{"id":768394,"date":"2026-09-12T14:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T14:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768394\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T14:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T14:04:14","slug":"it-got-out-of-hand-the-eastenders-star-building-revolution-in-manchester-after-ditching-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768394\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It got out of hand’: The EastEnders star building ‘revolution’ in Manchester after ditching London"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite hailing from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, actor David Witts has chosen Manchester as the home of his very own acting studio, where the youngest student is in their teens, while the eldest is in their 80s.<\/p>\n

But why Manchester? “It has everything you could possibly need without there being a pretension to it,” he tells the Manchester Evening News. “I’ve lived all over. I spent three or four years in LA filming some TV shows out there, and when I came back to England post-COVID, I wanted to live in a city and thought I’d check out Manchester.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t know much about it, but I came up for a weekend and thought, ‘Yeah, I want to stay here!’ It just has such a nice, welcoming vibe. Speaking to my desire for authenticity in myself and in the work I see in others, Manchester has authenticity built in. It feels like less of a pretence here than in other cities I’ve lived in. I just really enjoyed that.”<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to get the biggest stories straight to your inbox in our Daily Newsletter<\/p>\n

And you may be hard-pressed to find anyone in the city who disagrees. Not only is Greater Manchester home to a TV institution in Coronation Street<\/a>, but it\u2019s also a go-to filming location for some of the biggest film and TV shows in recent years.<\/p>\n

From Marvel’s 2022 film, Morbius, and 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, to a number of Netflix\u2019s adaptations of Harlan Coben\u2019s best-selling books and the streamer’s recent success story, House of Guinness, which has been confirmed for a second run.<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the BBC<\/a>, which broadcasts some of its flagship shows from here, even opting to keep its World Cup coverage in the summer in Salford<\/a>, rather than following ITV<\/a> out to New York, and there’s also a huge number of entertainment game shows filmed at MediaCity UK, from University Challenge to The Voice UK.<\/p>\n

For David, who is best known for his portrayal of Joey Branning in BBC soap EastEnders<\/a>, which saw him pick up Most Popular Newcomer, at the 2013 National Television Awards, his acting studio, Work MCR, which is based in Ardwick, isn’t necessarily about making the next Northern star – with Greater Manchester the former stomping ground of the likes of Sir Ian McKellen, Sarah Lancashire, Christopher Eccleston and Suranne Jones.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Former EastEnders star David is sparking an ‘acting revolution’ in Manchester(Image: Handout)<\/p>\n

“Work MCR is basically an acting studio that, like many things, it’s something that sort of just got out of hand,” he tells us. “I had been doing some teaching for other studios before, like a lot of actors do in between jobs. I realised the way I teach became larger than teaching within somebody else’s business framework.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to have small classes. I wanted to prioritise people sharing their real experiences rather than getting better at pretending, which is typically what acting is. “My interest was to get people to actually stop acting\u2014and by that, I don’t mean give up the career, I just mean stop pretending.<\/p>\n

“It became difficult to do that teaching for other companies because you have to stick to their framework. As an actor myself, especially as I get older, I’m not really interested in getting better at tricking people into thinking that I’m feeling something that I’m not. I’m more interested in seeing how deeply I can open myself up to share whatever weirdness is inside.”<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old continues: “It sounds a bit hippie when you say it out loud. But I started with just ten actors that I knew very well and worked with, who I knew wanted to work in this way too and I started doing one class a week with them. Then other people started to hear about it and wanted to get involved, because it turns out a lot of actors shared my desire to stop acting and instead share real feeling.<\/p>\n

“Suddenly, almost two years in now, we’ve built a community of probably near 100 people who do regular classes with me. We’ve built this community, and it feels a bit like a revolution in Manchester in terms of actors who genuinely care about authenticity and being open, available people in their work.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

David in one of his classes at Work MCR(Image: Handout)<\/p>\n

He adds: “The short answer is: it basically just got out of hand. You don’t start out thinking, “I’m going to have my own acting studio.” You just follow what you want to do, and then suddenly realise there’s something in this that other people want to share in.”<\/p>\n

And the North-South divide? “I feel like I’m trying to bridge that gap as a Southerner living up here now,” David says. “It’s difficult for me to speak fully to the Northern experience, but living in London and Essex (where I’m from), I used to think London was the centre of the universe and that I had to be a stone’s throw away from it. That was really stupid of me.<\/p>\n

“As soon as you move outside of there, you realise that’s not the case at all, and I think a lot of people are waking up to that. More people are choosing different cities within the UK to live in because there’s no longer the need to be tethered to the capital city. The world has gotten smaller.”<\/p>\n

As he’s asked what he’d like to change, or achieve, by having his acting studio in Manchester, David, who has had roles in movies The Beekeeper and A Working Man’, both opposite Jason Statham, comments: “It’s not so much about changing too much. It’s more about giving local actors the opportunity to train at a very high level without having to travel halfway across the country,” he says.<\/p>\n

“The community of actors we’ve got is amazing, incredibly supportive, and really up for challenging themselves to get better. While my studio offers part-time training, the actors are all-in and full-time in their effort. I want the studio to be somewhere people can get everything they need, rather than treating it like a fun hobby while believing the “real training” takes place in London.<\/p>\n

“No one really wants to watch someone doing their ‘acting’ at them. We want to watch people be honest, real, and authentic. Therefore, the training historically passed down from coaches 100 years ago is no longer as relevant when what we want in 2026 is to see real authenticity in people.”<\/p>\n

And his own soap background is also something that inspires David while up North. “Northern soaps are really respected up North; people love them and really get behind them, probably because they’re seeing people like themselves on TV,” he says. “Coronation Street alone generates so much work for Manchester actors. It’s about time some of these Manchester actors actually got that opportunity rather than, you know, casting agents using their London actors.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite hailing from Southend-on-Sea in Essex, actor David Witts has chosen Manchester as the home of his very…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[243,1078,96,2951,391,56,54,55,112864],"class_list":["post-768394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bbc","tag-eastenders","tag-entertainment","tag-manchester-city-centre","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-unmissable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768394","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=768394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}