Inside Daisy May Cooper’s rise from skint teen who auditioned for strip club to ‘Hollywood’s Adele’ cast for Bond role
SHE’S a former cleaner who once auditioned as a stripper, took the mickey out of Kim Kardashian’s rear end and showed up on the red carpet wearing bin bags.
But Daisy May Cooper has gone from quirky outsider to confirmed star – in a triumphant week which saw her tipped to play the new M in Bond and nominated for four BAFTAs.
She’s also set to achieve the elusive dream of many British celebrities, to crack America – with BAFTA nominated drama Am I Being Unreasonable? following dark comedy Rain Dogs to stateside screens.
Down-to-earth Daisy, 36, has previously said she dreamed of breaking America, half joking: “I want to go to the States and absolutely rinse it, like James Corden, and buy my own private jet.”
The comedian has undergone an Adele-style transformation after shedding stones on a keto diet, adding extensions to her blonde tresses and giving her wardrobe an overhaul.
But global fame is unlikely to fundamentally change Daisy, who picked up a BAFTA for best female comedy performance in 2018 wearing a Swindon Town football dress.
She turned up the next year in an outfit made of black rubbish bags with a bin lid as a hat and fake pigeon perched on top. She donated the money destined for a posh dress to a foodbank.
Daisy still lives near her parents in a village outside Cirencester in Gloucestershire where she looks forward to the annual duck race, keeps up friendships with school pals and loves that “nobody gives a flying f***” who she is.
Paid £100 a month
She has also been brutally honest about her poverty-stricken upbringing and how working as a cleaner with her brother helped her come up with the idea for This Country, the sitcom that made her famous.
She said: “I think I was paid about £100 a month and as we were going round cleaning, we came up with these characters and said, ‘We have to write something’.
“Because humour was the only thing getting us through such a depressing time.
“A lot of [This Country] is based on experiences we had. At the end of the first series, they’re talking about how they couldn’t afford a McDonald’s and had to watch their friends eating one, and that was our life.”
Daisy also had fun poking at the celebrity lifestyle, copying Kim Kardashian’s internet-breaking People magazine cover, replacing champagne with chips and ketchup for a shoot in 2021.
During lockdown she kept the nation entertained with her hilarious TikTok take-offs of famous dance routines, including Michael Jackson’s thriller and Beyonce’s Single Ladies.
It’s her no-nonsense approach to life that is likely to charm America, says Millie Woodman, Head of Talent at Ed Hopkins PR.
Millie said: “Daisy has been grafting in the industry for a long time.
“This Country has always had a cult following then she went mainstream with her lockdown TikTok dances.
“The fact she keeps it real makes her even more endearing to the public and has grabbed the attention of Hollywood which is looking for its next English rose, albeit the unconventional one.”
The Sun revealed yesterday how Daisy is in talks to play M – previously portrayed by heavyweights Dame Judi Dench and Ralph Fiennes – after her pal Phoebe Waller-Bridge joined the Bond franchise as a script consultant.
Millie added: “Daisy would make a great M in Bond because she’d bring an element of comedy and light-heartedness to the character. It will also show off her versatility.”
Meanwhile, quintessentially British sitcom This Country is getting an Office-style American makeover.
While the British show follows cousins Kerry and Kurtan Mucklowe as they scratch around for something to do in their tiny Cotswold village, Daisy has sold the rights for producers to set an American version in a small MidWestern town.
Earlier this month HBO showed Daisy’s dark comic show Rain Dogs, about a mum living on the fringes of society bringing up her 10-year-old daughter, and streaming channel Hulu has picked up her humorous BBC drama Am I Being Unreasonable?
It has been nominated for four awards in this year’s BAFTA’s – best male and female performances in a comedy programme, best scripted comedy and best scripted casting.
Unhappy marriage
The show, about a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, helped her come to terms with splitting from her ex Will Weston, a landscaper, in 2021. They share son Jack, two, and daughter Pip, four.
