Ignore soap snobbery – television is best place to learn acting, says Michelle Keegan

SOAP OPERAS are victims of “snobbery”, breakout star Michelle Keegan has claimed.

The actress, who began her career on Coronation Street and has featured in a string of TV dramas including Downton Abbey, is currently starring in hit Netflix crime drama Fool Me Once. The thriller, which follows Keegan’s character Maya as she uncovers a conspiracy surrounding her husband’s murder, has attracted more than 10 million viewers in the UK and topped Netflix’s most-watched programmes list in more than 60 countries.

Speaking to Fearne Cotton on the Happy Place podcast, Keegan credited the typically “working class” soap opera for her dramatic training.

She said: “I’m naturally disciplined but I think that’s come from being in a soap. I think there’s a lot of snobbery surrounding soaps.

“For me, it’s the best learning platform you can ever do as an actor.

“I remember we were filming three different story lines at one time, with three different directors, not in chronological order, going back and forward.

“Being in a soap, it’s so fast-paced you have to be on your game.”

She added: “I feel like that discipline I learnt from soaps at such a young age I sort of carried that through my career.”

Keegan, 36, previously spoke about the gulf between the dramatic rigour demanded by soaps and dismissal the form receives because it’s “seen as working class – people look down on it”.

When her Coronation Street character, Tina Mcintyre, was killed off in 2014 she began branching out into dramas including Our Girl and Ten Pound Poms.

Keegan’s career trajectory from soap apprenticeship to star of an internationally popular drama is not unique, and the value of long-form serial dramas such as Eastenders and Coronation Street has often been championed.

Nathalie Emmanuel, a Game of Thrones actress who started out in Hollyoaks, spoke in 2021 about the “snobbery” with which soap operas were viewed, an attitude she claimed affected how people judged her acting abilities. She said that US producers, unfamiliar with British soaps, blanked her when she tried to further her career.

Dame Julie Walters defended the form in 2015, saying that she disliked “people being snobbish about soaps”, adding that “there’s a lot of very good acting and lots of issues are addressed”.