A new series, Northern Lights, kicks off on Tuesday on TG4 and we speak to one of its stars, Sligo actress Elva Trill, just as the news breaks that the Hollywood actors' strike, which has halted TV and film production globally for four months, is coming to an end.
"I'm delighted that it's over, but I'm also delighted that it happened," she says. "There's so many people that are not getting royalties and are just not being looked after.
"As much as it has affected us and things have been stalled, it's all for the right reasons," she continued.
"I don't think they'll stop there - it's potentially going to be crews next and Equity (another major actors’ union), and fair dues, because when you see the margins and the differences between who earns what, and who's getting absolutely nothing, it's worth it - it's worth the fight."
Our focus shifts to Northern Lights, the six-part series written by and starring Tallaght playwright Stephen Jones, with Trill, Jay Duffy and Belgian actress Jennifer Heylen in the lead roles.
Set in Dublin's north city, 29-year old Trill stars as Áine Casey, a fiery Dublin hairdresser whose world collides with that of Lloyd (Stephen Jones) when he notices her standing on Grattan Bridge in pouring rain.
She explains, "It’s a story about strangers, essentially, who are all coping with different degrees of loss and frustration and guilt, a lot of anger. The show itself deals with... big, big things like suicide and also the resilience and hope these people find within each other.
"[Lloyd and Áine] have a chance encounter and through this journey that they take together, they both find out so much about each other. They know that they're going through things that are quite similar and they're sort of like two batteries that get to charge in each other's company. They just go on a little adventure together and recharge each other."
Despite the heavy themes, Trill says the show also has a lot of humour.
Jay Duffy, known from The Wheel of Time and Irish movie Handsome Devil, plays Seán, Trill’s character's boyfriend, and gives a strong performance here as a young man that is heavily burdened by mental health struggles and panic attacks. Trill hopes that the show captures the reality of mental health problems in a realistic way, especially her own character’s impatience and lack of understanding of his condition.
"Yeah, and it happens, right? More often than not... people don’t have the tools. She's not equipped to understand how to handle somebody that is changing so often, who can just take off, disappear and not tell her where he is... there's such a frustration in Áine."
"That's where the guilt comes from. The show has a lot of flashbacks, and as she reflects on how she handled herself, she has an awful lot of sadness in her for the lack of patience that she showed."
Trill says the casting of the photogenic Jay Duffy works well. "When you look at Jay, [you think] that person has so much going for them - handsome, talented, a gentleman, and you kind of think, this happens to everybody - it doesn't matter who you or your appearance or anything like that.
"It's a mental issue and it's very serious and I hope and I think that we have dealt with that very fragile topic in a way that's real, but also sensitive."
Trill is also undertaking a psychology degree, which clearly goes hand in hand with getting into the psyche of different characters.
"I’ve an assignment due right now on cognition of the brain!" she laughs. "It's lovely. You know, I really enjoy it. It's something I picked up during Covid because I thought if the industry doesn't come back to the way it was, what am I going to do? So it was almost like my lifeline."
"I always used to be asked, if you weren't going to do acting, what would you do? It was always going to be something to do with the mind. And I think that's the reason why I was so attracted to acting in the first place... getting into characters’ minds."
The actress’s latest turn comes on the back of 13 years of work, where she’s had roles in everything from Ripper Street to Line of Duty, culminating in a huge moment last year when she gave the closing speech as Dr. Charlotte Lockwood in Jurassic World Dominion.
The film was the last in the Jurassic World trilogy and became the third highest grossing film globally last year.
After the film wrapped, "I got a phone call from Colin Trevorrow [writer and director of the film] - well, he WhatsApped me first and said, 'Can I give you a call?'
"My jaw hit the floor and I was in such a panic because I thought, 'Oh my God, is this going to be one of those, ‘We have to go a different direction’ calls!?"
But, "No, it was just to say that, ‘You closed out the franchise - your speech closed out the franchise', and it was just incredible."
She’s also worked with industry stalwarts Jeff Goldblum, Matthew MacFadyen, Laura Dern and counts both Alec and Billy Baldwin as friends – but which actor with whom she’s worked has left the biggest impression?
She pauses and responds, "It's funny because it's an actor who is actually incredibly quiet - Tom Vaughan-Lawlor.
"I can't quite put into words the way that I saw him switching to character," she recalls.
"We had one scene in Maze [the 2017 film inspired by the prison breakout of 38 IRA prisoners]… when we sat down, he was so kind and so lovely and chatty.
"And then they said ‘action’, he completely shifted into character, but it didn't take anything out of him. It was just sort of so natural and organic and I just think he's such a phenomenal actor."
And of her friendship with the Baldwin brothers? "Myself and Billy did a couple of Christmas-themed children's movies in Rome and the minute that I met Billy it was just one of those things where we just knew exactly who each other was. We went for dinner, it was just so natural and we became buddies.
"We would take scooters around Rome at the weekends and just have a glass of wine and have dinners. And he's so funny and so intelligent - both of them are incredibly intelligent guys."
"And then Alec... it really was a ‘pinch me’ moment when I’m in a scene with Alec Baldwin, who I've watched my entire life and have seen in all these amazing movies."
Northern Lights - Tuesday 14 November at 10.30pm on TG4.
