Culture That Made Me: Fair City star Shane Quigley Murphy
Shane Quigley Murphy of Fair City.
Shane Quigley Murphy, 33, grew up in Ballinteer, Dublin.
He studied acting at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. His screen credits include Kin, Outlander and Vikings: Valhalla although he is best known for his role as Gar Boyle on Fair City. He was a contestant on this year’s Dancing with the Stars.
Saved by the Bell was a TV series set in California about the trials and tribulations of life in an American high school. I was watching it as a kid in the nineties in dreary Dublin. At the time, American cultural influences spread like wildfire through Ireland, changing the accent in Dublin completely.
There was something about Kurt Cobain. I don't know anyone who could not be enamoured with his brilliance coupled with his nonchalance. There's something endearing about tortured artists. There’s a catharsis through music, dance, acting – to be able to release a valve and go into that darkness, but if utilised correctly, you can hear and see some of the greatest art. He was a true artist. There’s a reason why Nirvana were the biggest band on Earth.
Frasier was a masterpiece. Kelsey Grammer and all the actors in it were at the top of their game. Coming off the back of Cheers, they had something they knew they could work with and they just rounded it out. There was a massive air of theatricality in so much of the way it was set, especially the penthouse apartment. It borrows from that French farce style of theatre and storytelling and puts it into episodic TV, set in America. It's more brilliant the older you get coming back to it.
I loved Season One of True Detective. Acting is my grá. More than anything else, I love to see top-tier acting and authentic portrayals of human emotion, and Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are the crème de la crème. I could listen to both of them read ingredients off the back of a baking sheet. It was so well paced, so well thought-out, with the injection of that supernatural, quantum physics element towards the end as well.
Growing up, I loved the adult humour of animated series like South Park and Family Guy, which blended biting social satire they could get away with because it was a cartoon. You could never get away with broaching certain subjects in any other form of media, but for some reason cartoons were looked down upon, existing in a creative space where they could avoid being “cancelled”. Genius shows.
The child in me loved the original The Lion King from 1994. It’s untouchable, with the great music of Phil Collins as well. Jeremy Irons as Scar was the epitome of a true villain, with a rich timbre to his voice.
Warrior is an obscure movie with Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte and Joel Edgerton. I love Tom Hardy as an actor. I love martial arts as well. It's a brilliant story about two separated brothers with a strange dynamic and their alcoholic father who showed love and promise to one and alienated the other one. It has well-choreographed fight scenes.
I love any Christopher Nolan film, apart from Tenet. I loved Inception. Anything that blends storytelling with deep philosophical thinking at the same time, that's my jam. It’s about the inception of ideas in the human brain, with multi-layered dreams within a dream within a dream, but it’s also a heist movie. It's a race against the clock. Incredible acting from Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy. A gold standard movie.
One of my favourite Irish playwrights is Conor McPherson. He was one of the playwrights I read prior to going into drama school. He’s unbelievable on the brutal reality of being human, the ambiguous, grey nature of it, the trials and tribulations of life, no bells and whistles. Any time I’ve seen a play like Rum and Vodka, it's blown me away. There’s such layers to it. It’s about the struggles of alcoholism, well explained from someone who uses language, imagery and storytelling vividly.
I'm a big fan of William Shakespeare’s plays. I love his comedies and the histories in particular – King Lear, Richard II, Henry IV. The history buff in me loves the blend of history done with that beautiful Elizabethan language, the richness of it. As a youth, seeing and reading Shakespeare’s plays, you have a tiny grasp of what’s before you. Then coming back in adulthood and realising you were looking at it in one dimension, when there’s so many dimensions to it, is wonderful. Everything's a double entendre. Everything's a sex reference. It can be completely visceral, but it all depends on the interpretation of the actor as well.
I'm a big fan of fantasy and sci-fi. It’s my guilty pleasure. My favourite book is a sci-fi series called the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. I only read it for the first time when I was about 25. Set in the future, it blends the work of the poet John Keats, tinged with philosophical beliefs and beautiful poetical mindsets, while set against the backdrop of this space opera at the same time.
Abercrombie did a book series called The First Law trilogy. It’s probably one of the most visceral descriptions of truth in warfare. It's not people swinging axes around their heads. It's pissing in your pants, being trodden on, and trying to stick a dagger underneath someone’s gap in their arm. Like most fantasy writers, he borrows from historical aspects of medieval Europe and Germanic settlements at war. He’s brilliant.
Pumping Iron is a documentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1970s training for Mr. Olympia, which he had already won five years in a row. It's documenting the Golden Age of bodybuilding in California. Also training for it at the time is Lou Ferrigno, who played The Incredible Hulk in the TV show. He was always Schwarzenegger’s big competitor and at his heels. It's wonderful, getting to see Venice Boardwalk in the seventies as well. It’s a gem.
I enjoy trad music massively. I’ve recently been getting into 1920s blues and bluegrass. I loved Muireann Bradley’s recent performance on Later with Jools Holland. She's only 16, 17 years of age. She’s incredible, without a doubt the next big thing to come out of Ireland. She sings this 1920s bluesy, American sound, the kind of music usually sung by much more gravelly, deeper voices, but it almost opens a completely new element to the music when you hear it from the mouth of a babe.
