Dervla Kirwan is remaining tight-lipped about the finale to Irish family drama Smother, which comes to an end on Sunday night, but she said she was delighted to return to Ireland to make the hit show.
Speaking on Friday night's Late Late Show, she said, "There's a wonderful poetry to coming back now, here to Ireland, playing this part, doing this show and RTÉ are leading the way giving an older woman an incredible leading part that is so beautifully written by Kate O'Riordan."
Kirwan, who is from Churchtown in Dublin, plays "a bad mother" on the drama, which was filmed in the Clare village of Lahinch, and it’s the latest success for the actress, who made her breakthrough in Ballykissangel 25 years ago.
"I’m an older woman and getting this role is so amazing. I'm nearly 50 . . . I'm very upfront about it," she said. "I feel a tremendous curiosity and hunger for life. I feel really positive about it. It's an exciting time . . . "
"I think it was...a really difficult experience and yet a glorious one"
— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) April 9, 2021
Dervla Kirwan speaks about the pressure she faced from the press during Ballykissangel.#LateLate pic.twitter.com/8TRGi6IzFE
Speaking about her time on Ballykissangel, which ran on RTÉ and BBC from 1996 to 2001, she said, "It's a 25-year-old show now, and I have a very fond place for it in my heart. I had an extraordinary experience as a young woman, being catapulted into a 16 million viewer show, unheard of really.
"I had Goodnight Sweetheart, which was again, a massive show. I think it was a really difficult experience and yet a glorious one. Difficult because the press was very invasive and yet I felt like I had to publicise it.
"I didn't have the mentors there, hopefully the younger actors now will have a generosity from our generation," she added.
"There wasn't that when we needed it. I was very vulnerable at that time; I was 23/24 years of age."
Asked by host Ryan Tubridy about being Irish in the UK, she said, "I'm definitely the only Irish person in the village and I am incredibly proud but I am also torn because I’m an Irish woman who left an Ireland that couldn’t give me the opportunities I was looking for and I went to the UK and they gave me those chances and I took those chances."
