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Something For The Weekend: Clare Dunne's Cultural Picks

Updated / Wednesday, 2 Feb 2022 21:18

Since the last time we caught up with actress Clare Dunne, she's scored success on the big screen as the writer and star of Herself, and on the smaller one as star of RTÉ's crime drama Kin.

Now she's been chosen as one of the European Shooting Stars of 2022, to be officially announced at next month's Berlin Film Festival.

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Listen: Shooting Star Clare Dunne talks to Ray D'Arcy

To celebrate the occasion, we asked Clare for her choice cultural picks...

FILM

The Worst Person In The World is an amazing film I got to see recently, and I'm obviously gonna go and see Belfast in the next week. A black and white movie with incredible actors: Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds are two of my favourite humans on earth. The Damien Dempsey documentary Love Yourself Today is also well worth watching.

MUSIC

I recently discovered Orla Gartland and loved her buzz. I'm also listening to everything in the documentary Summer of Soul. Today, I was making my lunch to Sly and The Family Stone.

BOOK

I read a book called Selfie recently that was a real anthropological study of how we all got a bit obsessed with ourselves over the last 20/30 years. It was epic. My more fun read has been Robbie Sheehan's new book Disappearing Act. The relentless spiralling imagination of that man… wow. And the laughs.

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Listen: Robert Sheehan talks Disappearing Act on RTÉ Arena

THEATRE

Faith Healer recently at the Abbey was brilliant. But I was also lucky enough to see Cush Jumbo play Hamlet at the Young Vic in London. She just killed it. She was smooth, charming, funny, heartbreaking.

Cush Jumbo

TELEVISION

I'm not great at committing to TV programmes, okay? I admit it... and I work in TV. I love Succession like everyone else. I’m gonna do Dopesick. I mostly love stand up comedy, to be honest. Check out Tom Papa.

GIG

I haven't been to a gig in like two years… so I am the same as everyone else. I want to see Damien Dempsey badly, as I went to the gig they filmed in that documentary and it was life changing. The power of the man ’s presence is something you have to experience in person. I believe in the religion of the sesh!

ART

I'm gonna shamelessly plug my cousin Cara Dunne, who got Dun Laoghaire Rathdown's Emerging Artist Grant in 2020 . But genuinely, I really love her work - I commissioned her to do do cartoons as framed gifts for me once. She has this sense of humour that kills me, in person and on her cards. She’s doing a great series of portraits of deadly women in Ireland… can’t wait to see them.

Cara Dunne, 'Molly and Ruby', 2018

PODCAST

Blindboy - been listening to him since he started. I recently discovered We Heart Worry with Yasmine Akram and Philippa Dunne. They just have these hilarious chats about silly worries - it's really really funny and makes you laugh at yourself, too. There is something in the way they laugh… its like that real bold, holding-it-in, sitting-at-the-back-of-the-classroom laugh. Gas.

THE NEXT BIG THING...

Every activist for climate change I reckon. People like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trying to steer America to a Greener way of life. We need bold visionaries and the people willing to be brave enough to uproot everything and change it from the bottom up. It's not about money anymore. It's about our kids, the earth, the future, the feckin human race.

Kin is currently available via RTÉ Player - watch the box-set here.

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