Daniel Laurie is a British actor born in 1995 in London who is best known for playing Reginald “Reggie” Jackson in BBC One’s beloved period drama Call the Midwife — a role he has held since Series 6 in 2017 and which has made him one of the most warmly regarded performers in British television. He was born with Down syndrome, grew up in Kensington, London, left school at seventeen after suffering persistent bullying, and found his calling in acting — a career that was discovered, as he has described it, precisely because of the path that bullying forced him to take. He is the son of the late EastEnders actor Leslie Grantham, who played the iconic “Dirty Den” Watts, and Australian actress Jane Laurie, who separated from Leslie in 2013 after 31 years together. Daniel chose to take his mother’s surname after the divorce. Beyond Call the Midwife, he has appeared in Vera, Stella, Finding Alice, and The Dark Power, and he returned to the show in its 2025 Christmas Special and Season 15 in 2026. In this complete guide you will find everything about Daniel Laurie — his early life, his family background, his acting career, the significance of his Reggie Jackson role for Down syndrome representation, his personal story, and his latest work.
Who Is Daniel Laurie?
Overview and Significance
Daniel Laurie occupies a unique and genuinely important position in British television. He is one of very few British actors with Down syndrome who has sustained a long-running, substantial role in a primetime BBC drama — and in doing so, he has provided the kind of authentic, dignified, and fully realised representation of a person with Down syndrome that the television industry has historically struggled to deliver. His portrayal of Reggie Jackson in Call the Midwife is not a peripheral or tokenistic inclusion but a recurring, emotionally significant character whose relationships, friendships, anxieties, and joys have been explored across multiple seasons and years of the show.
What makes Daniel Laurie’s story genuinely compelling — beyond the professional achievement — is the personal journey that produced it. Bullied out of school at seventeen, with no formal qualifications and no established professional pathway, he was helped into acting by his mother Jane, discovered a natural talent and an extraordinary affinity for the camera, and built a career from those unpromising beginnings that has brought him to the attention of millions of British television viewers. His father Leslie Grantham — one of EastEnders’ most famous original cast members — provides the famous-family dimension to his story, but Daniel Laurie’s career is unambiguously his own achievement, not an inheritance.
His advocacy role — both intentional and incidental — for positive representation of people with Down syndrome in mainstream culture is significant. The television landscape in the UK and internationally has for decades underrepresented people with learning disabilities and conditions such as Down syndrome in leading or substantial dramatic roles, and Daniel’s consistent, naturalistic, and emotionally intelligent performance of Reggie Jackson has contributed meaningfully to changing that pattern. He has spoken about this responsibility with characteristic directness and warmth, describing himself as a role model for others with the condition and affirming the importance of showing what people like him and Reggie can contribute.
Early Life: London, Family, and School
Birth and Kensington Childhood
Daniel Laurie was born in 1995 in London, England — his exact birth date has never been made public, a privacy choice that he has consistently maintained throughout his career. He was born with Down syndrome — a genetic condition caused by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21, which is associated with certain cognitive and physical developmental characteristics and which affects approximately 1 in every 700 births worldwide. Down syndrome is the most common chromosomal condition in humans and the most common genetic cause of learning disability in the UK.
He grew up primarily in Kensington, one of the most central and affluent of London’s boroughs, in a household that was both creative and characterised by genuine warmth and support. His mother Jane attended a special school for children with Down syndrome in Kensington, ensuring that his educational environment was specifically tailored to his needs and that he received the specialist support that the condition requires. His father Leslie Grantham’s approach to Daniel’s Down syndrome was immediate and unconditional: Jane Laurie recalled that when they knew their third child had Down syndrome, Leslie’s response was unambiguous — “Whatever we get, it’s our baby.” When Daniel was born and Leslie held him for the first time, his famous assessment was: “You know, there are some hard things in life, but this isn’t one of them.”
The warmth and acceptance of that parental response to his diagnosis was clearly foundational in Daniel’s development. In a period when Down syndrome was often met with social stigma, institutional discouragement of high aspirations, and a general expectation of limited horizons for people with the condition, having parents who embraced him completely and who expected him to have a full and active life was enormously significant. His father Leslie subsequently became a fundraiser for the Down’s Syndrome Association, demonstrating that his commitment to his son’s wellbeing extended to the broader community of people with the condition.
The Bullying Crisis and School Exit
Daniel Laurie’s experience at school was, by his own account, defined primarily by bullying — a painful reality that ultimately forced him out of education but that, as he has come to see it, opened the door to the career that changed his life. He has spoken about his school experience in multiple interviews, consistently describing it as deeply unpleasant, and attributing his departure — at the age of seventeen — directly to the cruelty of his peers. “I hated school,” he told The Mirror. “I was badly bullied and that made me walk out of school. But, because of that, acting found me when I was 17.”
