EOIN BUTLERtalks to Emmet Kirwan, Tallaght-born star of the new RTE comedy 'Sarah & Steve'
What was your first break as an actor?Probably The Big Bow Wowfor RTÉ. I was just out of drama school and it was great fun. I thought that lots more would come out of it, but it wasn't a success. The whole thing bombed, to be honest. I've also done lots of theatre and had parts in small films – or small parts in big films! Paddywhackery stuff, mostly. I did The Boys and Girl from County Clarewith Andrea Corr. That was great.
In the theatre world, I understand that you're a bit of a John O'Shea – a utility man. Yeah, I've taken on a couple of roles at the last minute. Two years ago, in a play called Mushroom at the Project Arts Centre, one of the actors got sick and I had four days to learn the part. The part was originally to be played by a Romanian. So I had to listen to an actor from the National Theatre of Bucharest speak for ages to get the accent right.
I'd have just done Borat and hoped no one would notice. Well, when most people do an east European accent they would pitch it Polish. But we had Poles in the cast as well as Romanians, so if I didn't get it right I'd have stuck out like a sore thumb. I'm a bit of a stickler for accents, really.
Speaking of accents, your own is a very obviously working-class accent. Is that an asset or a liability to you as an actor?It can be an advantage. But a lot of the time, when you're a working-class actor, you tend to only get offered working-class parts. And they can be thin on the ground – unless it's Roddy Doyle or something. That's why it was great to get cast as a Romanian, because it's just a million miles from what I'd normally do.
Two years ago, your alter ego, Frazier Fraz, interviewed Bosco and Colin Farrell as part of the Rock the Vote campaign. Which was the more exciting interview?Well, that whole campaign was just so much fun. Everyone was in their 20s, we were working out of a big house on Stephen's Green, and someone would stick their head in and say: "Did you hear? Bosco's coming in!" Everyone was really excited about that. They couldn't find Bosco's box, so we had to rig up a new one.
I don't know if it's cool to talk about this, but what's the lady behind Bosco like in real life?She's just this very nice lady in her 50s. There was a fella with her who created Bosco, he's about 70-odd. He came up and said: "Bosco is five and Bosco's favourite number is five." And we were like: "Sound."
You discussed how frequently both of you got out of your boxes. Do you think she had any idea what you were talking about?Ah, that was just a bit of on-the-spot improv. I have no idea whether or not she knew what I was talking about . . . I presume she did!
Your Frazier Fraz character generally played to the worst Tallaght stereotypes. Was it a conscious decision to make 'Sarah Steve' more sympathetic?The thing about [series creator David Coffey's previous series] Dan Becs was that, a lot of the time, you were laughing at them. But if you're writing about my hometown, I have no interest in doing that. Very often, middle-class people look at our culture and make fun of it. But I'm not going to do that. To be honest, there's nothing less funny than laughing at poverty. A lot of stand-up comedians in Ireland do that – 'ha ha . . . look at those people' – and they'll put on this faux working-class accent, and some people will laugh at that. But that's not for me.
The single-camera confessional format must have made 'Sarah Steve' attractive to RTÉ, given budgetary concerns in there?Well, look, the very first episode involves someone winning the Lotto and hiring a bouncing castle, which gets burst and sparks a street riot. Between extras, actors, sets, you'd be talking a couple of hundred grand on that episode alone if we shot it conventionally. We didn't have the money to put that on screen, but to compensate we really had to buff up the writing, the acting and the editing.
Between those two shows and 'Hardy Bucks', Irish audiences seem to have an endless appetite for seeing themselves mocked on screen.The secret is acute observation, and not simply playing to stereotypes. That's one of the things that's so great about Hardy Bucks. The same with Dan Becs. A lot of people from south Co Dublin looked at it and thought, 'wow, that's me'. Hopefully, people from Tallaght will look at Sarah Steve and laugh, and maybe even recognise themselves.
Sarah & Stevestarts on RTÉ2 on Monday and runs for 10 weeks