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The idea for This Country, which ran for three series from 2017-2020, was sparked by the Cooper siblings’ favourite pastime: reading the crime section of their local paper. “It was always [filled with] people we were at school with,” says Cooper. The central inspiration was “this girl… who had a brother… and all they did was hang around town on BMXs and intimidate people.” It took seven years to actually get the sitcom made. “[We were told] these characters will never work, and even if you do get it on screen you won’t be playing Kerry (Cooper’s character). I’ve still got that email. I’m going to print it out and put it on the [wall].”

This Country. Photo: 大象传媒

2. Drama school felt “like Squid Game”

Cooper says a lot of people are surprised she went to RADA, one of the most prestigious acting schools in the UK. She says she didn’t particularly love the pressure and rivalry of it: “It just felt like Squid Game.” She said she felt picked on for her appearance and had no passion for the things she was meant to love – “I’ve got no time for Shakespeare” – and in her third year she told the school’s administrator she was leaving. “She said, ‘If you leave, I’m going to phone every single agency and tell them that you’re unprofessional and not to work with you.’ I was terrified, so I stayed.”

3. She auditioned for Call The Midwife, disastrously

When she left RADA, Cooper says she “didn’t have the confidence I do now” and really struggled with auditions. “I was terrible. I would forget the lines, and [my legs would] start shaking.” She remembers a doomed audition for Call The Midwife. “They rang up my agents and said, ‘What’s going on there? She didn’t know the lines. Is she alright?’ And I wasn’t.”

Cooper jokes that fame to her means “you can walk up to any restaurant without a booking reservation and get a table”, but the first time she was recognised was far from glamorous. “Me and my brother went to our local pharmacy because he had thread worms,” she says. “We were queuing up to get some medication and the pharmacist said, ‘Oh my god, you two are on that show, This Country. Can I shake your hand?’ He shook my hand, then Charlie put his hand out. The pharmacist said, ‘No, I don’t want to shake your hand. Not if you’ve got worms.’”

Daisy May Cooper at the BAFTAs in 2024.

5. She does everything for her brother

Cooper says she’s always had to help her brother out because “he can’t do anything on his own. I have to book him tables in restaurants because he gets such bad anxiety… He’s like this wallflower that’s just happy in the background, so anything that requires him to be upfront, he can’t deal with, so I’ve got to be there.”

6. Winning a BAFTA was “underwhelming”

In 2018, Cooper won the BAFTA for Best Female Comedy Performance. She laughs and calls the experience “massively underwhelming… You’ve lived it so many times in your head. You’ve done your acceptance speech to the bathroom mirror about 10 billion times. Then by the time it happens – I can’t explain it – it just felt flat. It’s kind of, ‘Well now what?’ It’s like scoring a goal, then you go past the goalposts and it’s just fog. That’s when I think things got really hard for me. It had been this trajectory towards a certain goal. Then I’d achieved it and I hadn’t thought any further than that.”

7. If she wasn’t an actor she thinks she’d be in prison

This Country getting made was, Cooper says, a moment when she felt “I could just sit back and breathe. I was so exhausted.” She says there wasn’t really a plan B if acting hadn’t worked out. “I’m not good at anything else! It’s either this or prison… I can’t do any other normal job.”

8. She struggled at the height of her success

Cooper has been very open about her struggles with alcohol. She says that, after her BAFTA win, she just got drunk for about three years. Her long-term relationship broke down, because “he just couldn’t handle [her success]… He didn’t find [This Country] funny, which should have been a red flag.” She says she found her life at the time too much to cope with. “Having to be a mother, having to be a wife, having to be the face of This Country, I was so lost,” she says. “I felt quite suicidal at that point.”

9. She’d like to write a film about rehab

Cooper realised she needed to get help for her drinking when she “got to the point where I was waking up and having a drink at 10, 11am,” she says. “That was when I was like, ‘No, I’ve got to sort this out.’” She went into rehab and says she’s now “never been happier in her life”. She’d like to put the experience in a script. “I want to write a film about my time in rehab, because that was mad and fascinating.”

大象传媒 Action Line - Suicide or Feelings of despair: If you or someone you know is emotionally distressed or have feelings of despair, the following organisations offer advice and support