I grew up in Finglas in Dublin, but I don’t often go back there. We ended up in Phibsborough in my teens, so general northside is home. I don’t go home as much as I would like to, so when I do, I’m back in Phibsborough or I’m hanging around town.
I went to university in Limerick and did law for two years, and then got bored, and slightly disillusioned. I just thought, you know what? Maybe I can be more effective doing something else. So I said, I’ll give the old acting a go. And that’s worked so far.
I came back to Dublin and did a part-time course in the Gaiety for a year and then applied for the full-time course, and did that for two years.
My first gig on television was Little White Lies when I was just out of drama school. I have such vague memories of that show, one because my part in it is so small, and two because I always just assumed that TV would be something I would do a lot of.
Even though it was 2008 when I was starting my career, I didn’t really notice what was going on around me. When you’re in the little bubble of Irish theatre and Irish art, and you’re just out of drama school, what you’re focused on is getting the next job. Get a job, get seen, let people know who you are. So the other stuff, it’s not that it doesn’t affect you, but you can get a bit of tunnel vision with what is happening. I guess that was if you were like me, and you were lucky enough to be still living at home and you didn’t have to pay any rent.
In 2011, I got the call for Love/Hate when I was in London after doing my first play at the National Theatre in Conor McPherson’s The Veil. I’d heard about the first season of Love/Hate, but I hadn’t watched it because I’d been away. And then Maureen Hughes called and asked me to do a tape for this character, Lizzie.
I did it, sent it off, and then I had to get home very quickly and abandon my digs to get on a plane to meet Maureen and Stuart Carolan.
I still occasionally have people in London, who have been watching it on whatever streaming service it’s now on, come up to me and say, “I’ve just started watching Love/Hate.” Good writing lasts, good TV lasts. Love/Hate was so well put together that I’m not surprised it’s still going. I think people will be rediscovering it for a long time.
I moved to London from Dublin about 10 years ago. London is so big that to compare the two seems a bit silly, because you can fit about five Dublins in London. Probably more.
Sinéad Keenan, Caoilfhionn Dunne and Róisín Gallagher, stars of How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. ‘We did the chemistry read together, and the rest is history.’ Photograph: Netflix
Sometimes you get little sharp reminders that you’re not from here and that you’re a foreigner. Every now and again you get a little, “Oh yeah, no, you don’t know what that means.” English people don’t say give out. They don’t say press, they say cupboard. That’s a big one.
Then you meet an Irish person and you get into a massive, big, ranty chat with them, and everybody’s looking at you like you are a pair of lunatics.
But I like it here. I like the fact that there are five different small cities in one big, massive city. And as much as I love Ireland for its quiet and its countryside and that availability of the sea and the green, I like what London has to offer, even if I don’t need it on that particular day or that week.
People ask if I have trouble with my name in London. I have had trouble with my name for the past 41 years. No matter what country I’m in, it’s always been a thing, really.
I find more and more in London that people are going out of their way so that when I walk into a room, they can just say it and there’s no little snide remarks, or “How funny? How weird? How, you know … ?” There’s less and less of that happening, which is nice.
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When it came to How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, I absolutely loved Derry Girls. I don’t know anybody who didn’t. I got an email from my agent saying, “Would you like to tape for this new Lisa McGee show?”
I did that first monologue from the show, the one Dara does at the beginning, and another scene. I sent it off, and did what you do every time, which is wait and not pin too much on it. And then I got a call back, many months or weeks later, saying, “Do you want to come in and do a chemistry read with two other actors?”
I had no idea who they were, so I turned up at Spotlight Offices in London. Róisín Gallagher was outside. We went in together, and Sinéad Keenan was in the room upstairs. We did the chemistry read together, and the rest is history.
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The minute we sat down to do that, we all felt it. We were the same level of nervous. We were the same level of wanting it. We were the same level of invested in it. And everybody knew who they were when they sat down. That dynamic was immediate; the back and forth. Everyone laughed, and that’s what you want.
One of the reasons why I really wanted to do the job was to go on a road trip around Ireland and make people laugh. That’s a dream job. Donegal [where the series was filmed] is exceptional. It really is. It was very cold and windy, but beautiful. When you go away from home you forget what’s right on your doorstep.
In conversation with Niamh Browne. This interview, part of a series about well-known people’s lives and relationship with Ireland, was edited for clarity and length. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is streaming on Netflix now