Erin Doherty can’t quite believe the year she’s had. “No, honestly, it doesn’t feel real,” she laughs on Zoom to The Hollywood Reporter.
The Crown alum is still pinching herself after becoming an Emmy winner — and, as of Dec. 8, a Golden Globe nominee — for her performance in Netflix’s smash-hit Adolescence, a Plan B production written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham that follows the arrest of a 13-year-old boy (Owen Cooper) who attacks and kills a classmate.
In the one-shot sensation that has gone on to become Netflix’s second most-watched show ever, THR‘s April cover star Doherty plays child psychiatrist Briony. In episode three, she and Cooper’s character, Jamie, battle it out over a small table in a thrilling, 50-minute assessment of the teen’s indoctrination by the online “manosphere.” It’s a sequence that has gone on to score the entire Adolescence group — including Graham, his wife and producing partner Hannah Walters, Doherty and Cooper — unparalleled acclaim and awards success.
Adolescence was also produced by Graham and Walters’ production company Matriarch. They had an eye on Doherty while working on the Disney+ boxing drama A Thousand Blows, and the young Brit is beaming about it. “Hearing about Adolescence on A Thousand Blows, spending a year with Stephen and Hannah, and really falling absolutely, head over heels in love with them — the whole thing is summarized by these two gorgeous people being like, ‘Come along for the ride.’”
The ride in question is not so much of a rollercoaster — with ups, downs and head-banging loops — but perhaps more of a swing tower: An experience that has so far omitted dips entirely, just sky-high success and comfortable joy. “I really do think the Emmys afterparty [was the highlight],” Doherty tells THR about 2025’s most mind-blowing night — and where the Adolescence crew picked up a whopping eight awards (including for Cooper, who became the youngest-ever Emmy winner in his category). “We were all there, every single person and we just got to celebrate. We all piled on a bus, obviously dressed up and feeling ourselves and just kind of like, ‘What is going on?’ It was enough of the glamor,” she smiles, “but enough of just real people absolutely letting loose.”
Of course, glory like this comes with that smidgen of imposter syndrome. “You’re like, ‘What am I doing in this room with these people?’ It was our own little Christmas,” she continues, “we all just got the catharsis of putting your all into something and then getting to hold that trophy up and scream about it… It’s just so rare.”
It’s not the only trophy the star could be adding to her shelf — she’s got the Golden Globes coming up Jan. 11, where she’s a first-time nominee alongside program pals Graham, Cooper and Ashley Walters. “That feels even more like a kind of fever dream,” she says about the possibility of recreating that memorable Emmys night. “You grow up, you’ve heard those words: ‘Golden Globe.’” But, she admits, some of Hollywood’s glitziest occasions are also just a chance to reunite with the family she acquired on set. “My agent called me and was like, ‘You’ve got the nom.’ I was like, ‘Is everyone going to be there?’ Those things have always been this strange, otherworldly thing, [so] my immediate reaction is: ‘Are we going to have a gorgeous night together? Are the comfort blankets going to be there?’”
She’s had her comfort blankets thus far, but has Doherty found herself starstruck by any new faces who loved the show and wanted to congratulate her? “My biggest thing was Sarah Paulson, I love that woman. I always have,” she responds. “She’s just fantastic but also, obviously, as a gay icon […] She reached out on Instagram and was like, ‘You’re coming to the Emmys, we need to meet up.’ I didn’t reply for two days because I was like, I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do here. Who do I think I am, sending a voice note to Sarah Paulson?” Thankfully, the two found each other on the night, says Doherty, who adds that she also fan-girled over Gilmore Girls‘ Lauren Graham: “I met her and lost it. I love the Gilmore Girls.”