The specific nature of the bullying he experienced — as a young person with Down syndrome in a school environment — reflects the broader reality that children and young people with visible or diagnosed conditions are disproportionately likely to experience bullying. Research consistently shows that pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are significantly more likely to be bullied than their peers without such needs, and Daniel’s experience places him in a large and underserved community. His willingness to discuss it publicly — not as a defining trauma but as a fact of his past that he has processed and moved forward from — reflects the emotional intelligence and self-possession that have characterised his career.
The exit from school could have been the end of his aspirations. Without formal qualifications, with a condition that continues to be associated with limited professional expectations in many minds, and having left education under difficult circumstances, the pathways available to him were not obviously promising. It was his mother Jane who identified acting as a potential avenue — herself an actress, she recognised in Daniel a natural communicative ease and an emotional expressiveness that could translate into performance. It was, as he has said, his mother who “found an acting career for me.” The specific debt to Jane Laurie in the founding of his career is one he has acknowledged with evident gratitude throughout his public life.
Family Background: The Grantham-Laurie Dynasty
Daniel Laurie’s family background is one of the more remarkable in British television history, involving two parents who were both working actors and a legacy that provides a fascinating context for his own career. His father, Leslie Michael Grantham — known to millions of British television viewers as “Dirty Den” Watts — was born on 30 April 1947 and became one of the most famous actors in the UK through his central role in EastEnders from the soap’s first episode in 1985. Grantham’s backstory was itself extraordinary and turbulent: he had committed manslaughter in Germany in 1966 while serving as a soldier, was convicted, served ten years in prison, and then — remarkably — built a legitimate acting career from his release, studying drama while still imprisoned and eventually securing representation that led to the EastEnders casting.
Leslie’s Den Watts was one of the great villain characters of British soap opera history. His 1989 “death” — shot by a mysterious woman and left floating in the canal — was one of the most-watched EastEnders moments of its era, and his 2003 return from the dead was similarly a major television event, drawing enormous audience interest. The 1986 Christmas special in which Den served divorce papers to his wife Angie (Anita Dobson) was watched by over 30 million people — the highest-rated EastEnders episode in the show’s history and one of the most-watched television broadcasts in British history. Leslie Grantham also appeared in The Bill, Cluedo, and Heartbeat before his death on 15 June 2018 from lung cancer, aged 71.
Daniel’s mother, Jane Laurie, is an Australian actress who was working in British television and film throughout the 1980s. Her credits include Return of the Soldier (1982), The Last Place on Earth (1985), and Foreign Body (1986) — a career that placed her in the mainstream of British screen acting during a productive decade in her profession. Jane’s decision to take the most active role in supporting Daniel’s acting career — introducing him to the industry, finding representation, and using her own professional network to create opportunities — reflects both her professional expertise and the depth of her commitment to her son’s aspirations. The couple married and remained together for 31 years before separating in 2013, with Leslie and Jane maintaining a co-operative relationship around their children through to Leslie’s death in 2018.
Daniel’s decision, after his parents’ separation, to take his mother’s surname Laurie rather than his father’s name Grantham was a personal choice that reflected the closeness of his relationship with Jane and his own sense of identity — and one that has arguably served his career, distinguishing him clearly from the EastEnders legacy while keeping the family connection visible through the Laurie name.
Acting Career: The Professional Journey
The Beginning at Seventeen
Daniel Laurie began his acting career at the age of seventeen — directly following his exit from school and almost entirely as a consequence of his mother Jane’s identification of acting as a potential career path and her use of her own professional knowledge to help him access the industry. His first professional credits came in Vera — the ITV crime drama starring Brenda Blethyn as the eccentric Northumbrian detective DCI Vera Stanhope — where he appeared in the episode “The Escape Turn” as Adam Beecher. He also appeared in Stella — the Sky One Welsh comedy drama starring Ruth Jones — in 2016.
These early credits, while minor, were significant for establishing two important things: first, that Daniel had genuine professional acting ability that could hold up in competitive dramatic productions alongside experienced actors; and second, that he could secure professional work in mainstream British television, not as a token inclusion or as a special interest casting exercise, but as a working actor taking roles in long-running, professionally respected programmes. The Vera credit in particular — an ITV mainstream drama viewed by millions — placed him in the type of professional context where his abilities would be evaluated on the same basis as any other actor.
Stella and Early BBC Work
Daniel’s appearance in Stella (2016) — the comedy drama about a Welsh working-class family navigating modern life, created by and starring Ruth Jones — gave him another mainstream British television credit in a show with a loyal and substantial audience. The Stella appearance contributed to the growing picture of a young actor who was building a genuine professional portfolio rather than making a single tokenistic appearance. His work across these early credits, combined with his family background and his mother’s professional network, put him in the position to be considered for the far more substantial and consequential role that would arrive in 2017.
