Clare actress Simone Kirby on starring in the final run of His Dark Materials

The third instalment of His Dark Materials on BBC has the Irish star reprising her role as Mary Malone

Simone Kirby in His Dark Materials, on BBC One. 

Simone Kirby has cried in public on many occasions in her long career as a stage and screen actress. But the experience of sobbing her own – of weeping into the void – was new to her when she starred in the upcoming third series of the HBO/BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.

“This season I worked a lot with puppets. Some of the scenes are really emotional," says the Co Clare actress from her home in London. 

Kirby first encountered Pullman’s novels when she was in her twenties and thinking about faith and the meaning of life. The books are an exploration of religion, atheism and spirituality – all bound up in a YA fantasy inspired by CS Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was just what she needed.

“I was a big fan. Myself and my husband, when we were dating in the early days, we were reading them and we were both absolutely mad about them. And whenever anybody asked me what are your top five books… His Dark Materials series was up there.”

She’s been a devotee ever since. Kirby, star of Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall and RTÉ’s Pure Mule, was nonetheless surprised to hear HBO and the BBC were bringing the trilogy to the screen (enough time having passed since a disastrous movie tilt at the saga in 2008).

Kirby made her debut as Mary in season two, which aired last year

And even more surprised her name had been mentioned in the context of the character of Mary Malone, who first appears in the second volume, The Subtle Knife and returns in The Amber Spyglass.

Kirby made her debut as Mary in season two, which aired last year. And now she returns in the final run of episodes, which begins on HBO in the United States on December 5 before airing on the BBC on Sunday, December 18.

“I didn’t even know they were making the first season,” says the Ennis woman. 

“I don’t know how I missed it but I hadn’t heard. Before the first season had aired, they were casting the second. When I got the call, I was really surprised.” 

Mary Malone is a former nun who becomes an astrophysicist and neuropsychologist investigating how dark matter affects human consciousness. It is in this capacity she meets Lyra Belacqua (Dafne Keen), a dimension-hopping orphan whose fate is bound up with that of the Magisterium, a sort of steampunk version of the Catholic Church.

Pullman doesn’t tell us much about Mary’s background. However, when the show-runners were casting Mary for series two, it was decided she should be Irish. At which point, Kirby’s name entered the conversation.

James McEvoy as Lord Asriel in His Dark Materials. 

“It’s never said that she’s Irish. Her name is Mary Malone, a Catholic nun. It sounds pretty Irish to me. 

"While filming season one, there were some discussions. Kahleen Crawford was the casting director. I had done Jimmy’s Hall with her. 

"We had an Irish costume designer who was like, ‘guys she has to be Irish’. When Kahleen heard they might be going Irish, she brought me into the mix.” 

Kirby broke into acting in 2005 with Pure Mule, a slice-of-life portrait of pre-recession Celtic Tiger Ireland (also a springboard for Charlene McKenna). After that and Jimmy’s Hall – Loach’s 2014 hagiography of a communist activist in 1930s Leitrim – she worked for many years in theatre.

She has more recently carved out a career on the small screen; last year she appeared in RTÉ thriller Hidden Assets (which went down well when airing on BBC Four). Still, for all those accomplishments His Dark Materials was something new: a bells-and-whistles HBO production with a starry cast including James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson and Hamilton’s Lin-Manuel Miranda.

“It’s a big machine: big cast, lots of different writers, lots of different directors. You don’t always get to work with everybody,” Kirby says. 

“On this series, even though I was in episodes with some of the other directors, the way the schedule worked out, I never get to work with them. You’d meet them at unit base. And they’d go, ‘oh my God – we haven’t met yet, I’m the director of this episode’.

"It does feel different to something smaller where there might be one or two directors, or one or two writers. Where it’s a smaller bubble, and you get to meet everybody.”

She was excited to get stuck in. And eager to grapple with the challenges posed by the latest season, in which Mary interacts with computer-generated 'wheeled' elephants called the 'the Mulefa' (Pullman can be wacky when he wants). 

With nothing but CGI green screen and puppets for company, she found her theatre experience a godsend. In terms of making believe, nothing beats the stage.

“You bring the puppet in: they used the head mostly. There was a puppeteer named Olivia playing the character I work with the most. She does a 'pass' – we call it the puppet pass. I do the scene looking at the puppet. Then Olivia had to step out…. Everybody’s very respectful and trying to help you there emotionally, when there’s nothing to look at.” 

Covid was another matter. The pandemic may be a fading memory. However, it was a pressing issue when Kirby was shooting series three of His Dark Materials.

“It was very full on with the testing every day. We had a Covid team on set. Every time I went back to London, I couldn’t go back until I tested. 

"One day I tested positive. I couldn’t travel. I had to stay in London. It was towards the end. They ended up having to cut me out of a couple of scenes – there wasn’t enough time to reschedule.”

Pullman was a chattering-class darling when the three volumes of His Dark Materials were first published between 1995 and 2000. Opinions have since turned. In particular, militant atheists – which is how Pullman is popularly perceived – are no longer admired unquestioningly. 

Then there are the claims that the books’ big problem is not with religion but with Catholicism and its trappings. The Magisterium is clearly the Catholic Church rather than a stand-in for, say, the Church of England.

“His Dark Materials was written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism…. atheism for kids. That is what Philip Pullman sells,” said the Catholic League ahead of the movie adaptation in 2008.

Pullman didn’t regard this as a particularly controversial opinion. 

“In one way, I hope the wretched organisation will vanish entirely,” he told The Guardian.

But for Kirby, Pullman’s take on faith is more nuanced than often portrayed. He isn’t condemning spirituality. She feels His Dark Materials argues spirituality and science can co-exist peacefully.

“When I was a kid, I was spiritual. As a teenager, I went through that phase of turning my back on it completely. When I read the books it resonated – that idea that science and spirituality can co-exist. 

"I remember finding that a fascinating idea. Pullman doesn’t say, ‘It’s science or nothing’. He introduces angels. 

"The books aren’t a manifesto for atheists. It’s quite different, actually.”

•  His Dark Materials season three begins on BBC One on Sunday, December 18