Some faces carry a whole biography before a word is spoken. Stephen Graham’s is one of them, and this week the rest of the world gets another chance to watch it work.
Graham’s new series, Nocturne, makes its global debut on Friday, October 30, 2026 with the first two episodes, with new episodes every Friday through December 25 on Apple TV. Originally titled Lazarus, the 10-episode drama was written by Rowan Joffe and John Hlavin and also stars Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz. Schreiber plays Jonah Lynn, a former soldier turned homicide detective who leaves Philadelphia for a quiet life in a small Western Pennsylvania town, only for the town and his family to come under attack from the serial killer Jurek Walter, played by Graham
Stephen Graham: The Quiet Menace Arrives on Apple TV (Rory Lewis Photographer 2026)
It caps an extraordinary run. Adolescence dominated the Emmys with eight wins, including best limited series, and in May he took the Leading Actor award at the BAFTA Television Awards at the Royal Festival Hall. The kid from Kirkby is now one of the most sought-after actors working in Hollywood, and deservedly so.
In the studio
Sitting with Stephen, what struck me first was how much he gives the camera without trying to. There is no performance of “being photographed.” He just looks at you, and the weight is already there.
In two of the frames from our session, I kept him against deep navy, hand drawn up to the mouth, eyes lifted straight into the lens. The pose is almost casual, but the light isn’t. A single key rakes across the forehead and picks out every line, the wedding band, the steel of the watch, while the background falls away into shadow. It is the grammar of tenebrism applied to a modern face: let the darkness do half the work, and the subject steps forward out of it.
The third portrait went somewhere quieter. A hand-painted grey canvas, collar turned up, Stephen looking off past the frame in three-quarter profile. It is the version of him I think Nocturne audiences will recognise: still, watchful, and somewhat unreadable. Late Rembrandt understood that skin, stubble and the creases of a lived-in face are not flaws to be corrected; they are the portrait. I retouch accordingly, which is to say barely.
