Máiréad Tyers: Cork actress returns in Extraordinary role for Disney series
Máiréad Tyers from Co Cork has a starring role in Extraordinary. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Meet the young Cork actress fronting one of Disney’s biggest hit series. Following strong reviews and audience figures, Máiréad Tyers returns for a second series of Extraordinary, the witty and charming series in which everyone gets a superpower when they turn 18.
In a world where superpowers are the norm, Tyers plays Jen, a shop worker in her mid-twenties who is still waiting for her superpower to reveal itself.
She’s the latest young actress with a hit on her hands at a time where Irish screen talent is making its presence felt at home and around the world. Of those, a number of London-based breakthrough stars from Cork, including Tyers, Éanna Hardwicke and Dónal Finn, are steadily building stage and screen careers. They join actors including Sarah Greene and Chris Walley who have previously based themselves in the UK capital.
“What's lovely as well is we all know each other,” says Tyers. “We’re all friends with each other - Dónal Finn, Éanna Hardwicke, so many Cork people and you kind of go, how have we ended up over here, doing well and working.
“All of us I’m sure would be delighted to go back and work in Cork. But it’s fantastic and feels like we've got a really strong contingent over here.
“That made it easier as well moving over, having people who I knew from Cork already living here, going to the same drama school.”
In Extraordinary, the Ballinhassig-born actress hits every comedic and dramatic beat as Jen, the vibrant and wacky twenty something waiting for her superpower to emerge, playing her role in her own accent.
Tyers is not the only Irish connection to the series - Derry Girls star Siobhán Sweeney plays Jen’s mother, while the series is written and created by Northern Irish screenwriter and comedian Emma Moran.
Season two, now on Disney+, takes up where season one spectacularly left off, following Tyers’ Jen as she enrols in the powers clinic. Her hope is the clinic will help her unlock the key to her missing superpower - but she soon discovers it’s not as straightforward as she had hoped. It begins with a glorious dance-off, harnessing the spirited energy built in the first series.
“Jen ends the first season assuming that life is about to start. She's about to become an adult who knows what she wants and can do what she wants,” says Tyers. “Obviously that comes from her getting the money to go to the clinic. That's the journey she's about to start - she thinks she's about to get her power and she's starting this power journey, which is very exciting and something that felt inaccessible for years, since the age of 18.
“It has provided a lot of stress and feelings of inadequacy for her. She's finally going to be able to fix that and change that aspect of herself. And then also she's just gotten into a relationship with Jizz (a very good Luke Rollason). She's mad about him and it feels real.
“It feels like the most simple romantic relationship she's ever had. I think she comes into it being like: ‘Right. Life is about to start, let's go’. I think in the first episode when she has that dance, that encapsulates how she's really feeling at that time.” She agrees there is a shorthand that comes with returning to work with the producers, writer, cast and crew of the hit show for a second season.
“For the first season, Emma sent us a playlist, the majority of which ended up in the actual show. For season two, she also created a playlist and as soon as we knew that it was going ahead, she sent us that playlist before we even had scripts or anything. We were listening to that. I felt like I was then trying to guess what was happening before the scripts had even been sent out!
“I think having a tone and having something like an audio that you can listen to, a playlist for a second season, it brings you back into the world immediately. Even for me, in the first scene of the show, I'm wearing the same outfit as the last episode of the last season. There was something about putting on the clothes again, and being reunited with a lot of the same crew. All that felt like it was coming back and like we were just going back in time and carrying on the story where we left off.”
As a youngster, Tyers first fell in love with drama doing youth theatre at the Gaiety School of Acting, which at that time had a branch in Cork.
“I had a youth theatre teacher, Tony McLean Fay, who I did youth theatre with for maybe four or five years when I was younger. I think that was like the first time that I went to a class where you had complete freedom. The people who go to drama classes are often maybe the misfits, the people who find themselves together and find a real unity together in this space.
“I think that's what we found there. And then he helped me with getting into drama school (the highly regarded London school, RADA) and I met amazing people there.”
- Extraordinary Season Two is now on Disney+
It’s a buoyant time for new Irish talent, with many establishing themselves on the big and small screen at home and internationally.
From Dromina in Co Cork, Finn played the lead character of Mat Cauthon in series two of Prime Video’s global success The Wheel of Time, a fantasy series that also stars Rosemund Pike. Working steadily since he graduated from acting school in London, other screen credits also include SAS Rogue Heroes, How To Build a Girl and The Witcher.
The Carlow actress made a strong impression in Prime Video’s tennis drama Fifteen-Love. She played the lead role of Justine Pearce, a troubled former professional tennis player who revisits her past when she is reacquainted with her former coach (Aidan Turner).
Following roles in The Witcher and The Magic Flute, Dubliner McCormack starred in the Netflix hit, Everything Now. She played the lead character’s flamboyant friend in the show which centres on a teenager’s efforts to embrace life following treatment for an eating disorder.
Having starred in Dublin Murders and Normal People, Limerick-born actress McNamara played the lead role in the hit show Then You Run. The edgy series saw her play a rebellious teen sent to live with her estranged father, a big-time drug dealer.
