Daisy & Charlie Cooper | Writer/Performers

Daisy & Charlie Cooper | Writer/Performers

For siblings Charlie and Daisy, growing up in Cirencester and watching comedy together shaped who they are as writers and performers today. From a young age they began making short comedy films with their mum’s home video camera, inspired by the people they saw around them.

The seed of their hit BBC sitcom This Country came when Charlie, who had left university in his second year, moved to London to live with Daisy while she completed her training at RADA. With very little money and missing home, the pair began to talk about the characters they met growing up. This led to the creation of Kerry, a mixture of people the siblings had known, and before long they found themselves writing a script.

It took another five years before This Country was commissioned. The pair remember how high the stakes had become: they had returned to their childhood home, worked night shifts together as cleaners for £7 an hour, and watched as all their friends left town. There was no ‘plan B’, but they believed in their vision for the series. Difficult as their journey was, they wouldn’t change any of it. To them, it’s crucial that you live and breathe your project, to have faith in your vision and to use mistakes as beacons to guide you towards where you want to be.