The Scottish Mail on Sunday - You
Daisy May anD Charlie in five
bag than a nice dress,’ she says. ‘I remember walking into the Mondrian Hotel in London that night, and Steve Coogan looked at me and said, “Christ.” That’s all he said! That’s upsetting.’ Their Baftas experience sounds hilarious, from cornering Tony from Hollyoaks (‘the second we turned around, he ran away’) to serenading Declan Donnelly with a PJ & Duncan song.
We meet a couple of days after the Golden Globes, where Fleabag reigned supreme. ‘People say, “You must be so jealous,”’ says Daisy May of the Fleabag phenomenon. ‘Yes, absolutely, I’m jealous, but I’m also so proud and so in awe of what Phoebe Waller-Bridge has achieved.’
‘And it opens the door for other people to do it, people like us,’ says Charlie. ‘It’s a really exciting time.’
It really is an exciting time. In December last year it was announced that Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids, would be making a US version of This Country. ‘The most surreal thing ever,’ says Daisy May. ‘Paul Feig comes down to Cirencester with Jenny Bicks, who wrote Sex and the City and The Greatest Showman .We go to our local pub and have dinner. We’ve seen script outlines and their vision for the show is similar.’ Daisy May and Charlie are not writing or acting in this version, but will be executive producers, ‘which means you get the dosh but no stress,’ laughs Daisy May. ‘They were respectful of the fact that the show was our baby, and they didn’t want us to feel we were out of the loop. But we were happy it was in good hands.’
Even if it doesn’t work out, there’s no chance of unemployment. Charlie appears in Michael Winterbottom’s Greed with Steve Coogan, while Daisy May is in Armando Iannucci’s Avenue5 with Hugh Laurie and The Personal History of David Copperfield alongside Tilda Swinton, Dev Patel and – again – Hugh Laurie. ‘It’s weird because we don’t feel like we’re part of this circle,’ says Charlie. ‘We still do the same things we did ten years ago.’
Tilda, says Daisy May, has become a mate. ‘I found the first day of David Copperfield really scary,’ she says. ‘I had no experience of big actors, but Tilda is amazing. She told me that one of her favourite things is to polish cutlery. She’ll do that for hours. I enjoy folding towels.’
Towel-folding aside, Daisy May is passionate about the paranormal, regularly posting her ghost-hunting updates to her thousands of followers. When we meet, she’s tired after being up half the night having terrified herself watching a documentary about ‘the goat-man’, an axe-wielding half-man, half-creature. This is normal for Daisy May – she believes in ghosts and had read that if you record yourself asking one a question on your phone, the phone will pick up its reply in a way that you wouldn’t be able to hear normally. I must look sceptical, because she thrusts her phone at my ear and presses play. I hear her asking a ghost to make itself known, then there is a tiny, ethereal voice that replies ‘don’t be afraid’. It is genuinely the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s also not something that has happened to me in 20 years interviewing celebrities, but then I’ve never met anyone like Daisy May and Charlie Cooper – successful yet brilliantly normal.
While they aren’t sharing a student room any more, the pair still live near one another. Charlie, who only moved out from his parents’ house in Cirencester last year, now lives round the corner, while Daisy May, her husband Will (a landscape gardener) and their daughter Pip, two, live in a nearby village. ‘Our parents are our biggest fans,’ says Charlie. ‘Without them, this would never have been possible – they let us live at home rent-free for years.’
‘Even though they were really struggling,’ says Daisy May.
‘It meant we were able to be creative and pursue our dreams,’ adds Charlie.
‘We see Mum every day,’ says Daisy May. ‘She still does my washing,’ reveals Charlie. So what’s next? ‘Jobcentre,’ replies Charlie. ‘We could write something about the goat-man?’ suggests Daisy May, and I suspect she’s only half joking. First, though, they have series three of This Country to get out. It’s a particularly poignant one, the first without their friend Michael Sleggs, who played Slugs in the
Most used eMoji?
Daisy May: the goat face. Charlie: the laughing face.
Last thing you put on your credit card?
Daisy May: astrology books. Charlie: a book on the Neolithic period.
how do you take your tea?
Daisy May: Earl Grey with milk. Charlie: milk, no sugar.
who’d pLay you in a fiLM of your Life?
Daisy May: Kathy Burke. Charlie: Mackenzie Crook.
top of your bucket List?
Daisy May: to see a ghost. Charlie: Stonehenge at summer solstice.
show and was a constant source of fond teasing, both in real life and on telly. He died last year at 33 while receiving palliative care for heart failure. ‘He always had such good humour and such dignity,’ Charlie says. The hardest part of writing season three must surely have been figuring out how to include his passing into the storyline. ‘It was very difficult, obviously, because Michael was a close friend of ours and he was ill right up to before we started filming,’ says Daisy May. ‘We thought he might get better, so it was really hard, because that was written last minute. It was important, because he was so funny, to make it funny and touching.’ She takes a moment to compose herself when the tears take hold.
‘He always wanted to be included, whether he was ill or not,’ adds Charlie.
Michael had some last requests that Daisy May describes as ‘mental’. As well as asking the show’s vicar Paul Chahidi to conduct the ceremony at his actual funeral, he also wanted his body in his coffin to be in the first episode of the new series (though neither of these things actually happened). ‘We said: “How much morphine has he had?”’ says Daisy May. ‘It was a difficult episode to write because the way Kerry and Kurtan feel about Slugs is so different to how Daisy and Charlie feel about him. We tried to give him as good a send-off as we could, but I found it tough. I miss him so much.’
It’s their genuine approach to how humour meets human emotion that makes This Country such absolute genius. While the death of a friend is uncharted territory for them, whichever way they’ve chosen to honour Michael, I have a feeling it will be perfect. Because that’s the thing with This Country – it almost always is.
‘i’m jealous of but also so in awe of what ithas achieved’
Series three of This Country will be released weekly on BBC iPlayer from Monday 17 February at 7pm
Fridge porn (yes, you read that right) is the latest scrollable – and
competitive – pleasure sweeping Instagram. Louise Atkinson looks inside