Siobhán McSweeney: I have my own internal 'who do I think I am?' I'm from Aherla
Siobhán McSweeney presents the Finding Brigid documentary on RTÉ One. Picture: Moya Nolan
Siobhán McSweeney is a busy woman. Her latest TV series, Extraordinary, has just dropped on Disney+. It’s been announced she’s returning to the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s iconic Happy Days for Cork’s Midsummer Festival. And she's on our screens every Sunday, presenting The Great Pottery Throw Down on Channel 4.
So RTÉ couldn't have taken it personally if the Aherla, Co Cork, native had turned down their offer to present a documentary programme about St Brigid as the nation prepares to celebrate its first public holiday in her honour.
“I think RTÉ were very surprised,” McSweeney says, “I nearly bit their hand off with the eagerness”.
Like many of us, McSweeney has memories of weaving St Brigid’s crosses with rushes in school and putting out the Brat Bríde on Brigid’s eve — and she even chose the name Bríd as her confirmation name.
“I have a lot of the old stories in my head,” she says, “stuff we were taught in school, in church.... but there are also facts out there I didn’t know.”
Finding Brigid, which airs on RTÉ One, Tuesday 31, sees McSweeney unravel the tangled threads of fact and folklore to try and get to the truth about the woman, revered as both a saint and warrior, and explore what she means to us in modern day Ireland.
For McSweeney, the fact that Ireland’s first public holiday is dedicated to a woman who was “slightly overlooked” but kept “i mbéal na phobail”, as former president Mary McAleese puts it, is significant.
"The Church has had a very ambivalent relationship with Brigid, to such an extent that we cannot get clarification for purposes of the documentary as to whether or not she has even been canonised.
“I understand that they were afraid that she was becoming too popular," McSweeney says. "And there's something about that, that to me represents an awful lot of Ireland.
"It's sort of a mirror through which we can see how the voices of women and women's power, women's autonomy, and women's place in society has been brushed under the carpet.
"But in the mouth of the people, we know how powerful and intrinsic and wonderful and complicated being a woman in society is. The official records wipe us out but our lived experiences show otherwise.”
Among those featured in the documentary is Herstory activist Melanie Lynch and poet Laura Murphy, who fought to make St Brigid’s Day a national holiday; former president Mary McAleese; and Nationwide’s Mary Kennedy and her sister Deirdre Ni Chinnéide, who grew up by St Brigid’s Well in Clondalkin, and are co-authors of the book Journey to the Well: Connecting to Celtic Ways and Wisdom.
"Something that I discovered doing the documentary is that for me, Brigid was sort of a mirror,” she says.
“A lot of these people and experts I spoke to, what they saw in Brigid were things that I would see in them. So Mary McAleese - all hail my new BFF! - she spoke about leadership and guiding people.
“When I chose Bríd as a confirmation name, what appealed to me was the idea of a warrior poet. The idea that these two things could coincide within one being. For myself, what I would love to do with my life is to be able to sort of collide imagination and poetry and all these lovely things alongside perhaps a little bit of fearsomeness.”
“I'm a long, long way from it,” she says with a laugh.
It might not seem that way for those who follow McSweeney on social media.
“Having a platform for me, it's a very unnatural thing,” she admits. "I am truly terrified all the time, I think it's the human condition, certainly my human condition, is to be terrified all the time.
"But some things, I don't see it as being outspoken. I lost my parents early enough, so I suppose if anyone was going to give me the clip across the ear... they are gone."
McSweeney, who had her breakout role as sarky nun Sr Michael in Channel 4's Derry Girls, says she's aware she "pisses off people an awful lot".
“I am very annoying,” she says, “I understand why people would be pissed off with me, but sometimes I can sort of see that the reason why people would be pissed off with me is because I am not behaving the way I should. And the way I should is a patriarchal concept.
“I should be quiet, I should be demure, I should not have notions, I should dress in a way that does not draw attention to myself.
"My body is unruly, by virtue of the fact that it's not a polite size 12, my teeth aren't fixed.
“Some people who have had to live their life under the constraints of being a good person and all that that entails, under this sort of boring capitalist society where you're just meant to be a good worker..
"To see somebody like me who for some fucking weird reason doesn't behave that way, it's very infuriating I imagine. I don't mean to sound patronizing when I say that, or condescending. But when you're getting a fuckload of abuse, and you see the things that come over and over again, you're like, what is it?"
It particularly riles McSweeney when people in the UK complain that her accent is difficult to understand.
“You're letting your knickers show darling," she retorts. "I am classically trained babe, there's no reason to not understand me.
"What you're saying is that you do not like the sound of this accent coming through your television screen on a Sunday night. You do not like it because you have associated it with things that you do not like.
“That's the reason. There's nothing inherently wrong with my clarity. They're exposing their unconscious biases.”
But along with the abuse, there is a lot of love out there for McSweeney — and so many successes.
Is there anything else she'd like to turn her hand to? Perhaps, following her Derry Girls co-star Leah O'Rourke's lead, a stint on Dancing with the Stars?
"No," she says without hesitation, "people have gone through enough. They don't need to see that.
"I am doing a bit of writing, which I'm enjoying. I want to direct. I studied clowning in Paris, I’d love to do more of that.
"I'm living the life I've always dreamt of living," she says. "I am too scared to ask for more. I feel I've gotten away with so much already."
"Last week, I went to the screening of Extraordinary. I was at costume fittings - you won't believe the costumes for the second series. I am having great chats with you about Finding Brigid, a documentary that I adored doing. And I'm doing my most favorite play in the world in the place I grew up in."
Despite this roll of success, McSweeney is taking none of it for granted.
"I'm not stupid. I see how the industry and the world treats people, and I am waiting for the inevitable backlash. And I have my own internal backlash as well.
"I have my own internal 'who the fuck do I think I am?' Like, who do I think I am? I'm from Aherla, I shouldn't be doing this at all.
"So yeah, I'm very scared, but that can live alongside a... I wouldn't call it fearlessness because obviously there's fear, but there's a bit of, 'ah fuck it why not'. That keeps me getting through the door. Because if I let the fear win, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed."
As for her own plans for St Brigid's day?
"I am going to be going out with some female identifying friends, I'll cast a few spells and set a few men on fire."
- Finding Brigid airs Tuesday, January 31, on RTÉ One at 10.15pm
