Given his stratospheric rise in 2011, Roscommon’s Chris O’Dowd may well be one of the happiest men in showbiz and as Taragh Loughrey-Grant discovered, he’s certainly one of the soundest.
Nothing seems to faze Chris O’Dowd; not the pressure of his new Irish comedy, Moone Boy, not the global success of the summer blockbuster Bridesmaids and certainly not having a bath while doing our interview. The actor was well known this side of the Atlantic thanks to The Clinic and The IT Crowd, as well as roles in The Boat That Rocked and Gulliver’s Travels. However, it was the role of Officer Nathan Rhodes in the Judd Apatow produced Bridesmaids, co-written by his co-star Kristen Wiig, that made the beardy, 6ft 4” Boyle man a huge star stateside.
“I know, it’s been fun, hasn’t it?” he says. “It’s been great, but it’s kind of strange to deal with the successful nature of it because that’s all secondary to the fun of making that kind of stuff and finding people that you love playing with – all that area has been really enlivening.
“I think that in America at the moment there are really good shows like 30 Rock and The Office and they’ve a very similar sensibility to a lot of very funny Irish stuff and I think it makes it a lot easier for people like me.”
Despite a great audition and instant chemistry with Kristen, he didn’t think he’d land the role of the lovable traffic cop: “The director [Paul Feig] was weirdly an IT Crowd fan because he’s a big Brit comedy nut. They got me in to audition and it went really well. I auditioned with Kristen and did a couple of scenes and then improvised for about an hour. We just had a really good laugh, we had a similar sensibility which made it really fun.
“It’s a weird thing when you go into these auditions in Hollywood because there’s a sheet outside and everybody signs in, just to say that they’ve arrived but it means that you see the other people that are auditioning for the part and they were the kind of people that I was thinking ‘Oh, OK, well I shouldn’t have bothered turning up’.”
Bridesmaids co-stars Kirsten Wiig and Chris O'Dowd
Thankfully for comedy lovers everywhere, he did land the role, although Police Officer Rhodes wasn’t always Irish-American: “We never discussed it beforehand and when I went in I just presumed that I would do an American accent so I did and it was fine but I didn’t know at that stage that they knew my work and then the director said ‘You know what Chris, ‘I love the show [The IT Crowd] and I’d love to hear you do it in your own accent’ and we did and it worked a lot better.
“The two films that I did before and after Bridesmaids [including Friends with Kids, a comedy in which he once again plays opposite Wiig], I did an American accent for and it’s fine but it’s another thing to worry about. I’ve always been conscious in Britain and tried to use my own accent whenever I can because I don’t think that there are enough Irish voices in UK TV for the amount of people that live here.
“Unless there’s a very good reason why he can’t be Irish I make him Irish. I thought the reason why the Bridesmaids thing is a bit weird is because he’s a cop. We looked into it though and there are loads of them [first generation Irish-American police officers].”
Following much encouragement from The IT Crowd writer and creator, Father Ted’s Graham Linehan, who he describes as a
“genius writer”, the Boyle boy has picked up the pen for a new TV show.
He’s been busy in Steve Coogan’s offices in London working on Moone Boy, the Sky comedy which will begin filming in Boyle in January.
“We’ve written six episodes and now we’re just doing rewrites and we’re in pre-production and casting – it’s called Moone Boy. It’s kind of based on me as a kid in Boyle and it’s set there and I hope it’ll be really funny. There’s a kid, an 11-year-old, and I’m his imaginary friend. So I think it’ll be good it’s looking pretty funny.”
The show is set in 1990 and will feature historical events such as the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Mary Robinson’s Presidential election. As well as writing and producing, he will play the imaginary 31-year-old friend. Not a huge challenge for the 32-year-old, which is just as well, seeing as he already has a number of new roles to adjust to.
“I’m writing and executive producing, so it’s kind of all-encompassing at the moment and it’s great, I’m so excited about it. There isn’t an awful lot of Irish stuff on mainstream British TV and I’m conscious of that, I don’t think there’s enough stuff set in Roscommon and the Midlands too, so it’ll be nice to introduce people to that. We’re going to have someone else direct it, a guy called Declan Lowney [Father Ted, Little Britain], who is gonna be great.”
The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson and O'Dowd
Despite living in London, Chris is a bit of a home-bird, and he was back again recently for his dad’s 70th birthday.
“I’ll be in Boyle for Christmas. There are five kids in the family; John is the eldest, there’s Doirbhle, Triona, Jenny and me, I’m the baby, we are all very close.
“If they’re reading this at Christmas, I’m really expecting them to up their game, present-wise, because the last few years have been so disappointing. They really need to think about what I deserve rather than what they buy, which is garbage. I got a padded clothes hanger from my sister [Triona]. I don’t know if there was a hidden meaning or if it was just what she found in the house on the way to Christmas lunch.
“My sisters have been having some kind of baby making competition for the last three or four years and I think that they think that that’s an excuse for giving very mid-range presents but I’d like to let them know now, publicly, that it’s not and let’s not forget who the real baby in the family is!
Ribbing to one side, there are some special traditions in the O’Dowd Christmas calendar: “We go to the pub the night before Christmas, which is great but my favourite day of the year is Stephen’s Day.
“We go on a treasure hunt through a forest outside Boyle and every year a different family run it. They set up mulled wine stations while you’re getting the clues.
“You end up in a pub called Clarke’s in the middle of the town where you find out who’s won. There’s a charity auction where people bring in unwanted Christmas presents, wine and stuff and it’s all for the local hospice. Then you stay and talk all evening. Isn’t that fab? It’s such a beautiful town around that time of year with the lake and everything, it’s gorgeous.”
He may find the time at Christmas to read some of the multiple marriage proposals he’s been getting on Twitter (@BigBoyler) since Bridesmaids.
“Is this you segueing into sex symbol stuff? I thought it was amazing. It is weird but I think it’s not so much a sex symbol thing it’s more like women want me to go on a blind date with their sister. They don’t want me to lather them in a shower. I think they think he’s such a sweet character in Bridesmaids that it’s not about sex, it’s about comfort.”
Right on cue, I hear his girlfriend, journalist and documentary-maker, Dawn Porter, ask incredulously if he is really doing an interview in the bath! What does she make of all of this new attention?
“Listen, she is a lucky woman. No, I think she thinks it’s funny and surprising. If she hears people talking about it, she will say to me ‘I just don’t see what they see’ which I think is really funny. She’s great. We’re happy out, we’re very domestic, we’re just here with our dog [a Jack-Russell mix called Potato] and our cat and it’s all great.”
Even with five new films set for release – Friends with Kids, Hippie Hippie Shake, Frankie Go Boom, The Sapphires and This is Forty – along with his new Irish comedy, Moone Boy, O’Dowd is hoping that a dream project will soon also become a reality: “I’ve always wanted to do a feuding-brothers-comedy about the Yeats brothers but I haven’t found an angle on it yet. I like the idea of Jack B Yeats and WB Yeats just not really getting on. I think myself and Cillian Murphy would do a great job on it, we did a couple of things together already. We did Hippy Hippy Shake and Playboy of the Western World for Druid, a good while ago, during the first few years of The Clinic. It was a lot of fun.”
Has he told dad-of-two, Cillian, about his plans? “No, not yet. ‘Surprise, Happy Christmas! Stop having babies for five minutes and let’s go do this.’”