Call the Midwife: The Role of a Career
Daniel Laurie’s casting as Reginald “Reggie” Jackson in BBC One’s Call the Midwife — from Series 6 in 2017 — was the defining professional event of his career and arguably one of the most significant castings in the history of disability representation in British drama. Call the Midwife is a long-running, critically acclaimed, and enormously popular BBC drama created by Heidi Thomas, based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth about her experiences as a midwife in the East End of London in the late 1950s and 1960s. The show — which typically attracts audiences of 8–10 million viewers per episode and has run to fifteen series as of 2026 — is one of the BBC’s most important and commercially successful productions.
Reggie Jackson was introduced as a young man with Down syndrome who is orphaned following his mother’s death and is taken in by his second cousin Fred Buckle (Cliff Parisi) and Fred’s wife Violet (Annabelle Apsion). His integration into the Buckle household, his life in and around the Glasshouse Trust care home for young adults with disabilities, and his relationships with the wider Poplar community provide both the show’s most direct engagement with the experience of Down syndrome in 1960s Britain and some of its most genuinely moving and warmly observed human content. The character of Reggie is not merely a vehicle for social commentary but a fully realised individual with his own personality, enthusiasms, friendships, and emotional life.
Reggie Jackson: The Character and His Journey
Who Is Reggie Jackson?
Reggie Jackson is introduced in Call the Midwife as a gentle, warm, and fundamentally kind young man who is, at the moment of his introduction, recently bereaved and in need of a new home and a new sense of belonging. The circumstances of his arrival in the Buckle household — and subsequently in the wider Poplar community — are handled by writer Heidi Thomas and the show’s creative team with the sensitivity and specificity that characterises Call the Midwife’s best work. Reggie is not presented as a Problem to Be Solved or as an Inspiration to Others in the patronising sense that often afflicts fictional portrayals of disabled characters — he is simply a person, with the same need for love, belonging, purpose, and friendship that everyone has.
His character’s arc across the series has followed the trajectory of a young man finding his place in the world. He works in Fred Buckle’s shop, developing the practical independence and sense of contribution that are central to his dignity and self-esteem. He forms a close and genuinely touching friendship with Cyril Robinson (Zephryn Taitte), the community centre worker whose warmth and patience provide Reggie with one of his most important adult relationships. He experiences the joys and challenges of the Glasshouse Trust residential home, where his relationships with other residents and with the care staff explore the specific texture of life in a supported living environment with intelligence and empathy.
The Representation Significance
The significance of Reggie Jackson as a character in Call the Midwife extends well beyond the individual storylines he inhabits to the broader question of what it means to see a fully realised, long-running, recurring character with Down syndrome in a primetime BBC drama. Research consistently shows that authentic, dignified, and complex representation of disabled people in mainstream media has measurable positive effects — on the self-esteem and aspirations of people with similar conditions, on public attitudes toward disability, and on the degree to which disabled people are included in mainstream social and economic life.
Reggie’s portrayal specifically captures the nuanced reality of living with Down syndrome in mid-twentieth-century Britain — a context in which people with the condition were often institutionalised, frequently excluded from mainstream social participation, and rarely treated as individuals with full personhood. The historical setting allows the show to comment honestly on the attitudes and practices that were common in that era while showing, through Reggie’s relationships, the humanity and possibility that existed alongside those attitudes. His “My favourite episodes are the ones with Fred and Reggie” response from viewers reflects the genuine emotional connection that audiences have formed with a character who brings both warmth and authenticity to the show.
Fred and Reggie: The Core Relationship
The relationship between Reggie and Fred Buckle is the emotional heart of his storyline in Call the Midwife and one of the most genuinely touching family relationships in the show’s long history. Fred — played by Cliff Parisi, who himself appeared in EastEnders and therefore shares a significant biographical coincidence with Daniel Laurie’s family background — is not Reggie’s father or biological close relative but becomes a father figure through the specific circumstances of Reggie’s arrival in the household. The warmth, protectiveness, and quiet pride with which Fred approaches his relationship with Reggie is one of Cliff Parisi’s most assured pieces of character work, and the reciprocal affection and respect with which Daniel Laurie plays Reggie’s side of the relationship makes the pair one of the show’s most beloved duos.
Health storylines involving Fred — particularly a serious tetanus-related illness that left viewers convinced he might die — have specifically tested the emotional stakes of the Fred/Reggie relationship, with the fear of losing the surrogate father figure providing some of the most emotionally intense moments in Daniel Laurie’s Call the Midwife work. Viewer responses to these storylines — including the quoted comment “My favourite episodes are the ones with Fred and Reggie” — confirm the depth of audience investment in a relationship that, at its best, is one of the most authentic and moving things the show does.
Call the Midwife: The Show and Its World
About Call the Midwife
Call the Midwife is a BBC One period drama created by Heidi Thomas, adapted from the memoirs of Jennifer Worth — a midwife who practised in the East End of London from the 1950s and whose books, written decades later, were adapted into a television series that premiered on 15 January 2012. The show is set in the fictional Nonnatus House, home to both nursing nuns and lay midwives who serve the impoverished communities of Poplar in east London during the postwar years, and follows both the medical dramas of midwifery practice and the social history of a period of profound national change.
