Hugh O'Conor grew up on movie sets as a child actor, starring alongside the likes of Liam Neeson and Daniel Day-Lewis. This dramatic life inspired him to create a new family comedy - Showkids. Tune in to RTÉ One Sunday, 14 September at 5.10pm to see all the drama.
Here, Hugh tells us about his passion project, the amazing cast and crew and his excitement of seeing it all come together.
Showkids is definitely the most personal thing I've ever done. It was partly inspired by my own family and child acting life. I went to an intense but brilliant after-school drama class like Miss Jessop’s, where our imaginations were encouraged rather than dampened down. I hope this show does that too. It’s not about kids wanting to become actors, more about learning to use drama to find out who you are - which I’m still trying to work out. As Miss Jessop says, when we grow up, we lose our sense of play that children engage with so effortlessly. Maybe that’s why we tell stories instead?
Some of my clearest memories are our improvisations. We were given a title, and a set number of minutes to come up with a scene, which we would then have to perform for the others. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. We were making it all up, sometimes in front of whole audiences! The technique is not unlike the legendary improv comedy of the Upright Citizens Brigade, the Groundlings, or Second City. I’ve gone on to use it in workshops with drama students. They’re always freaked out to start with, and by the end, they’re totally immersed. Sometimes they even use it to help work out problems in their own lives, like the kids in our show.
Growing up, I loved comic books like Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County, and shows like The Simpsons, where the young characters went on funny, hugely imaginative visual and emotional journeys. I wondered when our kids began to imagine a scene, could we magically see their version of it, and then reappear back in class, knowing it was just their imagination? Faced with this challenge, on a strict budget, our indefatigable production designer Steve Kingston came up with so many creative solutions that I’m still smiling about it.
As well as the drama class, Showkids is also about the high-stakes and often comical world of show business that the kids (and parents) soon find themselves thrown into. I experienced it on films like Lamb with Liam Neeson, the disowned-by-Clive Barker horror Rawhead Rex, Da with Martin Sheen, and with Daniel Day-Lewis in the Oscar-winning My Left Foot. Our amazing young lead, Flynn Gray, is experiencing it now, as he’s starring opposite Ryan Gosling in Star Wars: Starfighter. I’m not sure if that’s life imitating art, or vice versa, but it’s pretty cool either way.
After reading the pilot episode, our super plugged-in casting director, Shauna Griffith, immediately flagged that nobody but Flynn could play our 12-year old daydreaming hero, Sam Curtain. At his audition, I asked Flynn what he’d been up to lately. "Night shoots" he calmly replied. We all knew he’d be perfect. It was sometimes quite surreal to see Flynn re-enacting things that had happened to me at that age - being chased by a monster on a cardboard set, or shouted at by the angry director for looking at the camera - nothing too traumatic, but still scary for a 12-year-old, and he was always such a pro. We’re all so excited for him.
I started writing the part of Fiadh for Niamh Moriarty (Best Interests), when we acted together in Jack Thorne’s version of A Christmas Carol at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, where, night after night, she made everyone bawl as Tiny Tim. It was so moving to be reunited with her a few years later on set. She’s such an incredible human being, and she’s only going from strength to strength as an actor. I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.
To complement the rest of our talented young performers, we knew we wanted to cast really funny people in the grown-up roles. The rule was their characters had to be sillier than any of the kids, and with folks like Philippa Dunne, Killian Sundermann, Amy De Bhrún, Ardal O’Hanlon, Peter McGann, Giles Brody, Rory Nolan, Hannah Mamalis, Thommas Kane Byrne, Moe Dunford, John Butler, Jennifer Zamparelli and so many others, they made every day on set a comedy treat.
It’s been almost ten years since I first jotted the idea down, from approaching Nick Murphy (Moone Boy) and my fantastic co-writers, Amy Stephenson and Shane Langan, to the show finally coming out. Our tireless producers, Mike Donnelly, Paul Donovan and the whole Deadpan team have gone above and beyond, and it couldn’t have been made without the unfailing support of Suzanne Kelly in RTÉ Kids, and everyone at Screen Ireland.
We hope the whole family enjoys the show as much as this extended family enjoyed making it.
Showkids starts on RTÉ One Sunday, 14 September at 5.10pm.
