The co-director of the drama school where Adolescence star Owen Cooper trained has said she hopes his Emmy win will encourage producers to “look outside the box” when it comes to casting working-class and northern talent.
Cooper, 15, became the youngest ever male recipient of an Emmy on Sunday, when he won the best supporting actor in a limited series award for his role as the teenage murder suspect Jamie Miller in the Netflix drama.
Esther Morgan, who runs the Drama MOB school in Didsbury, Manchester, with the Coronation Street star Tina O’Brien, helped train Cooper alongside hundreds of other young people from the north-west from a wide variety of backgrounds.
She said they were delighted at his success and pleased to see the producers taking the time to look for talent outside London.
“There’s a frustration in the industry that everything seems to happen in London, despite the talent that exists elsewhere,” Morgan said. “We were really passionate that we wanted to build something from the north, for northern kids and provide them with the same opportunities, no matter where they’re from.”
Cooper was cast in Adolescence after Stephen Graham, who co-created and starred in the series as the father of Cooper’s character, insisted on casting an unknown northern actor for the role. Graham has previously said he and the production team wanted to give a chance to young people “who may not normally have those opportunities” and that doing so was the show’s biggest achievement.
Morgan said: “We’re so proud of Owen and so happy for him, and he’s worked so hard, and we’re delighted that the producers took the time to look for northern talent and took a chance on him. But it’s so rare they’ll take that chance, and so much talent is never looked at.”
Morgan hopes that Cooper’s win will motivate more young people in the north-west to give the arts a try, and encourage a broader approach to casting that will enable people outside the capital, especially younger people, to be put on an equal footing for roles in the future.
“You hope now that with the story of Owen, who you know, is just a normal kid from Warrington, more people will consider sending their kids to the school,” Morgan said. “What we really want, and what we hope Owen’s success does, is give a bit of a message out to everybody that maybe there is some really good raw northern talent out there, and in the rest of the country. Maybe come and look in different places in future to find that talent; maybe you’ll find a star.”
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The Drama MOB school offers students a range of options, including the possibility of attending for nothing, so that young people can access the arts regardless of household income to “bridge that gap and make sure that it is accessible to everybody”.
In the past, Morgan has lamented the way talent outside the south is viewed, saying casting directors and producers have rarely given talent in other parts of the UK a chance even when a production is based there, and that when an actor such as Cooper is cast, there is a narrative that they have “done nothing and came from nowhere” despite being trained.