The show’s creator and head writer, Heidi Thomas, has guided the programme across fifteen series with a consistent emphasis on social history, medical authenticity, and the emotional and human complexity of its characters and their world. Under her stewardship, Call the Midwife has evolved from a critically praised period drama about a specific professional practice into one of British television’s most beloved and commercially successful long-running series, attracting audiences of 8–10 million viewers per episode and winning multiple BAFTA nominations across its run. The show airs on BBC One on Sunday evenings and is available on BBC iPlayer.
The cast of Call the Midwife is one of British television’s most distinguished ensembles, including Jenny Agutter, Stephen McGann, Laura Main, Judy Parfitt, Annabelle Apsion, Cliff Parisi, and Helen George, alongside the rotating cast of midwifery trainees and supporting characters whose stories provide the weekly narrative texture. The Christmas specials have become a regular and enormously popular fixture in the British television calendar, with the 2025 Christmas special — set in Hong Kong — airing as a two-part event across Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2025.
Daniel’s Latest Call the Midwife Appearances
Daniel Laurie reprised his role as Reggie Jackson in Call the Midwife Series 13 (2024) and in the 2025 Christmas Special — the Hong Kong-set two-part event that aired on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2025. He then appeared in multiple episodes of Series 15, which began airing in January 2026. His confirmed Series 15 appearances are in Episode 1 (11 January 2026), Episode 2 (18 January 2026), Episode 3 (25 January 2026), and Episode 5 (8 February 2026) — a substantial presence in the show’s most recent run that confirms both the character’s continued importance to the series and the production team’s commitment to Reggie as an ongoing, evolving part of the Poplar world.
The Hong Kong Christmas Special was notable both for its ambition — taking the show to an international location for the first time in its history — and for its audience reception, which was as warm as any Call the Midwife seasonal special in recent memory. Daniel’s involvement in the special confirmed Reggie’s standing as a character the show considers important enough to include in its most ambitious and high-profile production of the year.
Finding Alice and Other Acting Work
Finding Alice (2021)
Daniel Laurie’s most significant acting work outside Call the Midwife is his role as Zack in Finding Alice — the ITV black comedy drama that premiered in January 2021, written by Roger Goldby and Nicola Shindler, starring Keeley Hawes as Alice. Finding Alice tells the story of Alice, whose partner Harry (Jason Flemyng) falls to his death shortly after the couple move into their dream smart home, leaving Alice to navigate grief, family expectations, financial difficulties, and the increasingly absurd complications of the smart house technology — all while discovering that Harry was not the man she believed him to be.
Daniel played Zack — a young man with Down syndrome who forms a relationship with Alice in the series. The casting was significant in several ways. Finding Alice was a major ITV production with a high-profile cast including Keeley Hawes, Joanna Lumley, Nigel Havers, and Sharon Rooney, and Daniel’s casting placed him in company that confirmed his status as a professional actor whose abilities were trusted at the level of high-budget, star-led ITV drama. The role gave him material distinct from Reggie Jackson — Zack is a different character in a completely different genre context, allowing him to demonstrate range rather than simply repetition of the qualities familiar from Call the Midwife.
Finding Alice was very well received by critics and audiences, with Keeley Hawes’s performance at the centre of particular praise. Daniel’s contribution to the series added to the growing picture of an actor whose work in mainstream British television was becoming a meaningful and recognised part of the landscape.
The Dark Power (2020) and Other Credits
Daniel Laurie appeared in The Dark Power — a 2020 production — which added another credit to his growing portfolio of screen work. His television credits, across all productions, demonstrate a professional range that goes well beyond a single defining role, even as Call the Midwife remains the most substantial and most publicly visible context in which his abilities have been displayed. His IMDb page lists his principal credits as Call the Midwife, Finding Alice, and Vera, with Stella and The Dark Power as additional credits.
He has spoken on Twitter about his work with characteristic warmth and enthusiasm, describing his experience playing Reggie as one he hopes to continue “developing” and speaking of his desire to “show everyone everything that people like Reggie and I can bring to other’s lives” — a formulation that captures both his professional ambition and his awareness of the representative dimension of his work. His Twitter biography, which describes him as “actor, Star Wars fan and video game enthusiast,” reflects the personality visible in his public appearances: grounded, humorous, and disarmingly direct.
Personal Life and Interests
Family Relationships
Daniel Laurie’s family — his mother Jane, his brothers Spike and Jake, and his memories of his father Leslie — remain central to his public story. He and his brothers grew up in a household that, despite its celebrity dimensions, appears to have been characterised by genuine warmth and mutual support. Leslie Grantham was by all accounts a devoted and thoughtful father to all three sons, with a particularly special bond with Daniel. Jane Laurie’s role in launching Daniel’s career — and her continued presence as a supportive maternal figure throughout his life — is a thread that runs through virtually every profile of Daniel that has been published.
