She won an Emmy for her electric performance in the Netflix smash hit, but the casting process wasn’t exactly hiccup-free. The actor opens up about a year of success, struggle – and how she nearly became a footballer

For a while, Erin Doherty ignored Stephen Graham’s calls. Not deliberately, she stresses with a laugh. “I’m just really bad at my phone. I’m such a technophobe, and he knew that,” she says. They had made the Disney+ show A Thousand Blows together, in which Doherty plays an East End crime boss in Victorian London, and Graham had talked about an idea he wanted to dramatise, about a teenage boy who is catastrophically radicalised by online misogyny. A couple of months after they’d wrapped A Thousand Blows, Graham and his wife and producing partner, Hannah Walters, kept trying to get in touch. “I was getting voice notes from him and Hannah being like, ‘Erin, pick up your phone!’” Doherty’s girlfriend told her to ring him back and Graham offered her the role in Adolescence. She said yes on the spot, without reading the script.

Since it was screened on Netflix in March, Adolescence has had nearly 150m views. It sparked a huge cultural conversation; it was shown in secondary schools and its creators were invited to Downing Street. Did they have any idea it would become such a phenomenon? “No, and I’m not sure you’re supposed to,” says Doherty when we speak. She is chatty and down-to-earth, even in the year her career went stellar. As well as starring in A Thousand Blows, her role in Adolescence – as Briony Ariston, a psychologist – won her an Emmy for best supporting actress. “But you do know when you’re a part of something that’s good and deserves to be seen, and we knew that about it. I think because it came from such a genuine place, a place of real purity and rawness, it [fed into] the making of it. From day one, it had that electricity.”

It’s celebrity catnip, but beyond the headlines this is also a tale of family dysfunction. At this time of year, so many people know about that

There is not one saga I have been more invested in this year than the Beckham family feud. In case you are not as shamelessly showbiz-pilled as I am, this is a drama that parses like something between the parable of the prodigal son and Catherine de Medici’s tension with her daughter-in-law Mary, Queen of Scots.

It seems that, after years of a trying in-law dynamic, relations between the Beckham family and their first-born, Brooklyn, and his wife, the heiress Nicola Peltz, have soured. Brooklyn has been repeatedly and conspicuously absent from all the family group shots on Instagram and, most notably, mum Victoria’s Netflix documentary, and dad David’s 50th birthday celebrations and knighthood ceremony (and if you know how long Dave’s been auditioning for that honour, you’ll know that this was the biggest indicator of catastrophe).

Jason Okundaye is an assistant opinion editor at the Guardian and the author of Revolutionary Acts

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On the winter solstice, the Cornish town transforms into a rambunctious festival full of dance, delinquency and Morris dancers. Our writer dodges the vegetable missiles – and learns how to get the best out of a horse skull

Incense burners as big as basketballs send thick clouds of smoke into the hyped-up crowd. “Hoo hoo Holly!” cries a man in a suit of twisted roots, looking like an oversized Shredded Wheat. The crowd begins to chant: “Make way for the Holly!” And two 10ft tree gods – the Oak King and the Holly King – begin to lash and headbutt each other, as flamethrowers blast the air with hot orange streams. These mysterious-seeming traditions are part of Montol, Cornwall’s biggest solstice festival. Each year on 21 December, Penzance’s high streets close to traffic and crowds of thousands wearing elaborate outfits and horses skulls prowl, throw brussels sprouts and burn effigies of the sun.

Elements of Montol have pagan roots, including rituals such as “wearing animal masks and cross-dressing, going from house to house performing ludicrous plays and performing really crap music”, says one co-organiser, Aaron Broadhurst. But Montol itself only began in 2007, when Simon Reed, former Penzance mayor and campaigner for Cornish Culture, found the word, meaning “balance”, in an old Cornish dictionary. In its first incarnation, says co-organiser Paul Tyreman, the festival consisted of a wind band, the Turkey Rhubarb Band, who led a procession up Market Jew Street and through the town. “People gathered, sung carols, lit a beacon, and went home.”

