Soap operas are the victims of snobbery, says Michelle Keegan
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Soap operas are the victims of “snobbery”, actress Michelle Keegan has claimed.
Keegan, who began her career on Coronation Street and has featured in a string of TV dramas including Downton Abbey, currently stars in the Netflix crime drama Fool Me Once.
The thriller, which follows Keegan’s character Maya as she uncovers a conspiracy surrounding the brutal murder of her husband, has brought in more than 10 million viewers in the UK and topped Netflix’s most-watched programmes list in more than 60 countries.
Speaking to Fearne Cotton on the Happy Place podcast, Keegan credited the typically “working class” soap opera for her dramatic training.
She said: “I’m naturally disciplined but I think that’s come from being in a soap. I think there’s a lot of snobbery surrounding soaps.
“For me, it’s the best learning platform you can ever do as an actor.
“I remember we were filming three different story lines at one time, with three different directors, not in chronological order, going back and forward.
“Being in a soap, it’s so fast-paced you have to be on your game. You have to be.”
She added: “I feel like that discipline I learnt from soaps at such a young age I sort of carried that through my career.”
Keegan, 36, previously spoke out over the gulf between the dramatic rigour demanded by soap operas and dismissal the form receives as it’s “seen as working class – people look down on it”.
When her Coronation Street character, Tina McIntyre, was killed off in 2014, she began branching out into dramas including Our Girl and Ten Pound Poms.
Keegan’s career trajectory from soap opera apprenticeship to the star of an internationally-popular drama is not unique, and the value of long-form serial dramas like EastEnders and Coronation Street has often been championed by performers.
Nathalie Emmanuel, the Game of Thrones star who started out on Hollyoaks, spoke in 2021 about the “snobbery” with which soap operas were viewed, an attitude she claimed affected how people judged her acting abilities.
The actress said that US producers, being unfamiliar with British soaps, gave her a blank slate when she tried to further her career.
Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the former executive producers of EastEnders, said on his 2016 departure from the show that it was “a real snobbery towards soaps, which is sad”.
He added: “Everyone knows that soaps prop up the schedules and that new dramas are shown off the back of them, on both the BBC and ITV. But there’s still this attitude of ‘Oh, it’s just EastEnders’.”
Dame Julie Walters defended the form in 2015, saying that she disliked “people being snobbish about soaps”, adding that “there’s a lot of very good acting and lots of issues are addressed”.
Soap operas were among the most-watched programmes in the days of unchallenged linear television, with 17 million viewers tuning in for the death of “Dirty” Den Watts on EastEnders in 2005, but new platforms like Netflix have diluted soap audiences.
Some in the industry have also warned that the desire to attract younger viewers may cause loyal older viewers to give up their soap opera habits.
Sally Wainwright, the creator of the hit drama Happy Valley and a former Coronation Street writer, warned at Edinburgh TV Festival in 2023: “I don’t watch soaps myself any more, which is kind of odd as I grew up with them.
“I kind of got out of the habit of doing that. I think it’s quite common.
“It felt like all the stories got a bit samey, a bit similar, all about romance. Or a lot more obsessed with getting younger views and so making the stories about younger people, and ignoring the fact that their key audience was older than that.”
