Interview with The Gang

1 December 2017

• Saoirse Jackson, who plays Erin Quinn
• Louisa Harland, who plays Orla McCool
• Nicola Coughlan, who plays Clare Devlin
• Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, who plays Michelle Mallon
• Dylan Llewellyn, who plays James Maguire

Tell us about Derry Girls?

Saoirse: Derry Girls follows a group of girls and what they get up to and the drama of their lives. It’s really about finding yourself in a mad world and finding your own madness and what’s unique to you and the story of friendship.

Nicola: It reminds me of the babysitters club, except we’re really badly behaved. It’s not really like the teenage shows which are centred on relationships, what’s really refreshing about Derry Girls is it’s about the relationship between the girls, and when I say “The Girls” I do include Dylan in that! But it’s about their friendship and what they get up to and that’s what drew us to it as well.

Jamie-Lee: It’s a female led comedy and it’s young girls, being funny, and not typically what you would expect. They are being nice and just really enjoying themselves and being a bit wild and making mistakes and having each other’s back along the way and probably making things a bit worse for each other as well!

Nicola: That’s the nice thing about Lisa’s writing, she doesn’t have the burden that girls often have to be seen as nice and sweet and the Derry girls are not like that!

Jamie-Lee: Girls aren’t usually like that in real life!

 

Can you each tell us a bit about your characters?

Saoirse: I would say Erin is a teenage girl who reckons herself to be very, very smart but she is definitely not as smart as Clare, and she thinks that she is just striking that balance between figuring out that she is very smart and creative and trying to understand that she actually doesn’t know everything about the world. Sometimes she just needs to tone it down a notch and listen to her friends around her and maybe if she could be a little bit more like Orla and not care as much as what people thought about her then she wouldn’t get herself in as much drama as what she does.

Nicola: Clare is Erin’s best pal from when they were little but she is kind of a swot . She always wants to do everything well. But she is kind of a Machiavellian genius, she doesn’t care what she has to do in order to get where she needs to go. She will sell her friends down the river in a second. Also she would learn a lot more from chilling the hell out, she would learn from Michelle about just having fun. She is in this group because of Erin. She probably wouldn’t do half the fun stuff if she wasn’t friends with them. She actually needs them a lot more than I think she knows.

Saoirse: Same for Erin, she reckons that she is a lot cooler than the rest of her friends. She reckons she has nearly outgrown them at certain points in the series because they are cramping her style but the reality is Erin needs them so much more and to listen to them more.

Dylan: James is the alien of the group. He doesn’t have a scobby doo what’s going on really. He is kind of innocent and the voice of reason in a way, but the girls just shoot him down all the time. In reality, they are all giving him giving them tough love and he is trying to adjust to that tough love and he is gradually becomes a Derry girl by the end. They all mean well, I think! He is the nice guy.

Louisa: I would say that Orla is very free, very, very innocent and childlike. She is a bit of a clown. She is quite odd and doesn’t realise that James is an outsider because she doesn’t care. She lives in her own world and bangs her own drum, sometime literally!

Jamie-Lee: Michelle considers herself the most mature of the group, she is definitely the most sexualised, and I think she is at the age and stage of her life where she struggles between being a wee girl and a woman and she definitely thinks she is older than she is. Her and Erin are a bit similar, they both think they have outgrown Derry and think they are a bit too good for everyone around them because they are just so above it all. She doesn’t really care what a lot of people think or say about her and she will go out there and do things just for the madness of it all. She is the rebel of the group and she just loves the attention and the madness and being in the middle of it all, if its good or bad it doesn’t even matter as it’s causing a stir.

Nicola: We have said, Clare and Michelle are like the angel and devil on Erin’s shoulders. Michelle is more the extreme, and Orla is like “What the hell is going on?!.”

 

How did you all get on working together?

Dylan: You should see the blooper reel….

Jamie-Lee: We really did get on from the very start, even from the audition, so doing very long days we used to do certain things to keep ourselves amused during takes, we’ll not go on to the details because it will make us sound like we are about 9 years old!

