Owen Cooper’s phone buzzed at 3:17 a.m.—a push alert from the Television Academy that felt like a cattle prod to the soul. “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series: Adolescence.”

He stared at the screen in the dark of his Echo Park studio, the glow painting his face the color of cheap motel neon. “I thought it was a spam text from my mom,” he says now, laughing the laugh of someone who’s learned to armor joy with self-deprecation.

The nomination wasn’t a surprise—it was a detonation. At 24, Cooper had gone from open-mic stand-up in Pasadena dive bars to sharing shortlist space with legends who’d been acting since he was in diapers.

The role: Eli, a 15-year-old unraveling in the fluorescent corridors of a suburban high school, where every hallway echo sounds like a verdict.

Adolescence—a six-episode HBO gut-punch created by a showrunner who’d once been suspended for hacking the PA system—cast Cooper after a Zoom audition where he read Eli’s breakdown scene while his cat walked across the keyboard.

“I was eating cold pizza, hair like a bird’s nest,” he recalls. “The director said my ‘authentic dishevelment’ sealed it.” Eli isn’t a quirky misfit; he’s a pressure cooker—bullied for his stutter, medicating with stolen Adderall, filming his own collapse on a cracked iPhone.

Cooper mined his own junior-year panic attacks: the time he hid in a locker during a fire drill, convinced the alarm was God’s ringtone. “I didn’t act the stutter,” he says. “I remembered it—how words jammed like a vending machine that ate your dollar.”

The nomination arrived the same week Cooper’s student loans hit “call your parents” territory. His agent texted a screenshot of the shortlist; his reply was a voice note: “Is this real or did I inhale too much craft-service fog?”

The realness sank in at the nominees’ brunch—silverware clinking like wind chimes in a morgue, Cooper wedged between a Succession veteran and a Squid Game survivor. “I wore the only blazer I own—thrifted, smells like someone else’s ambition,” he says.

When the host asked for “one word to describe your journey,” Cooper blurted “Puberty—again.” The room laughed; he didn’t mention the nights he’d rehearsed Eli’s suicide-ideation monologue in the mirror until the glass fogged with snot.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s name hovers over the story like a celebrity ghost. Cooper’s obsession predates the nomination—back to age 12, when Donnie Darko reruns became his insomnia cure. “Jake’s Frank the bunny wasn’t a costume; it was a prophecy,” he says, eyes lighting like a kid spotting a rare Pokémon.

“That movie taught me acting could be dangerous—lean into the weird, let the mask eat your face.” Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler sealed the deal: “Lou Bloom’s smile—vacant, sharky—showed me how to play charm as a weapon.”

Cooper’s dorm wall was a shrine: stills from Prisoners, Zodiac, a bootleg Brokeback Mountain poster annotated with Post-its: “Cry here,” “Stare like you’ve seen God’s browser history.”

The fantasy meet-cute is scripted in Cooper’s head like a rom-com on bath salts. “Emmy after-party, open bar, I spill vegan queso on his loafers. He looks down, I look up—‘You’re the reason I stuttered on purpose in drama class.’

He laughs that laugh—half hyena, half lullaby—and says, ‘Kid, let’s talk method over mezcal.’” Cooper’s imitation is spot-on, Gyllenhaal’s cadence borrowed like a library book overdue by a decade.

“I’d ask about the bunny suit—did it smell like mothballs and existential dread? Then I’d pitch him Adolescence Season 2: Eli grows up, becomes a paparazzo stalking his own trauma—Jake as the mentor who’s one flashbulb away from unraveling.”’

The nomination has turned the fantasy into a manhunt. Cooper’s publicist slipped his name onto the Governors Ball guest list; he’s memorized Gyllenhaal’s skincare routine (“snail mucin and regret”) in case small talk veers dermal.

“I rehearsed lines in the shower: ‘Your Enemy performance gave me nightmares—can you sign my subconscious?’” The obsession isn’t parasocial—it’s vocational. “Jake doesn’t act; he infests roles.

I want five minutes of that virus.” Until then, Cooper settles for proxies: bingeing Presumed Innocent on mute, mouthing Jake’s lines like a prayer wheel.

Adolescence itself was a pressure cooker disguised as a set. Cooper lost 15 pounds to play Eli’s skeletal anxiety—method acting via ramen and regret. The stutter wasn’t looped; it was live, triggered by sleep deprivation and cold brew.

“Director said, ‘Lean into the glitch.’ I leaned so hard I fell.” The nomination validates the fall: voters saw not a performance but a possession. “Eli’s my exorcism,” Cooper says. “Every stutter was a demon leaving the host.” The statue—if it comes—will sit on a shelf beside a Donnie Darko rabbit mask he 3D-printed in college, ears flopped like surrender.

The Gyllenhaal quest has leaked into interviews. On a late-night couch, host asks, “Dream collaborator?” Cooper doesn’t blink: “Jake Gyllenhaal—alive, preferably sober, willing to discuss bunny trauma.”

The clip goes viral; #OwenMeetsJake trends with fan art of Eli and Lou Bloom sharing a milkshake. Gyllenhaal’s team sends a cryptic DM: a bunny emoji and a calendar invite titled “Mysterious.”

Cooper screenshots it, frames it, hangs it above his bed like a holy relic. “If it’s a prank, I’ll cry into my snail mucin. If it’s real—well, I’ve got questions, and Jake’s got answers.”

The nomination’s real gift isn’t gold—it’s gravity. Cooper’s phone now pings with scripts: a teen hacker in a cyber-thriller, a stutter-afflicted sidekick in a superhero flick.

He’s reading them with Eli’s eyes—searching for the glitch, the stutter, the moment a character breaks and rebuilds. “Jake taught me that,” he says. “Not in a masterclass—in a midnight movie theater when I was 12, popcorn stuck in my braces, realizing acting could be witchcraft.”

Until the meet-cute manifests, Cooper keeps the faith: bunny mask on the shelf, Emmy odds on his lock screen, and a prayer whispered to the Hollywood gods—let the rabbit hole lead to the man who dug it.