Aside from cloning herself, actress Charlene McKenna couldn’t be much busier and as she tells Taragh Loughrey-Grant, she’s one very lucky girl.
Charlene McKenna is currently enjoying an embarrassment of riches in the acting stakes. She is in the middle of shooting the fourth season of RTÉ’s hit drama Raw and has just filmed appearances for Channel 4’s Misfits as well as the BBC’s Saturday teatime favourite Merlin.
“We’re flying through production. We just started the second block and it’s all going really well”, says Charlene about returning to the Raw set, “We’ve lots of new people this year, some nice new pretty people, older and younger. So it’s an interesting new dynamic.”
McKenna won an IFTA for her role as Jojo in the restaurant-based drama and she is excited about returning to the show: “I’m very happy with the scripts this year and I think it’s going to be a really good show. There are some trials this year as well, I think it’s good and I think it’s well written.”
The acclaimed drama has a strong following, not least because of the gripping storylines and complex love stories, which included Kryštof Hádek’s full frontal nude scene as Pavel in series one. However, McKenna will not be following suit: “I don’t think I’d be doing that now for RTÉ. I just don’t think I’d do that for TV, full stop. For film, it would have to depend on the nature of it. I suppose if you were in something like Michael Fassbender’s Shame then you’d do it; it’s all context, it’s all relative. That kind of thing might be different but for this kind of show, for me, it wouldn’t have been necessary. I don’t think people need to see that at 9.30pm on a Sunday with their tea!”
Charlene McKenna: "I think I was lucky, lucky that I came at a time when those things were being made and I was at a right age to play them."
The Monaghan-born actress has definitely not been idle between the seasons of Raw: “Both [roles in] Merlin and Misfits are guest leads. In Misfits, I’m playing Shannon, a dead girlfriend who Curtis, played by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett ,brings back to life”, she laughs, “and then all hell breaks loose. Then it’s the madness that follows because the Kelly character . . . she doesn’t take to a new woman too kindly!”
Speaking about her role as Lamia in Merlin, she says: “I found it fascinating, she was a daughter of one of the gods and they were basically created to kill children, and even Keats wrote this incredibly detailed, elaborate long poem called Lamia. In this instance, she’s half-serpent, half-woman and she wants to kill Merlin. Whether she does or not, I’m not saying!”
As we speak, Charlene is sitting in the make-up chair for Raw but I imagine the hair and make-up for both Merlin and Misfits was a little more demanding than Jojo’s? “The make-up for both of them was fascinating. For Merlin, it was great because there was a lot of prosthetics for the snakeskin. I have a huge battle sequence and I transform from half-snake, half-woman to full-on hideously frightening serpent. They showed me the CGI of what that was going to be and it was incredible, it really looks amazing, so I find that really fun.
“Misfits was really interesting. I had to have face scans because when I’m dug up, they bring me back from decomposed to composed in the coffin. It’s like seeing your face and it looks like a Bafta award, [the bronzed mask without eyes] but it’s your head. I was like ‘I want to keep that, I want to see myself as a Bafta!’
Charlene has made some great career choices to date, but it can’t just be down to luck, or can it? “I don’t know. I think I was lucky, lucky that I came at a time when those things were being made and I was at a right age to play them. There were a few in a row that came, like Pure Mule, which was a big change for RTÉ and a big change in writing and it was hugely successful, so I was so lucky to have that. Then Single-Handed; I thought it was amazing and that followed Whistleblower. I do think that I was so lucky and of an age at the time that stuff was being made. There comes a time when you do move on and you try to keep getting good things. I’ve been blessed, you get to meet amazing people, it’s a great job!”
Watch it! Merlin, Saturday, BBC One and the new series of Raw will begin on RTÉ One in the New Year.
