Róisín Meets: 'My car accident was the best thing that ever happened to me'

“I don’t know if anybody else looks back at their life and wonders, ‘how did I get here?’ But for me, there was a definite, Camille before the car accident and Camille after the car accident,” says Camille O’Sullivan.

Before she became the enigmatic singer and performer familiar to theatre goers, the Cork woman was an architect, complete with suit and clipboard, until a serious car accident gave her a new perspective on life.

“I don’t want to belittle the accident because I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but it was possibly the best thing that ever happened to me,” she tells Róisín Ingle on the latest episode of the Róisín Meets podcast.

She had to learn to walk again and was in recovery for a long time, but it was while she there that she made the promise to herself that she would pack in architecture and pursue a singing career.

“My sister never knew I wanted to be a singer until after the accident and she was like, ‘Do you want to check and see if she’s OK in the head? What’s she on about?’” she laughs.

This week, O'Sullivan is back at the Gate Theatre for a new run of Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece, which she has devised along with her long-time musical partner Feargal Murray.

She speaks about the joy of putting Shakespeare's words to music on the podcast, her boyfriend the actor Aidan Gillen, how life has changed with her four and a half year old daughter Lila, and lots more.

Camille O'Sullivan performs The Rape of Lucrece at the Gate Theatre until April 7th.

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