After losing 10 stone, Daisy May Cooper worried whether casting directors would still see a place for her in comedy. The This Country actor, 40, said she “really panicked” that being slimmer meant she was no longer funny.
“I thought, ‘F***. Is that going to affect me casting-wise?’ Will I be scratched off people’s lists when they go, ‘She can’t be the funny big one?’” she said. “It’s so mad that as women we even have to think about that.”
Changes to Cooper’s diet and lifestyle between 2021 and 2024 included low-carb, high-fat meals, while her size dropped from 24 to 10. Before that, climbing the stairs left her struggling for breath, with pain in her chest and left arm.
“I thought, ‘This is it. I’m going to f****** die before my kids go to secondary school if I carry on like this.’”
She also described being shamed for wanting to feel healthier. Abuse about her changed appearance became so difficult to handle that she stopped using a mobile phone and handed control of her Instagram account to her fiancé and personal assistant, Anthony Huggins.
“People are so f****** horrible and mean and say such horrible things, I just can’t even go near it,” Cooper said. She still makes videos and gives Huggins instructions for posting them, but stays away from the account herself.
Her changed appearance also created a continuity problem for Am I Being Unreasonable?, the BBC comedy in which she plays Nic. In March 2025, she explained that its 2nd series was meant to follow almost immediately after the 1st, which aired in 2022.
“Series one is meant to be 30 seconds before series two, and in that 30 seconds I’ve lost about 10 stone and had my lips done,” she said.