One part of the journey that’s been particularly satisfying for the British television industry is how an original story like Adolescence has buoyed hopes for the business in the U.K., and told creatives: You don’t need IP to attract audiences and make a cultural impact. “It’s fashion, essentially, isn’t it?” Doherty wonders. “It’s what’s in, what’s out, what are the things getting made? And there was a time when it was all reboots and all remakes and stuff, but actually this has come along and people are like, ‘Oh, wait. Let’s just stop for a minute and think about what’s actually going on out there, and what people are actually desperate to talk about,’” she says.
She urges others to follow their gut instinct: “I think this has injected some kind of confidence in British art and British storytelling and just going, ‘We’re enough. Let’s just do what’s in your bones.’”
All roads lead back to Graham and Walters. Doherty describes them, rather poetically, as “the ultimate guardian angels of the land.” The latter, in fact, picked up Producer of the Year at London’s Women in Film and TV Awards earlier this month, which has the actress thrilled. “If someone just put me in a room with Stephen and Hannah and were like, ‘Well, sorry, that’s your lot,’ I’d be like, ‘Okay, that’s great. Everyone else can bugger off,’” she says about the prospect of working with them forever.
Fortunately, the trio show no signs of slowing down any time soon. After all, they’ve got season two of Disney+ and Hulu’s 1880s-set A Thousand Blows, written by Peaky Blinders mastermind Steven Knight, out Jan. 9. In the trailer released for the show this month, the all-female London gang leader Mary Carr (Doherty) is getting the band back together. “She is. She’s George Clooney in Ocean’s 11,” the actress laughs.
In the second installment, a year has passed since we were last immersed in the East End and Mary endeavors to reassemble the Forty Elephants, which includes making contact with a broken Hezekiah (Malachi Kirby) and the estranged Sugar Goodson (Graham). “I literally loved it. I had the best time on this season, because we shot them back to back — that was the biggest blessing in disguise,” she explains, “because we knew these people so, so deeply, particularly the women of the Forty Elephants. By that time, we were in each other’s pockets and still to this day, I love the bones of those women.” It’s a series about redemption, she teases, with Mary at the top of her game: “Everyone at the end of season one was pretty much on their ass. And this season is about how they rebuild, but how they rebuild with the people around them.”
“On a larger scale,” she adds, “it’s about bringing everyone together to achieve what they need to achieve, and to fight the fights that need to be fought.”
Sadly for us, Doherty can’t talk about what comes after A Thousand Blows — but just know she’s in her element. “I never want to lose that child awe about what it means to be an actor. Simply put, it’s literally just putting on different hats and trying on different things for size.” Ironically, quite like Briony, she loves the psychology part of the job. “That was the real key, to take it back to Adolescence. That’s why I was like, ‘Oh my god, I have to do this,’ because I love psychology so much that I don’t ever want to just pigeonhole myself. People are so multifaceted.”
One recent script has her particularly excited, but that’s all the star is able to say for now. “You can’t quite explain it. There are no words to describe that feeling. But you just can’t let someone go.” Is she at least able to spill the beans on what’s immediately attractive about roles, at this stage in her career? “There’s a certain level of fear that has to be there,” she answers. “‘Okay, I’m actually not sure how I’m going to achieve this, but we’ll figure it out.’” The director and fellow creatives are another huge pull — so who does Doherty look up to?
“Chloé Zhao is absolutely smashing it. I haven’t seen Hamnet yet… Everyone is losing their minds [about it]. Because, obviously, Paul [Mescal], Jessie [Buckley], I just don’t think you can go wrong. I’m absolutely chomping at the bit to go and sit in a cinema and just lose myself to that,” she laughs, “so Chloé Zhao and creatively, to work with Paul or Jessie, I would lose my absolute mind.”
Doherty is radiating positive energy. There’s a lot to look forward to, and she’s still picking up accolades from a performance in a limited series released over nine months ago. It’s her world now, one that she’s happy to share, indefinitely, with Graham and Walters: “They’re everything you think they are. They’re true creatives.”
A Thousand Blows streaming on Disney+ and Hulu Jan. 9.
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