The couple wed two years earlier because they thought they should ‘settle down’.
But Daisy later admitted: “My ex-husband is a lovely man, but I just wasn’t in love with him. And he wasn’t particularly in love with me.
“Writing this show has been therapy for us, in a very weird way.”
Daisy has candidly admitted that the pressures of living under Covid restrictions and the birth of her son made her realise how unhappy she was in her marriage.
She revealed she “dreaded” taking her son home to her husband after giving birth during lockdown.
She said: “I was desperately unhappy in my marriage, but didn’t realise it at the time, and then lockdown put this massive spotlight onto it. I had my son in lockdown. It was a mess. The hospital weren’t allowing the husbands to come in – and that’s when I knew I couldn’t go back to him.”
Following her marriage split she dated chef Ryan Weymouth for five months and even had his name tattooed on her ring finger – but they parted two weeks after the inking.
The past year has seen Daisy transform her image after losing weight on keto – a low carb, high fat diet.
But she was left upset by fans who trolled her claiming she was no longer funny because of her new svelte figure.
She said: “I’m so for body positivity but when I was at my biggest I was at my most miserable and I had a massive food addiction. I wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t breathe when I was walking up the stairs. I was so unhappy.
“I’ve had some messages like, ‘Well, now you’ve lost the weight you’re not funny anymore’. What the f***. Why do women have to be f***ing fat to be funny?”
Road to fame
Daisy’s road to fame has been a rocky one.
As a young kid, her dad Paul lost his job at a sales firm and later suffered a heart attack which saw the family struggle to make ends meet.
They had to sell their home to survive but, as the money disappeared, they often had nothing for the gas meter, relied on payday loans and once spent a Christmas by candlelight.
But her parents always tried their best and when Daisy dreamed of being on TV, they took out a credit card to help pay for a summer acting course in London when she was 18.
She stayed in the capital trying to find jobs but was so skint she ended up auditioning to be a stripper – wearing a ballgown and calling herself Louise Redknapp.
She later said: “I took the top of my dress down and showed my t**s and snogged the pole. That was my only move. It was just horrific. The owner of the club sat me down and said, ‘Unfortunately I don’t think this is for you’.”
Daisy returned home to Gloucester where she applied for drama schools and was eventually accepted by Rada where her contemporaries included Happy Valley actor James Norton. But she hated it.
“We did weird Jacobean plays and no comedy,” she said. “When we left, the teacher said 70 per cent of us wouldn’t make it but I always thought my career would go from strength to strength.”
The reality was different.
She returned home again where she shared a bedroom with brother Charlie, 33, who had dropped out of university – which was when they got the job as night cleaners.
But she was skint at the time that she once attended an audition for Call the Midwife in broken sandals.
She said: “I had to take £9 out of the family’s food budget to get a [bus] to London. I only had one pair of shoes, these sandals that had fallen apart, and I had to tape them, and walk from Victoria coach station into Central London.”
She compared that period of her life to the Oscar-winning film Parasite, which sees a down-on-their-luck family deceive their way into the lives of a rich family.
Fed-up with being unable to get work she and Charlie started to write what would become This Country. It proved an instant hit and won a raft of awards.
Despite her success Daisy still worries about her new-found fame.
She once said: “Every day I wake up and think ‘I am going to get cancelled today. There is a fear that I’ll say the wrong thing and upset everyone.”
But it hasn’t stopped her remaining unapologetically herself.
She said: “I like to think I’m the canary down the mine for people.
“If you ever feel embarrassed or have hangover anxiety just know that I will have done way worse. It’s a way for you to feel less embarrassed about yourself.
“I’ve been told to hold back a lot, I’ve been told no a lot of times – at Rada, at school in relationships – and it gets to the point where you think, I just can’t f***ing keep that up anymore. I’d rather be myself and at one with who I am and then if people like it that’s amazing and if they don’t….”
It’s that determined take-it-or-leave attitude that means Daisy might just get that private jet she dreamed of.