Daisy May Cooper has admitted it 'was the last straw' when ITV dropped her and her brother after years of 'sacrifice' to try and get their show This Country commissioned.
The comedian, 40, rose to fame creating and starring in the mockumentary, which followed her character Kerry Mucklowe and her cousin Kurtan, played by her brother Charlie, during their day-to-day life in Cirencester, Cotswolds.
The siblings were inspired to write about their upbringing whilst they were living together in London, with Daisy enrolled at drama school RADA whilst Charlie worked at Topshop after dropping out of university.
The 'homesick' pair spent their spare time doing impressions of people back home before honing their characters when they moved back to Cirencester.
Speaking to Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast, Daisy explained how they worked as night cleaners back home because 'we were so ashamed to do anything in the day, where somebody might come in and go, "Oh, I thought you were going to be at uni and you were at drama school and now what?"'
During their night shifts, the pair wrote their first scripts for This Country before filming some scenes to send to production companies. 'We had to be at that kind of rock bottom with everything else to to be able to gamble like that,' Daisy explained.
Daisy May Cooper has admitted it 'was the last straw' when ITV dropped her and her brother after years of 'sacrifice' to try and get their show This Country commissioned
ITV eventually gave the pair a pilot but the comedian explained once the broadcaster 'saw the pilot, that was so awful, they were like no'.
They were dropped by both ITV and their production company, with Daisy admitting she feared for Charlie's mental health.
'I remember getting that phone call and Charlie just said "I'm going to go out for a bit". And I remember thinking he's going to do something stupid to himself because it was the last straw and it had been so many years and we sacrificed everything for this.'
There was more bad news after Daisy called their agent who explained to them 'you've signed a contract, so you can't take this idea to anyone else because if you do, you have to pay for the rights, which they have bought for something like £500'.
'They bought the rights off of us. It was such a bad deal. So we'd have to buy them back and it would be £300,000. We didn't have a pot to p*** in. We could barely afford to buy tobacco just to have a rolly that day.'
Despite the setbacks, Daisy explained 'I just knew that everything was going to be OK.'
A determined Daisy went 'straight to the commissioner of the BBC and I sent him the clips and the original script that we had done and I said "I will stand outside your office please come and talk to me."'
'He emailed back that night and said come in for a meeting.'
The comedian, 40, rose to fame creating and starring in the mockumentary, which followed her character Kerry and her cousin, played by her brother Charlie, during their life in Cirencester
Daisy said in a 'bizarre' twist of fate 'we went in for a meeting and the person that had just been in before us was Phoebe Waller-Bridge who was selling Fleabag. So Fleabag and This Country got commissioned within the same hour.'
Daisy added: 'We said "we've got all this debt" and he said "don't worry about it we'll pay for it, we'll sort it". We could have just spent £300,000 to buy our own characters back.'
This Country aired for three acclaimed series from 2017-2020 and won Daisy a Best Female Comedy Performance Bafta.
Last year Daisy admitted This Country won't be making a return due to her dramatic weight loss.
Since the show finished Daisy has undergone a dramatic health transformation and has lost ten stone. She has joked she would never be able to play Kerry again unless her character 'had a tapeworm'.
Speaking to the Radio Times, Daisy revealed her and her brother are working on something new: 'It's early days but we're working on something unscripted.
'We can't do This Country, though, because I've lost so much weight and I've had my lips done. We'd have to say that Kerry's had a tapeworm and been stung by a bee.'
Daisy has been on a dramatic weight loss journey over the last three years but previously revealed she has since been flooded with messages telling her that she's 'no longer funny' since changing her appearance.
ITV eventually gave the pair a pilot but the comedian explained once the broadcaster 'saw the pilot, that was so awful, they were like no'
Discussing her appearance, the mother-of-two told the BBC podcast How To Be In The Spotlight: 'I'm so for body positivity but when I was at my biggest I was at my most miserable and I had a massive food addiction.'
'I wasn't healthy. I couldn't breathe when I was walking up the stairs. I was so unhappy. And I've had some messages like, "Well, now you've lost the weight you're not funny any more".
'What the f**k? Why do women have to be f**king fat to be funny? That makes me so angry. I champion anybody. I think everybody should be happy with their body. But I wasn't.'
Daisy's weight loss caused a similar issue during the filming for season two of her BBC comedy Am I Being Unreasonable?
Filming had to be delayed due to Daisy's new slim physique and lip filler treatment as the star joked: 'Series one is meant to be 30 seconds before series two and in that 30 seconds I've lost about ten stone and had my lips done.
'I saw the rushes and I said to the BBC, "God, we're going to have a disclaimer at the beginning saying - Daisy has had her lips done, go with it and please don't judge".'