Why it’s easy for people like Daisy Ridley to stay ignorant of privilege

Reading Daisy Ridley’s interview with the Guardian this weekend, in which she discussed her privilege, was a strange experience.

As someone who tried to access the world of performing arts, only to be confronted with class differences, my main take-away was that Daisy doesn’t see herself as privileged because, as an upper middle-class white woman, she is protected from seeing how privilege works.

In the interview the Star Wars actor was asked whether she thought her privilege – her boarding school, her upper middle-class upbringing and her family connections, including a playwright and actor uncle – had made it easier for her to be confident and navigate celebrity.

Responding with surprise – ‘The privilege I have – how? No, genuinely, how?’ – she then drew comparisons between herself and her fellow Star Wars cast member, black British actor John Boyega, before putting her confidence partly down to ‘being part of a big family who are all quite chatty’.

Reading this it was obvious to me that Daisy had never had to come face-to-face with her privilege and it brought back some strong memories for me.

At 14, I still hadn’t grown out of my childhood dream of becoming an actor and applied for a place in a theatre group for young people.

I turned up to the auditions with a couple of monologues memorised and ready to take part in a group workshop. But when I got there and met the other applicants, something felt a bit off.

There was something about them – their mannerisms, their accents, the way they carried themselves – that was different, and made me question my own mannerisms, my own accent and the way I carried myself. 

From my working class kid perspective, I knew that these other kids were ‘posh’ and it was jarring – I was confronted with a class difference that I hadn’t really thought about before and was suddenly unsure about how I should operate.

It threw me off and I didn’t end up getting into the theatre group – although I won’t rule out that being down to a lack of talent…! But I found the situation so uncomfortable that I knew I didn’t want to apply again. And I didn’t.

For the other teens at the audition, and likely Daisy growing up, the thoughts and worries I had probably wouldn’t have crossed their mind. 

Anyone who has felt the inadequacy that can come from not fitting in with middle or upper class surroundings has run into the existence of privilege like it’s a brick wall.

The same goes for anyone who has not been able to pursue a career like acting due to not having enough money to support themselves in an insecure industry. Or anyone who has been turned off by the fact that the industry doesn’t tend to employ people like them.

These experiences are obstacles that stop you from doing what you want – and are hard to ignore.

But if you have privilege, this kind of rude awakening doesn’t tend to happen. If your class, wealth or whatever allows you to carry on as normal and doesn’t force you to think about what other people have, then privilege can simply seem like the status quo.

But this isn’t an excuse for people who have privilege to remain ignorant of it. Over the past few years there has been a lot of discussion about privilege and acting in particular – whether it’s about the lack of actors of colour, the need for more working class actors, or decrying the fact that so many British A-Listers, from Tom Hiddleston to Eddie Redmayne to Damian Lewis, went to Eton. 

And this year, a government report found that while only seven per cent of the British public went to private school, this number rose to 44 per cent among our top actors.

Although it might be easier for people like Daisy Ridley to stay ignorant of privilege, it’s important that they do make an effort and wise up to its existence. 

It is, after all, only by acknowledging its workings and seeking to redress the imbalance that we can make sure more people don’t have their life chances affected by what they do or don’t have.