Glanmire's Éanna Hardwicke is ready for his close-up
Cork actor Éanna Hardwicke has further enhanced his growing reputation as one of the most talented young Irish actors with his brilliant portrayal of the detective in the popular RTE Drama series Smother.
It seems like a lifetime ago now but when landed on our screens at the start of the first lockdown, it was the perfect viewing for such dark times — a beautifully-filmed love story that went on to become a global sensation. While the blistering chemistry between the leads Paul Mescal (Connell) and Daisy Edgar-Jones (Marianne) garnered much of the attention — and kept going for a few weeks — the strong supporting cast was key to the show’s success. From the opening scenes, in the instantly familiar breeze-blocked corridors where the popular sporty boys banter with each other and flirt with the girls, director Lenny Abrahamson adroitly conjured the febrile atmosphere of a co-ed secondary school. For 24-year-old Cork actor, Éanna Hardwicke, who played Connell’s best friend Rob, it helped that his own schooldays weren’t that long behind him — and that he already knew many of his castmates, including Mescal.
“It was a very unique experience, in that quite a few of us were friends already, and we weren’t that long out of school ourselves. It wasn’t hard to think back to it, and Lenny is fantastic at capturing and evoking a particular atmosphere, it is hard to put your finger on what it is but it is just there. The director of photography, Suzie Lavelle, is also incredible, she did amazing work to create the shapes you see in a school corridor, people spread out, finishing their homework, doing little bits, it just felt like a very lived-in world.”
That Hardwicke would single out the director of photography says a lot about his approach to acting as a team effort — throughout our conversation he speaks glowingly of the actors, writers, technicians, producers, and directors he has worked with in his relatively short but busy career and how much he has learned from them.
The actor, from Glanmire, is based in Dublin, where he has lived since he studied theatre at Trinity’s Lir Academy, which is where he met Mescal, who was a year behind him. He was educated at the Cork School Project (now Educate Together) and at Ashton School in Cork city and began acting at the age of ten.
“I was lucky. I had great youth theatre experiences, I did the Gaiety in Cork, then the National Youth Theatre after I joined the Cork School of Music. I had a great time and we put on some really good productions. It was fun but also a stepping stone into professional life. There were a lot of people in that class who went on to become actors,” he says.
Hardwicke made his on-screen debut at 12, when he was cast in , which was filmed by Conor McPherson in Cobh. When he left school, he went on to study theatre at the Lir Academy in Trinity College, where Mescal was a year behind him. In the week he finished at the Lir, he got a role in the sci-fi/horror film , directed by rising Irish star Lorcan Finnegan.
“That was incredible, I was pinching myself. The script was just so unique and so original, it blew me away when I read it. I got to work with amazing people, including Jesse (Eisenberg) and Imogen (Poots). I just loved that the film was telling its story in a really unique way.”
With , based on the hugely popular book by Sally Rooney, came a role that Hardwicke knew was special. He gives a quietly powerful performance as the popular Rob, full of bravado and smart comments in school but at a loss when he leaves. He and Connell struggle to maintain their friendship as they go their separate ways and he later goes on to die by suicide, leaving Connell struggling with grief, guilt and depression. The show has been widely praised for its handling of mental health, especially the scene where Connell goes for counselling after Rob’s death.
“Whenever I read that part in the book, it broke me,” says Hardwicke. “It meant the world to me to play the part of Rob, it really did, I didn’t take it lightly. The scenes where Connell comes home from college [and meets up with Rob]; it was a very surreal experience to sit in a bar with someone who is a very good friend of mine anyway. I loved the part and I’m so glad that it really got people talking. It is one thing to address stigmas in mental health in society, which we are getting better at doing, but it is another thing to actually show it.”
Hardwicke has been attracting attention again recently for his role in RTÉ’s twisty thriller , set around Lahinch, County Clare. He plays garda Joe Ryan, the ex-boyfriend of Grace Ahern (Seána Kerslake) who becomes embroiled in the aftermath of the suspicious death of Grace’s father, shady businessman Denis. The ‘whodunit’ element and the intricately complicated private lives of the Ahern family has led to a lot of discussion among viewers on social media.
“I’m getting texts from people, going ‘I think this person did it’, and it’s a different person every week,” says Hardwicke. “I love that. One of the wonderful things about a TV show like this is that it becomes an event. It is great that it is not being released in a batch because you watch it week by week and then it becomes a conversation.”
Filming on the show was halted by the pandemic last March but eventually resumed in September. Hardwicke says it was a real achievement to get it in the can.
“I was just amazed at the effort… producing a television series or film is such a huge thing anyway but to do it with these added restrictions and precautions and safety measures, they did a phenomenal job.”
During the hiatus in filming, he returned to Cork — “I went home to the nest, it was lovely.” He has not been back since Christmas and says he is looking forward to returning when lockdown restrictions ease.
“I love Glanmire and I have appreciated it so much in the last year, I walked every square inch of the place. I keep thinking about getting the bus into town and going to the Oval bar for a pint. I cannot wait. The last time I was there was probably the Christmas before the pandemic and before that, I remember going to a reading there by Kevin Barry, who is one of my favourite novelists. I'd love to see more of that kind of thing. It’s something I love about Cork in general… there is a sense that the art lives and breathes in the place.”
In November, Hardwicke filmed the French-Irish co-production Joan Verra in Dublin, starring acting legend Isabelle Huppert. He also has some projects lined up this summer.
“To use that awful cliché, they’re 'under wraps' at the moment. As an actor, you are always happy to be working, and it is never something I have taken for granted. But now especially, you take the opportunities and you enjoy every second of it because we’ve had a long stretch now without it.”
I wonder what he makes of the attention his friend Paul Mescal received after — who could forget Connell’s chain getting its own Instagram account and the O’Neill’s GAA shorts that sold out after he was pictured wearing them. It all got a bit bonkers, didn’t it?
“It did, in such a good way,” laughs Hardwicke. “I knew as soon as I saw Paul and Daisy working together that it was going to be brilliant…. and the story obviously was so widely loved anyway, the book, it was all there. But you can never account for the scale of the reaction and the fact that it was viewed so many times on the BBC and around the world. It was a universal story but also an Irish one. I loved that a GAA schools match was being watched by people in the US, Australia and Spain.”
Speaking of which, Hardwicke’s suggests he may have overstated his experience as a Gaelic footballer when he got the role.
“I played in school and a bit for Glanmire but I was never that good,” he says. “But I put my hand up and said, ‘yeah, I played for a couple of years and would be handy’. Of course, Paul is famously a brilliant footballer and a great athlete and a few of the other lads were the same, but we were playing against guys in their Leaving Cert in prime fitness. I’d say they just about got a couple of takes from me before I was on the sidelines, wrecked.”
Hardwicke is still in regular contact with Mescal, who was recently filming in Australia.
“I was chatting to him when he was filming there. He’s doing great. He has always had this really amazing work ethic. I’m delighted to see him go from strength to strength, there is no stopping him now.”
I could say the same for Hardwicke, who deserves every success that comes his way. Just don’t expect him to be papped wearing O’Neill’s shorts.
“I tried to buy them but they were sold out,” he laughs. “People would only accuse me of copying anyway.”
The final episode of is on RTÉ 1 at 9.30pm tomorrow.