His older brothers, Spike and Jake Laurie, have been largely out of the public eye, maintaining a private profile that contrasts with their father’s famous public presence. Daniel is the youngest of the three and the only one who has pursued acting professionally. The family’s decision, collectively, to take Jane Laurie’s surname after the divorce — giving all three brothers the Laurie name rather than the Grantham name — reflects a united family identity that has been maintained through the years since Leslie’s death in 2018.
Hobbies and Interests
Daniel Laurie’s self-description on Twitter as “actor, Star Wars fan and video game enthusiast” provides a genuinely informative window into his interests and personality outside his professional work. His passion for Star Wars — the franchise that has been one of the defining popular cultural phenomena of the past half century — is a connection he shares with an enormous and diverse global community, and one that speaks to the enthusiasms and cultural consumption patterns of someone whose life is not entirely defined by his professional identity as an actor.
He is also a musician — a talent he has demonstrated publicly through his Call the Midwife Christmas Special appearance, in which he showed off his piano and guitar playing abilities. Music occupies an important place in his life and provides both a creative outlet and a social connector that is distinct from the professional world of acting. He has mentioned enjoying natural environments and open spaces as a counterpoint to the urban London life in which he was raised — a preference that connects him to the countryside and outdoors in ways that reflect a need for the kind of physical and mental space that busy city life does not always provide.
Leslie Grantham: The Famous Father
“Dirty Den” and EastEnders Legacy
Leslie Grantham’s status as one of the most famous actors in British television history provides important context for understanding Daniel Laurie’s biography, while simultaneously being something that Daniel has navigated thoughtfully throughout his career. The discovery that Daniel was Leslie Grantham’s son — which became more widely known in 2021 rather than at the outset of his career — provided a moment of intensified media attention that might have been uncomfortable for a more private personality. Daniel’s response was, characteristically, to acknowledge it without being defined by it.
Leslie Grantham played Den Watts in EastEnders from the soap’s very first episode in February 1985, providing one of the anchor characters for what became the most popular soap opera in British television history. His performance across the character’s first run (1985–1989), through the famous “death” that sent the character into the canal in a hail of bullets, established Den as one of soap opera’s great rogues — charming, menacing, and utterly compelling. His return in 2003 — with the reveal that he had been in witness protection rather than genuinely dead — was a storyline that generated enormous audience interest and placed Grantham once again at the centre of the show’s dramatic universe.
The discovery of a scan of Leslie in the 1986 Christmas special — in which Den hands Angie the divorce papers, watched by 30.15 million viewers — remains one of the most-watched television moments in British history. The programme’s grip on British popular culture at its mid-1980s peak was extraordinary, and Grantham’s Den Watts was at the centre of that grip. His subsequent career, including various television appearances and stage work, maintained his public profile even as EastEnders itself evolved and changed around him.
Leslie’s Death and Daniel’s Response
Leslie Grantham died on 15 June 2018, aged 71, from lung cancer. The death was announced through a representative statement and was met with widespread tribute from across British television and entertainment, acknowledging his unique contribution to British popular culture through EastEnders and the other productions in his long career. For Daniel, his father’s death was a private and personal loss — he has not made it a prominent public narrative, though its impact on his life can be inferred from the closeness of their relationship as described in earlier public accounts.
The particular poignancy of Cliff Parisi — who plays Fred Buckle in Call the Midwife alongside Daniel — having himself appeared in EastEnders as a separate character, brings a biographical connection between Daniel’s professional world and his father’s legacy that is both coincidental and moving. The two men who have the most important on-screen relationship in Daniel’s current career are connected, in different ways, to the show that defined his father’s professional legacy.
Leslie Grantham’s EastEnders Legacy in Full
To understand the significance of Daniel Laurie’s paternal legacy, it helps to have a complete picture of what Leslie Grantham’s EastEnders career actually represented in British popular culture. EastEnders premiered on 19 February 1985 on BBC One — a direct competitor to Coronation Street on ITV, the long-established soap whose dominance the BBC intended to challenge with a grittier, more urban drama set in London’s East End. The show was an immediate phenomenon, and Den Watts — introduced as the landlord of the Queen Vic pub, husband to Angie, and father (officially) to Sharon — was from the outset its most compelling and most complex male character.
Leslie’s Den Watts was fundamentally a performance of masculine complexity in a medium that had rarely attempted it with such conviction. Den was neither hero nor simple villain — he was charming and brutal, generous and cruel, loving and unfaithful, loyal to his community and treacherous to the individuals who trusted him most. The combination of these contradictions, delivered by Grantham with an effortlessness that made it look entirely natural, gave Den Watts a quality that made him genuinely riveting television. The famous Christmas 1986 moment — Den handing Angie the divorce papers — was watched by 30.15 million people in an era when television was the defining communal experience of British society, and its cultural resonance has never entirely faded.
