Last night, a major Hollywood milestone was smashed.
Owen Cooper made history as the youngest-ever Emmy award-winning male at just 15 years old for his work in Adolescence, a four-part drama where each episode was filmed in one take. It follows a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering his classmate, and how this tragic event came to pass due to a rise in incel culture.
It’s no real surprise that the show scooped up multiple awards, as it broke records on Netflix and has been made available for free to schools across the country by the government.
While Cooper’s age has been the focus of most headlines, I’ve been more interested in his start in acting, as he’s from the same place as I am. Warrington, a town with strong working-class roots, is based slap bang in the middle of Manchester and Liverpool.
One of the reasons I became an Entertainment Editor in the first place was that I have a background in performing and theatre. When I was a little bit older than Owen, like many of my peers, I signed up for casting agencies and studied the craft.
But back in the early 2010s, opportunities were scarce and highly competitive for people in this region (although if I’m being honest, Cooper’s talent far surpasses my own – journalism was always my true calling).
If studios actively create opportunities and seek talent locally, then future British stars can be found far beyond the M25
Nonetheless, for those who did go on to pursue things further, the best way to ‘make it’ was to audition for a lucrative drama school post-college, the majority of which were based in London, where most acting agencies are located.
I’ve recently moved out of the UK capital, and I’ve learned that to establish roots there permanently (i.e., buy a house and start a family) and have a decent quality of life, you need a lot of money. By proxy, that shuts the door to many other budding young actors.
In some ways, that sentiment still rings true. However, this Emmy win has shown that if studios actively create opportunities and seek talent locally, then future British stars can be found far beyond the M25 – and it’s frankly about time.
Owen Cooper’s speech said it all
Cooper seemed in disbelief when his name was called, and when he went up on stage, he very obviously had not prepared a speech – most likely because he wasn’t expecting to win.
He expressed this by reflecting on how this opportunity came to be in the first place, and why it feels like such a dream come true:
“When I started these drama classes a couple of years back, I didn’t expect to even be in the United States, never mind here.
“I think tonight proves that if you listen and you focus and you step out of your comfort zone, you can achieve anything in life.
“I was nothing about three years ago, I’m here now.”
“Who cares if you get embarrassed? Anything can be possible.”
His words resonated with a past version of myself, as opportunities within film and TV felt like a complete pipe dream as a teenager. For many kids, especially in northern areas (where austerity is rife), the arts are dismissed by parents, other students and even teachers, because it’s an industry that has mostly been locked within London.
It’s easy to be dissuaded from big ambitions in the creative arts when there’s no gateway to the industry nearby, and we’re currently in a climate where drama is being dismissed as unimportant by many politicians and prominent spokespeople. I encountered plenty of comments when choosing my GCSEs, A-Levels and even my degree, and I daresay that there’s an even bigger stigma for young boys who wish to become actors.
That’s supported by a quote from Cooper in an interview with Vogue: “Not a lot of working-class 14-year-olds do drama lessons and get out of their comfort zone in that way. But the decision you have to make is: do you want to be bland and try to fit in with everybody else, or do you want to do the things you want to do?”
While yes, there have been some opportunities in other parts of the UK, especially for long-standing soap operas such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale, it’s only now that major studios have begun to widen their casting search in the hope of finding fresh faces, just as Netflix proved with Owen Cooper.
Why Netflix’s casting team sets a killer example
Cooper was discovered by casting director Shaheen Baig, who oversaw tapes from around 500 boys. His video audition was sent by his local acting school, The Drama MOB, an institution based in Manchester and the surrounding areas that has a casting agency attached to it – a commutable distance from Warrington, I may add.
From doing his drama classes, Cooper learnt improv, which was something that sold Baig on his performance, showcasing the importance of the skills he learned by putting in the work at this hobby. But perhaps crucially, Baig set out specifically to search for northern performers.
This is a case of several things lining up. Firstly, The Drama MOB’s existence, which was founded by Esther Morgan and Tina O’Brien (you may recognise the latter as Sarah Platt from Corrie). The fact that this business has the funding and support to be able to offer not just training but opportunities for its members is truly groundbreaking.
As Morgan told The Guardian: “It’s not so much north/south but London/everywhere else. The north is underfunded and often ignored as a creative space.”
Baig gave a shoutout to this school and another operating across Yorkshire called Articulate, on Instagram, where she also found supporting actors for the show. Like The Drama MOB, this institution offers scholarships for theatre classes for families who can’t afford them, meaning many members come from working-class backgrounds.
Now granted, The Drama MOB isn’t specifically in Warrington itself, but it’s in a city near enough for students to visit – and the country has plenty of other hubs where groups such as these could flourish: Liverpool, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow and Birmingham, to name just a few.
Put simply, we need more institutions like this across the country. The North West and Yorkshire are a great start, but groups of this nature are still much more abundant in London than anywhere else in the UK. Even for those in the capital, many charge very high fees and so aren’t even accessible to local folk who aren’t fortunate enough to splurge high amounts of disposable income.
The more schools there are, the higher the chance that kids from everywhere can get the training they need for access to film and TV. And, if they get the financial help and media attention they deserve, then casting directors from all kinds of companies beyond Netflix may wish to actively seek out talent in places that were previously ignored when I was growing up.
And after Owen Cooper’s incredible Emmy accolade, why wouldn’t they? This win has not just done Warrington proud – it may have changed the futures of other kids from less privileged backgrounds for the greater good and given them someone local to aspire to.
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