{"id":142305,"date":"2025-09-17T00:20:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/142305\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T00:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:20:07","slug":"owen-coopers-emmy-sends-message-to-look-outside-the-box-drama-school-says-adolescence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/142305\/","title":{"rendered":"Owen Cooper\u2019s Emmy sends message to \u2018look outside the box\u2019, drama school says | Adolescence"},"content":{"rendered":"

The co-director of the drama school where Adolescence<\/a> star Owen Cooper trained has said she hopes his Emmy win will encourage producers to \u201clook outside the box\u201d when it comes to casting working-class and northern talent.<\/p>\n

Cooper, 15, became the youngest ever male recipient of an Emmy<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Esther Morgan, who runs the Drama MOB school in Didsbury, Manchester<\/a>, with the Coronation Street star Tina O\u2019Brien, helped train Cooper alongside hundreds of other young people from the north-west from a wide variety of backgrounds.<\/p>\n

She said they were delighted at his success and pleased to see the producers taking the time to look for talent outside London.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a frustration in the industry that everything seems to happen in London, despite the talent that exists elsewhere,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWe 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\u2019re from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper was cast in Adolescence after Stephen Graham, who co-created and starred in the series as the father of Cooper\u2019s 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 \u201cwho may not normally have those opportunities\u201d and that doing so was the show\u2019s biggest achievement.<\/p>\n

Morgan said: \u201cWe\u2019re so proud of Owen and so happy for him, and he\u2019s worked so hard, and we\u2019re delighted that the producers took the time to look for northern talent and took a chance on him. But it\u2019s so rare they\u2019ll take that chance, and so much talent is never looked at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan hopes that Cooper\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou 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,\u201d Morgan said. \u201cWhat we really want, and what we hope Owen\u2019s success does, is give a bit of a message out to everybody that maybe they need to look outside the box a bit. 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\u2019ll find a star.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Drama<\/a> 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 \u201cbridge that gap and make sure that it is accessible to everybody\u201d.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cdone nothing and came from nowhere\u201d<\/a> despite being trained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The co-director of the drama school where Adolescence star Owen Cooper trained has said she hopes his Emmy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-142305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}