His death scene in 1989 — shot by a mysterious figure in a fur coat whose identity was kept secret for years — generated years of speculation and was one of the most discussed television cliffhangers in British history. The confirmation, in 2003, that Den had in fact survived and had been living under a false identity became one of the great soap opera returns in the medium’s history. His second death in 2005 — at the hands of his adopted daughter Sharon — brought a genuinely epic narrative arc to its conclusion. The total television legacy that Daniel Laurie’s father left is one of the more extraordinary individual contributions to British popular drama that any single performer has made.
The biographical resonance between father and son is not merely the famous-family connection that journalists reach for as an easy story hook. It is the specific fact that both father and son found their professional expression in long-running BBC dramas that placed them at the emotional centre of communities — Den Watts in the Queen Vic, Reggie Jackson in Poplar — and that both were loved by their audiences not despite their complexities and challenges but because of them. Den was loved because he was flawed in interesting and human ways. Reggie is loved because he is genuine and warm in ways that remind audiences of what is best in human relationships. The two performances are entirely different, and the comparison is not one of equivalence. But there is a thread — of authentic humanity projected through the television screen — that connects the Grantham and the Laurie.
Disability Representation in British Television
The Landscape Before and After Daniel Laurie
The context of British television’s historical relationship with disability — and specifically with Down syndrome — provides essential background for appreciating what Daniel Laurie’s career represents. For much of television’s history in the UK, characters with disabilities were either entirely absent from mainstream programming, used as peripheral symbols of pathos or inspiration, or represented by non-disabled actors in roles that emphasised the condition’s challenges without capturing its full human complexity. The concept of “nothing about us without us” — the disability rights movement’s foundational principle that people with disabilities should be involved in decisions that affect them — was rarely applied to casting and storytelling decisions.
The specific history of Down syndrome in British television before Daniel Laurie’s arrival in Call the Midwife is one of sporadic, often well-intentioned but frequently patronising representation. Characters with Down syndrome appeared occasionally in soaps and dramas, but almost always in the context of storylines about other characters — parents struggling, siblings adjusting, communities responding — rather than as fully realised individuals with their own narratives. The person with Down syndrome was the occasion for other characters’ growth rather than the subject of their own story.
What Call the Midwife and Heidi Thomas did with Reggie Jackson was something more ambitious: they created a character with Down syndrome who has his own story, his own relationships, his own history, and his own future — and they cast in the role a genuinely talented actor with Down syndrome who brings to it the authenticity that can only come from lived experience. The result has been a character who, across eight years of television, has accumulated the kind of detailed, specific, fully human characterisation that allows audiences to relate to him not as a representative of a condition but as a person.
The Wider Movement for Authentic Casting
Daniel Laurie’s career exists within a broader movement in British and international screen industries toward authentic casting — the principle that roles representing people with specific identities, conditions, or experiences should, wherever possible, be played by people who share those identities, conditions, or experiences. This principle has been applied most visibly in debates about racial representation in casting, but it applies equally powerfully to disability, and the experiences of actors like Daniel Laurie have been central to shifting industry practice in this area.
The argument for authentic casting in disability representation rests on several foundations: the professional opportunity it provides to disabled actors who have historically been excluded from mainstream industry; the authentic quality it brings to performance that non-disabled actors, however talented, cannot fully replicate; and the cultural signal it sends to disabled audiences that their experiences and identities are considered worthy of genuine representation rather than proxy. Call the Midwife’s commitment to Daniel Laurie — providing him with a long-running, evolving, emotionally substantial role — has been one of the most visible examples of this principle applied in mainstream British drama, and its influence on subsequent casting decisions across the industry has been acknowledged by producers, casting directors, and disability advocates alike.
Down Syndrome Advocacy and Representation
Daniel’s Voice on Representation
Daniel Laurie has spoken consistently and thoughtfully throughout his career about the importance of authentic representation of people with Down syndrome in mainstream media and about his own role, through Reggie Jackson, in providing that representation. His statement about wanting to “show everyone everything that people like Reggie and I can bring to other’s lives” is one of the most direct articulations available of his understanding of the purpose and value of his work — not simply as professional achievement but as a social contribution.
He has described Call the Midwife’s creator Heidi Thomas as having provided him with a community, a family, and a purpose through his work on the show, and has spoken about how filming at Nonnatus House gave him the sense of belonging and acceptance that his school experience denied him. “Because of [show creator] Heidi Thomas I have bonded and made friends with the cast,” he has said — a statement that speaks to the specific therapeutic value that a supportive professional environment can have for someone whose formative social experience was dominated by exclusion and cruelty.
The Call the Midwife Creative Team’s Approach
The way in which Call the Midwife’s creative team — led by Heidi Thomas — has written and developed Reggie Jackson across multiple series is itself a significant contribution to the culture of disability representation in British television. Reggie has been given storylines that reflect the full range of human experience: joy and loss, friendship and loneliness, independence and dependency, growing up and finding one’s place in the world. He has not been presented as a passive recipient of others’ care but as an active participant in his own life and the lives of those around him — a distinction that is apparently simple but that is frequently not observed in television’s historical treatment of disabled characters.
