Sinead Kennedy - 'I said to Tom Cruise, 'You're such a ride!''
Sinead Kennedy of the Today show is from Ballincollig in Cork.Â
I loved Live & Kicking when I was growing up. It was a kids TV show on BBC with Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston. It was my ritual Saturday morning viewing. It was fun. It was live. It was chaotic. There was such a great rapport between the presenters. They always seemed to be having a good time. They had sketches, celebrity guests, loads of competitions for kids, but it was UK-only. I remembered being quite disgruntled by that even though we were watching religiously each week from Cork! It was the unpredictability of it. Live telly is the best because anything can happen. It was then I decided: I want to do that as a job.
Loads of fun things happened when I worked on children’s TV with RTÉ. One morning, we were playing a game – in true Cork style – called “Crubeen Crazy” where we took plastic pigs’ feet and we had them in vats of jelly to make it look like blood. It was like “bobbing for apples” – you had to dump your head into the jelly to retrieve the crubeens with your teeth. There was jelly everywhere on set, which was slippery and slimy, and I slipped and fell flat on my face on all fours. It was one of those moments: you get up really quickly and think did anyone see me? Then you realise, you’re on national telly – there’s no way you got away with that one, Sinéad!
You can’t hide on live telly. The natural reaction is what you go with – whether it’s apologising, or laughing, or being embarrassed because that’s how a normal person would react. I got really angry one time because somebody pied me in the face. I wasn’t expecting it and I stormed off the set. I’d say I looked like a right nut. I was thinking: they wrecked my hair! I was fuming. I was working on a kids TV programme so I was getting pied on a regular basis but just this one day I wasn’t in the humour for it. I am what I am.
I love any film with Tom Cruise. I’ve fancied him for a long time. I still kind of do. He’s one of the handsomest men on the planet. I interviewed him a few years ago for the Dublin premiere of Oblivion. He lived up to the hype. He wasn’t as short as I thought he would be. When he came up to me on the red carpet, I went: “Gosh, you’re such a ride.” As soon as it came out of my mouth, I was thinking: Oh, my god. Shut up, Sinéad! He just laughed very politely and went on with the interview as if nothing happened. This was on the red carpet where I was surrounded by my peers. I was sleep deprived at the time – I had handed in my thesis for my psychology degree that day – which is my only defence. One of his staff came back over afterwards and asked [adopting an American drawl]: “Tom wants to know what a ride means.” I was mortified.
I’m totally fascinated with forensic psychology. I did a H Dip in criminal psychology in UCC. That means that every book I have on my bookshelves either prescribed or by choice is crime-based – about horrendous crimes, profiling, serial killers. Whenever someone is coming over – and the bookcase is around the telly so you can’t avoid it – my husband says, “Can you hide some of those books? It’s so grim.” Mindhunting There’s one book that stands out for me. It’s called The Jigsaw Man by Paul Britton. He was the UK’s first forensic psychologist. He was consulted on crimes all over the UK. He goes into a great level of detail about how he worked out various things about offenders from the ways they committed their crimes. It’s utterly fascinating, but absolutely horrific as well. I don’t get upset reading books, but I cried the whole way through a full chapter in this book. It was about the Jamie Bulger case. It was heavy going.
There was a television documentary called India’s Daughter on BBC. It was about a young Indian woman who was gang raped on a bus late at night. It came out shortly after the case had happened, which made news worldwide because of the barbaric nature of it. She died later from her injuries. It stirred up protests in India and across the world. I remember watching the documentary and being furious at some of the contributors on it – like the legal team for some of the men that were accused of committing the crime. I was thinking: They’re saying all this stuff on television? This is their opinion? They’re happy to stick with it and to speak the way they’re speaking about this young woman? I remember being horrified. It’s a documentary that has stayed with me.
I have days where I want to switch off and come home and watch rubbish on TV, but nine times out of 10, I’d prefer to watch something that engages my brain, that makes me think and feel, that provokes something within me. I’d always prefer to hear real people share their stories because there’s such an honesty about those kinds of programmes. Genuine, raw television where you’re capturing something real appeals to me. Working on something like, say, a documentary – that will make people sit up and think and maybe reassess something in their life or make a profound change in some way – is a privilege.
I adored the Cranberries as a teenager. I was heavily influenced by my older cousin. My cousins live in Holycross, Co Tipperary. We managed to sneak into Dolores O’Riordan’s wedding in Holycross Abbey. The parish priest, who knew my cousins’ family well, let us in the side door to watch the ceremony. It was a spectacle – she was such a superstar, what she wore and she arrived in a white carriage pulled by a white horse. It was fabulous like nothing Ireland had ever seen and such a big deal for a small town. I was too young and uncool to know who they were until that moment. After that I was absolutely hooked. It was my claim to fame for years. I still love the Cranberries. They’re very much on my playlist all the time.
