His Dark Materials Actor Guilty In Sickening Criminal Case

The Nottingham Crown Court found Daniel Frogson guilty on Tuesday, for which he received an eight-month jail sentence that was instead suspended for 24 months. He’ll also need to register as a sex offender for the next 10 years and attend a 43-day rehabilitation program for 15 total sessions.

Daniel Frogson, 21, was found to have downloaded or viewed over 840 explicit images involving children when he was 17. Police were alerted to Frogson’s illicit activities when they discovered an IP address in 2023 downloading the offensive images came from Nuthall, Nottinghamshire, where Frogson was living at the time.

Police seized two computer devices from Daniel Frogson’s home containing three images of children engaged in unlawful acts and several search terms “showing a s*xual interest in children,” according to prosecutor Nicola Patten. The elicit materials featured photos of children as young as three years old, 165 of which fell under the most serious category of class A indecent images. Frogson denied having any knowledge of the images or any s*xual interests in children in interviews with law enforcement, probation officers, and prosecuting attorneys before entering his guilty plea in court.

Judge Steve Coupland held nothing back in his sentencing, categorizing Daniel Frogson’s crimes against children as worrying, heinous, and “sickening.”

“Each of them is a real child being abused for the pleasure of someone like you watching,” Coupland said during sentencing. “It is made worse because of the number of them – there were 848 indecent images – and it is made worse by the length of time you were doing it.”

Daniel Frogson has a relatively short acting career but quickly found fame as Tony Costa, the oldest son of Ma Costa, on the BBC One and HBO TV series adaptation of Philip Pullman’s fantasy novel series His Dark Materials. He started his acting career in 2018 on the CBBC mini-series Joe All Alone, based on the best-selling novel by Joanna Nadin about a 13-year-old boy left all alone in his mother’s apartment for a week when she and her lascivious boyfriend go off together on an impromptu trip. The series received two BAFTA nominations the same year, winning Best Drama in the children’s award category.

Daniel Frogson appeared in the first season of the BBC and HBO’s adaptation of His Dark Materials for six episodes as Tony Costa, the oldest son of the Costa family who helps rescue his kidnapped brother Billy. The British tabloid The Mirror reported that Frogson is also currently working in construction, and he continues to audition for new roles after putting his career on hold for a year to complete his court case.

Is His Dark Materials cursed? The adaptations of Pullman’s novel series seem to be one of those franchises that just seems to run into bad luck more than a few times.

The Golden Compass, the 2007 film adaptation of the first novel Northern Lights in the His Dark Materials series starring Daniel Craig, bombed at the box office, making just $8.8 million on its opening day after opening on over 3,500 screenings. Now Daniel Frogson’s criminal history seems to be looming over the one adaptation that saw even a smidge of success following the novels.