The show’s historical setting — the 1950s and 1960s, when institutionalisation of people with Down syndrome was common and social participation was severely restricted — gives the Reggie storylines a particular resonance. His presence in the Poplar community is in itself a commentary on what was possible for people with Down syndrome even in an era when society conspired to limit their horizons, and his relationship with Fred, Violet, Cyril, and the wider community challenges the historical norm in ways that are simultaneously accurate about what some families and communities did manage and aspirational about what might be possible when acceptance and inclusion are genuinely practised.
Practical Guide: Following Daniel Laurie
Watching Call the Midwife
Call the Midwife airs on BBC One on Sunday evenings, typically beginning in January each year. Series 15 began airing on 11 January 2026, with Daniel Laurie appearing as Reggie Jackson in episodes 1, 2, 3, and 5. All episodes of Call the Midwife are available on BBC iPlayer — the BBC’s free streaming service available to UK residents with a valid TV licence. BBC iPlayer is accessible via web browser at bbc.co.uk/iplayer, and through dedicated apps on smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, Amazon Fire Stick, Apple TV, and other streaming devices.
The current UK TV licence fee is £174.50 per year (as of 2026), which provides access to all BBC One broadcasts and to the full BBC iPlayer on-demand catalogue. All fifteen series of Call the Midwife are available on BBC iPlayer, allowing new viewers to watch Daniel Laurie’s full Reggie Jackson arc from his introduction in Series 6 (2017) through to the most recent episodes of Series 15. The Christmas specials, including the 2025 Hong Kong special (which aired in two parts on Christmas Day and Boxing Day), are also available on iPlayer.
Finding Alice on ITV and ITVX
Finding Alice — the 2021 ITV comedy drama in which Daniel played Zack — is available to watch on ITVX, ITV’s free streaming platform. ITVX replaced the ITV Hub in November 2022 and is accessible at itvx.com and through the ITVX app on all major devices. Registration is free for UK viewers and provides access to ITV’s full on-demand catalogue. Finding Alice’s complete six-episode run can be watched in full on ITVX.
Social Media and Following Daniel
Daniel Laurie is active on X (formerly Twitter), where he has spoken about his work, his interests (Star Wars, gaming), and his experience on Call the Midwife. He does not have a public Instagram account, which reflects his generally private approach to his personal life and his preference for keeping his off-screen life separate from his public professional identity. His Twitter account, where he describes himself as “actor, Star Wars fan and video game enthusiast,” is the most direct window into his personality and enthusiasms available through social media. For official news about Call the Midwife, including Daniel’s upcoming episodes, the BBC One and BBC official social media accounts are the most reliable source of advance information.
FAQs
Who is Daniel Laurie?
Daniel Laurie is a British actor born in 1995 in London who is best known for playing Reginald “Reggie” Jackson in the BBC period drama Call the Midwife, a role he has held since Series 6 in 2017. He was born with Down syndrome and grew up in Kensington, London. He is the son of the late EastEnders actor Leslie Grantham (“Dirty Den”) and Australian actress Jane Laurie. His other acting credits include Finding Alice, Vera, Stella, and The Dark Power.
What condition does Daniel Laurie have?
Daniel Laurie has Down syndrome — a genetic condition caused by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21. He was born with the condition in 1995 and has spoken openly about it throughout his career, describing it as an important part of his identity and as one of the reasons his portrayal of Reggie Jackson in Call the Midwife has been so meaningful — both personally and in terms of representation. He has said of having the condition: “It’s great for me to have this syndrome.”
Who does Daniel Laurie play in Call the Midwife?
Daniel Laurie plays Reginald “Reggie” Jackson in Call the Midwife — a young man with Down syndrome who was orphaned following his mother’s death and is taken in by his second cousin Fred Buckle (Cliff Parisi) and Fred’s wife Violet (Annabelle Apsion). Reggie has been a recurring character since Series 6 in 2017 and has appeared in multiple recent series, the 2025 Christmas Special, and episodes of Series 15 (2026).
Who is Daniel Laurie’s famous father?
Daniel Laurie is the son of the late Leslie Grantham — the British actor best known for playing Dennis “Dirty Den” Watts in EastEnders. Leslie was an original cast member when EastEnders launched in 1985 and remained one of the show’s most famous stars through his character’s controversial death in 1989 and his dramatic return in 2003. The 1986 Christmas special in which Den served Angie divorce papers attracted 30 million viewers — one of the most-watched television broadcasts in British history. Leslie died on 15 June 2018, aged 71, from lung cancer.
Why did Daniel Laurie leave school?
