Daisy May Cooper has criticised one of the UK’s most prestigious acting school, calling out its “bullying” culture.
The Am I Being Unreasonable actor has said that she has never “known bullying” like she experienced while attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). Cooper said that the abuse at the school aimed towards her was worse than in “any fucking workplace”.
“I’ve not known bullying like what I experienced in that school, in any f****** workplace,” she told The Evening Standard. “I don’t think that I realised that it was real bullying until I started talking to other people from my year, or other people that went…That [kind of] bullying does not need to exist anywhere.
The This Country star earned a place at the school after her parents took out a credit card to help her pay for a summer acting course. Discussing her perception of RADA’s bullying approach to teaching actors, she said: “That’s not going to get the best out of people, that’s going to leave [them] with scars that they can never fix.”
She added: “They were getting people to talk about miscarriages that they’d had, or rapes that they’d been through — and then there’d be no aftercare. You’d just cry about it and they’d go, ‘That’s really good, you managed to get somewhere then.’
“And I’m sorry, I don’t give a fuck, acting is pretend, that’s what we do. There’s no reason that you’ve got to bring up a rape… just to get congratulated for being a good actor. It’s dangerous. You were so desperate because it was like, ‘If I don’t do this course, I’ll never get seen by an agent, so this is the rest of my career’ — you’d put up with anything.”
Having been a vocal critic of her former school, Cooper has surprisingly admitted to having never heard from Rada about her comments. However, she has spoken to a student who was attending the school, syaing she’s heard “my name’s absolute mud” at the institution.
Meanwhile, as Cooper becomes a bigger and bigger force on both sides of the Atlantic she is now reportedly “in talks” to star as M in the next James Bond film.