{"id":463471,"date":"2026-02-09T09:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/463471\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T09:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:15:11","slug":"lewis-cope-looks-back-i-never-got-bullied-for-wearing-a-dress-my-brothers-did-boxing-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/463471\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewis Cope looks back: \u2018I never got bullied for wearing a dress. My brothers did boxing!\u2019 | Family"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lewis Cope in a dress, playing Michael in Billy Elliot the Musical, in 2008, and reproducing the look in 2026<\/a>Lewis Cope in 2008 and 2026. Later photograph: P\u00e5l Hansen\/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Grooming: Alice Theobald at Arlington Artists using Charlotte Tilbury and Paula\u2019s Choice. Archive photograph: courtesy of Lewis Cope<\/p>\n

Born in Hartlepool, County Durham, in 1995, Lewis Cope is an actor and dancer. Aged\u00a013, he made his first stage appearance in the West End production of\u00a0Billy Elliot the Musical. After competing on the series Got to Dance in 2013, he trained at the Royal\u00a0Welsh College of Music & Drama. Cope has since appeared on television series such as Doctors and Vera, and in Emmerdale, as Nicky Miligan, from 2022 to 2024. He performs in the Strictly Come Dancing<\/a> live tour until 15\u00a0February.<\/p>\n

This is me in a dress, playing Michael in Billy Elliot the Musical. Michael is Billy\u2019s gay best friend \u2013 he wears his sister\u2019s clothes without fear or shame, and is the one who inspires Billy to be whoever he wants to be. Being part of that story at such a young age was a\u00a0complete eye-opener. It was also the point in my life when I realised my dream of performing was achievable, and that I was ready to do it.<\/p>\n

In spite of what I do for a living, I\u2019ve\u00a0never really craved being the centre of attention. I grew up in a\u00a0family of 14 \u2013 eight brothers and five sisters \u2013 and I was number 10. There was never a quiet moment, and as the older ones grew up, they looked after the younger ones. Everyone chipped in. Our family home had two staircases, so you could go up one way and come down the other. There was a constant sense of movement: people coming in, people going out, parties happening, noise everywhere. Underneath all of that chaos was a\u00a0strong sense of love.<\/p>\n

My mum always said I was very strong-minded. If I decided I was going to do something, then I would do it. But because there were so many of us, I was quite selfless and a good team player. Mainly I liked to work hard. Mum was a beautician and ran her salon out of one of the rooms in our house; she\u2019d have a client in, then dash out to put food in the oven for the kids, somehow making everything work at once. She was brilliant at juggling everything without ever making it feel like a burden.<\/p>\n

With so many of us to entertain, Mum would often end up taking all of the kids to one activity: horse riding, football, boxing. One day she took me and my brothers to a dance class. I\u00a0hated it but my brothers loved it. Mum told me I could either sit with her or join in. I figured I might as well give it a go. That decision, as small as it felt at the time, changed everything.<\/p>\n

When I started at secondary school, I\u00a0stopped dancing. Back then, dancing didn\u2019t feel cool and I wanted to fit in. So when my dance teacher told me auditions for Billy were happening in Newcastle, I flat-out refused. A\u00a0few days later, though, I started thinking about it properly. I realised I was letting the fear of being judged stop me from doing something I\u00a0loved. I\u00a0never got bullied for wearing a\u00a0dress, either. I had so many brothers, all doing boxing. If anyone tried anything, I always had backup.<\/p>\n

After I got the part, I had to move to London. When my mum dropped me off at the Billy house, she said she knew I\u2019d be fine straight away. It reminded her of home: loads of kids, constant noise, organised chaos. We had house parents looking after us, drivers taking us to the theatre and teachers who home schooled us. I went from going to school to performing in front of 1,500 people in the West End each night \u2013 it was wild and surreal.<\/p>\n

One of my biggest challenges with dance was music. It wasn\u2019t really a\u00a0thing in our house. There was so much noise all the time that we never really needed a soundtrack playing in the background. As a result, I didn\u2019t have a natural sense of rhythm. Eventually, the producers arranged drumming lessons to help me hear the beat properly. It took work, but I wasn\u2019t going to shy away from that. I\u2019d seen my mum\u2019s work ethic growing up, and that stayed with me. If something needed effort, I was going to give everything to it.<\/p>\n

After Billy Elliot, there was the option of going to a stage school such as Sylvia Young, but I wanted to go home and live a normal life again. When I\u00a0was back in Hartlepool, I joined Ruff Diamond, a dance group made up of local boys. We were just a group of lads giving it a go, but somehow we got on to the TV competition show Got\u00a0to\u00a0Dance in 2013, performing hip-hop routines. We made it all the way to the final as runners-up.<\/p>\n

For a while, I seriously considered working on the railway. It\u2019s mad how close I came to a different life<\/p>\n

After that, I had a moment of reckoning. I felt a bit of self-doubt and started asking myself what I was actually doing, and where I wanted my life to go. For a while, I seriously considered working on the railway doing cable pulling. It would have been easy to go down that route, not go to drama school and never do any of this. Looking back, it\u2019s mad how close I\u00a0came to a completely different life.<\/p>\n

Years later, I got a call about an Emmerdale<\/a> audition. I needed to do a\u00a0self-tape, but I was on holiday at the time. I remember thinking, \u201cRight, let\u2019s just get this done so I can go to the beach.\u201d I put effort into it, but I\u00a0did it quickly and then forgot about it completely. I\u2019d done so many self-tapes by that point that I\u2019d learned not to hold on to hope. When you\u2019re between roles, you can send off 10 tapes and hear nothing back. That silence messes with your head. You start wondering whether everything you\u2019ve done was just a fluke, whether you should be doing something else entirely. The industry demands persistence and a strong sense of self-worth, especially when you\u2019re not working. Then, in a moment, everything can change. Seven weeks later, Emmerdale called and asked me to come to Leeds. I did a screen test on Thursday, moved there on Sunday, and started work on Monday.<\/p>\n

Emmerdale reaches millions of people every night. The audience becomes incredibly familiar with you \u2013 so familiar that they feel like they know you personally. I\u2019d be walking down the street and people would say, \u201cOh hi, Nicky!\u201d You get so used to it, you almost go along with it.<\/p>\n

One of the best parts of getting Emmerdale was knowing it was my Nana Dot\u2019s favourite programme, along with Vera. I\u2019ve managed to work on both now. It feels like a\u00a0pattern \u2013 if Nana likes the show, I end up on it. The same goes for Strictly.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 30 now, but I feel like a kid again. Dancing nine hours a day, six days a\u00a0week on Strictly really gave me a new lease of life. It lifted me emotionally and physically. Every week I\u00a0convinced myself I wouldn\u2019t get where I needed to be by Saturday. I\u2019d say I felt stiff, that I looked daft, that I couldn\u2019t move properly. Katya [Jones, his dance partner] always reminded me to look back at the week before and trust the process. You always get through it.<\/p>\n

If the 11-year-old version of me who auditioned for Billy Elliot could see where I am now, he\u2019d be grateful I\u00a0kept going. It hasn\u2019t been easy. There were plenty of moments where I\u00a0could have chosen not to do the scary thing and missed out on something great. And I\u00a0can still feel the same buzz and energy I had back then. That\u2019s\u00a0something I never want to lose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lewis Cope in a dress, playing Michael in Billy Elliot the Musical, in 2008, and reproducing the look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-463471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}