Louisa: There is something about putting on a school uniform where you are not necessarily of that age that brings you into that mind-set of being really silly.

Nicola: 100%

Jamie-Lee: There was some corpsing for sure, some really good times.

Nicola: We meet at different stages in the audition process so when it came to filming we already kind of knew each other as we had messaged a lot, and we have messaged constantly, we talk nearly every day on our WhatsApp group.

 

Dylan have you become one of the girls?

Dylan: I donned a drag outfit this Halloween in Derry, so yeah.

Nicola: We had the best day, I was like “We will get Pink Lady jackets” and they were like “Are you well Nicola? What? Where will we ever wear them…” But I don’t care. I would wear it anywhere!

Louisa: I do remember one really bad day that we were corpsing, we were filming in Sister Michael’s office and it was very, very hot and we had all the crew and lighting and Jamie’s stomach started rumbling and it sounded like a cat.

Jamie-Lee: And the burping!

Nicola: It was so bad! She was like, in this really growly voice, “I’ve got something to tell you and it’s really bad…” and for some reason it just completely destroyed me and I was worried I was going to get fired as I couldn’t stop.

Saoirse: Definitely a blessing and a burden at the same time being such good friends because sometimes it was so hard not to laugh.

Nicola: And sometimes when other people did laugh it was like “thanks for the support girl, but you ruined my best shot.”

There’s a pretty epic scene in one of the episodes where you have to do the dance routine to Whigfield’s Saturday night, did any of you know how to do it and how long did it take to learn?!

Jamie-Lee: Nicola nailed it, that was her favourite part! She said she shone in that part. That was her favourite day of her life.

Nicola: It might not look like it but we had a proper dance teacher.

Saoirse: I am a terrible dancer, and now Erin is a terrible dancer! I find it really hard to follow a set of instructions. Never mind a set of dance moves.

Jamie-Lee: I definitely remembered it!

Dylan: On nights out afterwards we bust it out in the clubs!

Nicola: Busting it out at Edinburgh Fringe Festival! I was doing a show this summer and the guys came up to visit me. And we were really lame, we got them to give us a shout out in the club, they said “The Derry Girls are here!” and we were like THIS IS AMAZING!

Next year is the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Derry Girls is obviously a comedy but do you think viewers will take away anything about its unique historical setting?

Jamie-Lee: I think it’s so well done by Lisa, because she grew up in Derry, and for her it was part and parcel of normal life and that really shows here. The determination and strength of people that you see in the show is one of the things that people are going to take away. Things like bombs scares were just part of normal life and people dealt with it and got on with it. They still raised their families and had jobs and paid their bills, they just worked around it. And often amongst the awful scenes there were lovely light-hearted family times that people remember. It wasn’t all marred by The Troubles being negative. There was a lot of funniness. Irish people have tendency to find humour in really dire situations and that’s part of the joy of it and part of the culture of Ireland.

Louisa: I would say the irony of the fact that it’s barely referenced is part of the show and I think that’s a great thing. The girls are totally in their own world.

Saoirse: What Lisa’s captured so beautifully is that sense of community growing up in a small place. Whilst the troubles are going on, everybody knows each other in Derry and the fact that you can’t get away with anything really captures that sense of community. Knowing the man in the local shop and knowing the woman in the local chip shop and them knowing you and that taking no crap mentality, it really shines through.

Jamie-Lee: Lisa has also written those really strong female characters and reflecting that “Mammy culture” where your Mammy is the head of the house and she is really strong and nothing really gets in the way of whatever is going on in the family.

It was a really female led comedy as well as on screen, as off screen, is that something that’s quite exciting to be a part of?

Nicola: It’s massive! When I got the script, I remember reading the first two lines that Clare has where she says “I don’t want to be an individual on my own..” even that self-contained is so funny and just being around all these women - and all being on set – it was so exciting. I am obsessed with Kristen Wigg, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, being around all these women made it seem so possible to think that young girls, and boys, are going to see the show and see these girls on screen who are complicated and not following the norm, that is so exciting! I don’t even have the words!