Osses on the prowl around Penzance.

Away from our families, my flatmate and I hung out in his bedroom, Christmas lunch on our laps, watching a poorly written, jarringly inappropriate movie

In 2022, I was living in a flat in north London above a chicken shop, with two flatmates and a cockroach infestation (what did we expect, said the landlord, living above a takeaway?). My flatmate was from Lithuania, and was due to go home in January, and our other flatmate, his girlfriend, was away for Christmas. I’d been home to Canada the month before, so for Christmas Day itself it was just the two of us.

I bought a small chicken to roast, and served it with stuffing I’d brought back from Canada – it’s the same concept as the stuffing in the UK but somehow fluffier and with more texture – and some pasta. I made brussels sprouts, trying to recreate a dish I like from a restaurant in my home town by cooking them with bacon, maple syrup, parmesan and a mayonnaise drizzle. It wasn’t very nice. We had some prosecco that my flatmate had won in a competition, even though neither of us really liked prosecco. It felt like we should, because it was Christmas.

Our 20 favourite pieces of in-depth reporting, essays and profiles from the year

Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist?

The US economy is pumped up on tech-bro vanity. The inevitable correction must prompt a global conversation about intelligent machines, regulation and risk

If AI did not change your life in 2025, next year it will. That is one of few forecasts that can be made with confidence in unpredictable times. This is not an invitation to believe the hype about what the technology can do today, or may one day achieve. The hype doesn’t need your credence. It is puffed up enough on Silicon Valley finance to distort the global economy and fuel geopolitical rivalries, shaping your world regardless of whether the most fanciful claims about AI capability are ever realised.

ChatGPT was launched just over three years ago and became the fastest-growing consumer app in history. Now it has about 800m weekly users. Its parent company, OpenAI, is valued at about $500bn. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, has negotiated an intricate and, to some eyes, suspiciously opaque network of deals with other players in the sector to build the infrastructure required for the US’s AI-powered future. The value of these commitments is about $1.5tn. This is not real cash, but bear in mind that a person spending $1 every second would need 31,700 years to get through a trillion-dollar stash.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Epstein files reveal messages between his accomplice and a man who appears to be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

• US politics live – latest updates

A man identified as “A” who appears to be Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor discussed facilitating meetings with “inappropriate friends” with Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

Among the latest tranche of Epstein files are email exchanges in 2001 and 2002 between Maxwell and a correspondent who appears as “The Invisible Man” in the email thread and says he is writing from Balmoral, the royal residence in the Scottish Highlands.

DoJ issues rare defense of president, saying claims included in material mentioning him are ‘unfounded and false’

In another released email exchange from November 2001, Ghislaine Maxwell appears to be organizing an instructor for Epstein who “has to be female youngish and attractive otherwise he will lose interest rapidly”.

Maxwell emails someone called “Gibby”, saying: “JE is looking for an exercise instructor to work out with. He is looking for someone who can tone, flex and stretch.” “I am counting on you,” she adds.

He likes, well you know what he likes.

Letter to former US gymnastics team doctor postmarked three days after Epstein’s death

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A disturbing letter that appears to have been written by Jeffrey Epstein and sent to Larry Nassar, the US Olympics gymnastics team doctor convicted of sexual abuse, is included the latest batch of Epstein-related documents released by the US government.

“As you will know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home,” the letter, which appears to have been signed from Epstein to Nasser, reads. “Good luck! We shared one thing … our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they reach their full potential.”

Former Barclays boss and ex-US Treasury secretary named in versions of will of convicted child sex offender

The former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley and the ex-US Treasury secretary Larry Summers were appointed as executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, according to a newly released tranche of documents linked to the deceased child sex offender.

Filings published on Tuesday by the US Department of Justice included various versions of Epstein’s last will and testament, which showed the financier intended to hand responsibility of managing his affairs to associates including the two high-profile men in the event of his death.