Three main Late Late Show talking points, from Brendan O’Carroll to proud Cork people
Patrick Kielty with Adam Clayton, Samantha Barry and Graham Norton
The first two guests on Friday night’s Late Late Show were chat show host Graham Norton and Glamour’s Global Editorial Director Samantha Barry — but more importantly, two guests from Cork.
When host Patrick Kielty quipped that Barry was only in the studio to meet her fellow Corkonian, she replied: “Honestly, my favourite headline about me being on here today was from the Evening Echo, and it was like ‘ Cork people on the Late Late’, it was Samantha Barry and Graham Norton, and then also Paul Mescal and Adam Clayton. You know you’re reading a Cork newspaper when that happens,” she said.
“We've reached peak Cork,” Kielty agreed.
As well as discussing her role with Glamour, Barry described life in America after the US presidential election. She said there “is an underlying misogyny and racism in America” that contributed to both Donald Trump’s win and Kamala Harris’s loss.
She also described what it was like dancing with Beyonce at the recent Glamour Women of the Year Awards.
“It's rare that you get somebody that has that calibre of celebrity that takes the oxygen out of the room. I've seen it only a couple of times. But there was this moment when Beyonce walked in where there was this inhale of breath.”
Saoirse Ronan was a guest on Graham Norton’s BBC chat show two weeks ago and made a comment about gender-based violence that resonated with viewers and went viral on social media. Norton said he appreciated the line at the time but did not expect the clip of the interview to be shared so widely.
“It felt like a great line. We were having a conversation, everyone was talking about something, and then Saoirse put this brilliant button on it. And it was like, oh, good on you, that was good.
“What you didn't expect was then [for it] to take off in that kind that way TikTok clips do. What's so strange is that's how people consume the show, they'll never know what was really happening before that, or what happened after, it's just taken out of context in that way. But on the night we thought, good on you. If it would have been a panel show, that she'd won the round.”
However, Paul Mescal, who was a guest beside Ronan on the show, said he was not surprised by the reaction.
“I'm not surprised that the message received as much attention as it got,” he told Kielty.
“She's more often than not the most intelligent person in the room. She was spot on, hit the nail on the head and it's also good that messages like that are gaining traction. That's a conversation that we should absolutely be having on a daily basis.”
Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll addressed a recent controversy following his use of a racial term during rehearsals for the upcoming Christmas special of the show.
The BBC temporarily paused rehearsals to investigate the incident at a read-through of an episode and O’Carroll has clarified the situation and apologised once more.
“I like to poke fun, particularly at people who marginalise other people,” he said. “I wanted to poke fun at intergenerational racism, how Mrs Brown doesn't ‘get’ racism.”
He said it revolved around an old ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’ rhyme that had a racial slur in it. “Cathy stops Mrs. Brown and goes, ‘Mammy, you can't say that.’ And we went on,” he said.
He said the N-word was not used in full in the line as he “expected [the audience] to finish it in their head and realise, ‘Oh, she doesn't get it’. It was a gag that backfired. It landed on its arse. I landed on my arse. You had Ukraine, you had Gaza, you had the American election, but I ended up on the front page of the English papers for a week. I obviously deserved it.”
When he found out one of the show’s runners was offended by the joke O’Carrroll said he apologised and dropped the line from the script.
“I immediately sent him an email apologising because I don't want to offend anybody. I believe that the workplace should be a happy place, not just for us, but for everybody.”
