Star of Clare-based drama Smother, Dervla Kirwan, has worked in many notable TV shows, but as she tells Claire O’Mahony, it was a memorable experience to work through the pandemic in Lahinch.
Dervla Kirwan would like to give to shout-out to the inhabitants of a certain town in northwest Clare. "If anyone from Lahinch is reading this, Dervla just wants to tell them how much she misses them all and sends them love. They were lovely, lovely people," says the actor.
She has got to know this part of the country quite well, having spent three years filming the RTÉ drama thriller Smother here. The area wasn’t somewhere she had visited before. "I know a lot of Dublin people go to Lahinch because you’ve got the surf and the golf, but I never went there in my childhood so it was completely new," says Dervla, who grew up in Churchtown in south Dublin. "It is a breathtaking and starkly beautiful place and the whole area is magic."
The stunning scenery and the welcoming locals are not the only reasons she was thrilled when the role of Val Ahern, Smother’s calculating matriarch, came her way. "I had done The Stranger for Netflix, I’d had a very big success in London with a show called Jesus Hopped the A-Train and then I’d had a total failure with the Scottish play (a euphemism for Macbeth)," she says. "So I ended the year thinking, 'Oh sh*t, that’s it, I’ve screwed myself.’ And then the script for Smother landed just after Christmas, to film this series and play this woman, to go to a place I’d never been before."
It was a dream job, she says. "Sometimes you get a little bit of winning the lottery, you just get this extraordinary break and that’s what Smother will always be for me."
Dervla, who is 51, has been in the business for 35 years. She was drawn to acting from an early age. "I felt very comfortable," she recalls. "I used to go to Betty Ann Norton’s drama school and that was a really great place for me as a kid. I was the kind of kid who was always staring out of the window during class. If I loved a subject, I was highly focused upon it. But if I didn’t, I was a terrible student in that regard."
Her big TV break came in 1991 when she was cast in Melvyn Bragg’s adaptation of his novel A Time to Dance, and this was followed by roles in Casualty and Goodnight Sweetheart with Nicholas Lyndhurst. However, Ballykissangel is the show that made her a household name at age 23, playing pub landlady Assumpta Fitzgerald. The drama had 10 million viewers tuning in at its peak to keep up with the goings-on in a fictional rural Irish town.
"I look upon it with great gratitude," she says now. "That was a hugely successful show, in a beautiful area of Ireland. I have fond memories, and I don’t know if I would do anything different. I was very young and I had great time."
Since leaving Ballykissangel in 2006, she has worked extensively and consistently in theatre and TV, although she’s unable to divulge any details of her next, post-Smother role. "I’d love to tell you but I can’t because I’ve signed a NDA [non-disclosure agreement]. You could say it’s a lovely job that I’ve got next, I’m very happy," is all she can reveal.
Home for Dervla is in Hampshire in the UK, with her husband – fellow actor Rupert Penry-Jones – and their children, Florence (18) and Peter (16). "Hampshire is extremely quiet," she says. "It’s very rural and it’s a great antidote to all the nonsense that can be attached to our careers." When she’s not working, she’s a big fan of crime podcasts and she’s also an avid reader.
"I’m going to sound so, but I am middle-aged. I’m just about to get into Joseph O’Connor’s latest book, My Father’s House and once that’s done I’ll be guzzling Claire Keegan and her work. I’ve got about 20 books lined up. I like to read, I like to keep as informed as possible – not that I can do a damn thing about anything in this world of ours, but that’s what I like to do. I like to work out, walk the dog, very boring. But I like it that way, because when I’m working, it’s full on."
She and Rupert met on stage while they were both in a JB Priestly play in 2001 and they married in 2007. He has starred in TV shows including Spooks, Whitechapel and Silk, and the couple are highly supportive of each other’s careers.
"It wouldn’t work otherwise," says Dervla. "It sounds so boring but we’re constantly watching films and TV, that’s what we do. But it’s not like we’re sort of dressing up in Shakespearean costumes and running around the house. It’s very low-key. Work is work and real life is having an argument over who has badly stacked the dishwasher, which is usually me. Now he stacks it and I unstack it. But seriously, that’s the reality of it. We’re together 22 years; maybe people don’t realise that, but it’s a long time."
As to whether their children might follow in their famous parents’ footsteps, she is unsure. "I have always said to them, do what you love. I don’t know if they’ll go into acting. But if they were to, obviously that would be discouraged and encouraged, if you know what I mean. There would be a reality check about it. I don’t know and I don’t think they know. At 18, you might have an idea or a glimmer but I’ve always said to them it takes a good 10 years to really find themselves. I’ve always said to them don’t waste your 20s. Enjoy your 20s but work hard."
Although she loves living in the English countryside, she misses Ireland "100 per cent. Actually what was beautiful [about Smother] was to go through the pandemic and to have a job, to be there in a beautiful place and to be there with terrific – and they are terrific – people on that show, both on camera and behind camera. To have that for three years of my life, it was just marvellous."
Upping sticks and coming back to live in Ireland is something they’ve considered. "My kids are English, my husband’s English. We talk about this now as they grow; moving back, and I think that’s something very much that we will aim to do. It’s all possible," she muses.
Filming the third series of Smother was bittersweet as there was an element of sadness that this is the final in the trilogy. "But at the same time, when I managed to read all the scripts, our writer Kate (O’Riordan) had done such a fantastic job, and all the writers involved in making the final series, leading up to what will be an epic final episode, I was really excited," she says.
There are, she believes, very few parts out there like Val. "She is so uncompromising. She’s not that likeable and she’s over-privileged and there’s a steeliness to her. She’s a tough cookie, but I like that," she says.
"I know that Ireland is full of fabulous actresses that could have played that part so I am intensely grateful to have got that opportunity."
I ask her how she feels about getting older and she laughs, "It sucks. I’m heading towards the inevitable and that’s quite a terrifying thought."
But she also believes that age is just a number and holds up her Smother co-star, the acting legend Fionnuala Flanagan, who plays Val’s mother Caro Noonan, as an example of this.
"I’m sure she won’t mind me saying this, she’s 81 and she is sexy, beautifully turned out, word perfect, hilarious, charming and has the energy of a woman 30 years her junior. So it’s all individual, isn’t it? It is but a number. It’s about the soul and the dynamic personality of that person."