Saoirse: That’s what’s most exciting to me. It’s a group of 5 young individuals and every single one of them is unique in their own way. It’s so refreshing to have a TV show with young girls being proper young girls because they are still so playful, so physical and so uncomfortable in their own skin at times. Even though it is so female heavy, the whole production, having Dylan’s character James brings such a beautiful contrast. He’s a boy who’s not trying to be the macho male in this situation, he is the most caring and understanding in a way.

Jamie-Lee: I remember auditioning for Michelle, who is more feisty and gobby and who could be quite mean sometimes and throughout the audition process someone said to me, “should we give her a softer side?” and Lisa said “Why would we give her a softer side?! Because she’s a dickhead?! No, she is a dickhead!”’ and I just remember thinking that’s so brilliant, you just get that feeling that it’s going to be something amazing and all of us are really passionate about it. I was dickhead when I was 16, young girls can be absolute arseholes because they just think about themselves and that’s the end of it.

Dylan: Orla is nice!

Jamie-Lee: If Orla had sense she might be a bit of a dick!

Up until now Nadine Coyle has been arguably the most famous Derry Girl. Do you have a favourite famous Derry Girl and who?!

Nicola: When I first found out I was auditioning for this show, (I’m not from Derry I’m from Galway), and the only person I knew from Derry was Nadine Coyle. She famously got kicked off the Irish Pop Stars when she was 16 so I literally learned exactly what she said on Pop Stars at the audition and I pretty much delivered it as a monologue! I was like “I’m Nadine Coyle from Derry..” I have to play Nadine Coyle in her life story, I am ready to go! I am up for it.

Dylan: If we meet her, we can give her a pink ladies jacket!

You work with some pretty big talents in this including Tommy Tiernan and Ian McElhinney and Kathy Kiera Clarke, what was that like?

Saoirse: Ian was so lovely, he was so nice to work with! I’d say me and Louisa really found a bond with Ian and had an attachment like he was our real Grandad. He was just so natural to watch on set and had that real alpha male persona but at the same time playing a dopey Grandfather and Father.

Jamie-Lee: It’s so funny working with the “adult cast”. Everyone had different strengths and came from different backgrounds so it was nice.

Louisa: All of the “adults” were so funny in their individual ways and we all appreciated and learned from their comedy and I think it really helps when people are so brilliant.

Jamie-Lee: There was a really good energy on set and I just hope that energy comes across on screen. It was good craic.

Nicola: There was a lot of fun guest stars, Diona who plays Katya was a force of nature and Paul who plays the shopkeeper is so funny it’s ridiculous.

Saoirse: Tommy is obviously huge in Ireland as a comedian but not as well-known as an actor so it was interesting to see him in that environment as well. It’s funny though because Ireland is so small, the first time I meet him I was like “oh you literally live next to my uncle.” People don’t get how much people Ireland do know everyone!

 

Obviously Derry Girls is set in the early 90’s and it’s a bit of a nostalgia trip in terms of the music, pop-culture and historical - what stands out from that decade for you?

Nicola: Really, really bad lip-gloss. Like sparkly purple.

Jamie-Lee: I had to wear that for a scene! But for me I would say the Spice Girls. The fact that they did what they wanted and were in charge. They were strong women with six pack’s and wore amazing clothes.

Louisa: The dress sense! It was so cool. But the Derry Girls are very uncool. The costume designer nailed the costumes, in saying that, some of the stuff she put us in was criminal. I had an awful pair of ski pants.

Jamie-Lee: I had a pair of brown trousers that I will never get over.

Dylan: There was a Baby G watch as well. But for me it’s video games, PlayStation1, Crash Bandicoot and Freddo Frogs were 10p.

Saoirse: There is a lot of talk in the series of their favourite TV programme and Erin is obsessed with Murder she Wrote. These days teens don’t have to wait for their favourite TV programme to come on, that whole running home from school to watch it because there is no other option!

Nicola: I remember in the 90s my sister was obsessed with Blur and Oasis and had the Country House tape and I used to listen to it on my Walkman in the back of the car. And there was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!