Daisy May and Charlie Cooper had £100-a-month cleaning jobs before ‘This Country’.
The sibling duo – who created and star as cousins Kerry and Lee ‘Kurtan’ Mucklowe in the hit BBC Three comedy – struggled for money as they tried to find their big break, and Daisy revealed they turned to comedy as a way of coping.
Appearing on ITV’s ‘Lorraine’ on Monday (02.03.20), she said: "It was such a bleak time. I’d just come out of drama school and thought it’d be fine because I’d get loads of auditions, and then didn’t get anything.
"[I] had to move back in with my parents, and just do a night time cleaning job – I think we got paid about £100 a month, it was that bad.
"As we were going around cleaning, we just came up with these characters and said, ‘Oh God, we’ve gotta write something’. Humour was the only thing getting us through because it was such a depressing time."
And the 33-year-old actress admitted many of the situations and ideas explored in the show came from their own experiences, including having to watch their friends enjoying fast food which they simply couldn’t afford.
She added: "A lot of it is actually based on experiences that we had. At the end of the first series, Kerry and Kurtan are talking about how they couldn’t afford a McDonald’s and they had to sit and watch their friends eat it. That actually was our life. We had no money.
"When people say they haven’t got much money and they have a hundred quid in the bank – we had nothing. To try and get to auditions it was £9 on the National Express, which was such a massive chunk out of our weekly budget. It was horrific!"
Daisy won the female comedy performance prize at the BAFTAs in 2018, while the show as a whole claimed the scripted comedy award – and she admitted the recognition was a genuine dream come true.
She explained: "That was our only hope. That was our vision. When it actually happened, I couldn’t quite believe it, I thought I was gonna pass out on the stage."
Daisy May Cooper worked £100-a-month cleaning job before This Country