Daniel Laurie left school at the age of seventeen because he was severely bullied by other students. He has spoken about this experience in multiple interviews, describing school as a place where the bullying was so persistent and severe that he simply walked out. “I hated school. I was badly bullied and that made me walk out of school,” he told The Mirror. He views this experience as having, inadvertently, led him to acting — his mother Jane helped him find an acting career after he left school.
Is Daniel Laurie related to Hugh Laurie?
No, Daniel Laurie is not related to Hugh Laurie. He took the surname Laurie from his mother, Australian actress Jane Laurie, after his parents separated in 2013. His birth name would have been Grantham (his father’s surname), but he chose to use his mother’s name. Hugh Laurie — the British actor best known for House M.D. and Blackadder — has no family connection to Daniel Laurie or to his parents.
What has Daniel Laurie appeared in besides Call the Midwife?
Besides Call the Midwife, Daniel Laurie has appeared in: Finding Alice (ITV, 2021) as Zack; Vera (ITV) as Adam Beecher (2020); Stella (Sky One, 2016); and The Dark Power (2020). His most substantial work outside Call the Midwife is Finding Alice, in which he appeared alongside Keeley Hawes, Joanna Lumley, and Nigel Havers in a major ITV production.
When did Daniel Laurie join Call the Midwife?
Daniel Laurie first appeared as Reggie Jackson in Call the Midwife in Series 6, which aired in 2017. He has appeared in the show’s subsequent series, Christmas specials, and most recently in the 2025 Christmas Special (which aired as a two-part event on Christmas Day and Boxing Day 2025) and in multiple episodes of Series 15 (2026).
Does Daniel Laurie have a twin?
No, Daniel Laurie does not have a twin. He is the youngest of three sons born to Leslie Grantham and Jane Laurie. His older brothers are Spike Laurie and Jake Laurie. There is no twin sibling. All three brothers chose to take their mother Jane’s surname (Laurie) after their parents separated in 2013.
What is Daniel Laurie’s net worth?
Daniel Laurie’s estimated net worth is approximately £500,000 to £700,000 as of 2024–2026, reflecting a career spanning over a decade of professional television acting. His primary income source is his recurring role as Reggie Jackson in Call the Midwife — one of BBC One’s most-watched dramas — alongside his appearances in Finding Alice and other productions. He has maintained this career despite, and partly because of, the unique position he occupies in British television as one of very few actors with Down syndrome in a sustained leading role.
How can I watch Daniel Laurie in Call the Midwife?
Call the Midwife Series 15 (2026) is available on BBC iPlayer at bbc.co.uk/iplayer. All previous series of Call the Midwife, including Daniel Laurie’s debut in Series 6 (2017), are also available on BBC iPlayer for UK viewers with a TV licence. The 2025 Hong Kong Christmas Special (two parts, Christmas Day and Boxing Day) is available to watch in full on iPlayer. BBC iPlayer is accessible on web browsers, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and streaming devices.
What does Daniel Laurie say about his Down syndrome?
Daniel Laurie has spoken about his Down syndrome with consistent openness and positivity throughout his career. He has stated: “It’s great for me to have this syndrome,” reflecting an accepting and positive relationship with his own condition that distinguishes him from the more commonly heard narrative of disability as primarily defined by limitation or suffering. He has also spoken about the importance of showing what people with Down syndrome can achieve and contribute, describing his role as Reggie Jackson as an opportunity to demonstrate that to audiences across the UK.
To Conclude
Daniel Laurie’s career — from the bullied teenager who walked out of school to the established BBC actor who appears in one of Britain’s most loved and most-watched dramas every year — is one of the more genuinely inspiring stories in British television. It is a story about talent recognised and nurtured by a mother who knew what her son was capable of; about a role created by a writer (Heidi Thomas) who believed in authentic, dignified representation; about an audience that fell in love with a character because he was written and performed with the full complexity of a real person; and about an actor who has turned what others might have seen as limitation into the foundation of an extraordinary professional and personal contribution.
His father Leslie Grantham — the most famous villain in British soap opera history — would, by all accounts, have been enormously proud of his youngest son. The man who told Jane Laurie, when Daniel was just a few days old, that “there are some hard things in life, but this isn’t one of them,” had understood from the beginning what Daniel himself has spent his career demonstrating: that Down syndrome is a fact, not a ceiling; a part of who someone is, not a definition of what they can become. In a career that has brought Reggie Jackson to millions of British viewers — and, through BBC iPlayer, to many millions more — Daniel Laurie has proved that point in the most compelling way possible: through the work itself.
The seventeen-year-old who walked out of school because the bullying was unbearable could not have imagined that he would one day play a character watched by eight million people every Sunday evening, appearing in the Christmas Special watched across the nation on Christmas Day, and returning to the show year after year as a character who has become one of its most genuinely beloved. That gap — between the frightened, bullied teenager and the established BBC actor — is the most important measure of Daniel Laurie’s achievement, and it has nothing to do with famous parentage or inherited opportunity. It is entirely his own.
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