Stephen Graham has starred in famous indie music video.

The Irishman actor also starred in Sam Fender's Spit Of You video in 2021 and was enlisted on Kasabian's One Flew Over The Cuckoos next-inspired You're In Love With A Psycho promo in 2017.

Graham, who plays the role of the dad in recent Netflix phenomenon Adolescence told Radio X what inspired him to make the four-part limited series.

"I read an article and it was an article about a young boy who'd stabbed a young girl to death," he told The Chris Moyles Show.

"A couple of months later there was a piece on the news and it was about a young boy, who'd stabbed a young girl to death and if I'm really honest with you, it hurt my heart. And. I just thought why?"

The heartbreaking truth of Stephen Graham's "Adolescence"

"Not just because I'm a father," the Liverpudlian actor went on. "But because, you know, any kind of human being with an ounce of moral compass can look at that kind of situation and think what's happening?

"We're entering this kind of era where there was four, five, six, seven cases of young boys and I'm gonna call them young boys. They're not men."

Speaking about his own reason for creating the series, he went on: "You know that beautiful saying, It takes a village to raise a child. I just wanted to create something that kind of looked at it from that perspective, but also looked at it that maybe we are all slightly accountable in some way. Be that parents, be that school, be that government, school, society and let's be completely honest: Today the internet is as much of a teacher and a parent to our children as we can be. Do you know what I mean?

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