Eileen Walsh: Iconic Cork actor on Cillian Murphy reunion and a Midsummer night's marathon

From her recent on-screen reunion with Cillian Murphy to a new TV series with Chris O’Dowd and plans for a 24-hour live performance Leeside, Esther McCarthy catches up with leading lady Eileen Walsh

Sat, 08 Feb, 2025 - 01:00

When Cillian Murphy learned of his Oscar nomination last year, Eileen Walsh was glad to celebrate with her friend in the very place it all started for both of them.

Back in The Triskel in Cork to record a programme for CNN’s 60 Minutes about the actor, the interview happened to coincide with the Oscar nominations — leading to a ‘full circle’ moment.

“That was the day it was announced. So we were all together in Cork, in the theatre where Disco Pigs started and that’s when he had just got the news. It was beautiful, a really special time to be there for,” Walsh recalls.

It’s almost three decades since the 1996 debut of Enda Walsh’s groundbreaking play that helped launch both of their careers. If anything, Eileen Walsh is busier than ever over the past year, having again worked with Murphy on the exceptional Irish drama Small Things Like These. She also starred in Say Nothing, the well-received TV adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestselling book about The Troubles, and was in the headlines this week as it was announced she will star in a marathon 24-hour play at Cork Midsummer Festival 2025.

In the coming weeks, we’ll see her working on home turf again in a highly anticipated series from Chris O’Dowd. Set in the fictional Northern town of Drumbán, Small Town, Big Story focuses on what happens when a big Hollywood TV production comes to town, shining a spotlight on a long-held secret.

Small Town, Big Story will premiere on Thursday, February 27, on Sky and streaming service NOW. The show’s big-name cast also includes Christina Hendricks and Paddy Considine.

“I play Catherine, who is a history teacher at the local secondary school,” says Walsh of her role.

“She’s having a little fling with a maths teacher. She’s married to Shamie [Considine], and their marriage is going through a tough time. They are two kids in, 20 years down the line, and both suffering unhappiness in different forms.

"When Shamie was younger, he had a relationship with a woman. There appears to be something that happened around the millennium, and she goes off to America where she becomes a very high-powered TV exec. She’s played by Christina Hendricks, who is fab.

Eileen Walsh stars as Catherine Proctor in Small Town, Big Story

“She comes back because she pushes for her old hometown to be used in a Game of Thrones-vibe TV show. By her coming back, she unleashes secrets that have been kept down in the town for the last 20 years. There are ripple effects throughout the town, not just on their relationship, but in the town itself.”

So far, so intriguing, and O’Dowd’s new series has a blast with the blending of genre and the meta-style references that come from a show within a show.

“I love Chris O’Dowd’s work,” says Walsh of working with her compatriot. “He’s very funny. He’s very charming within himself. All the characters are complex, but you only slowly get to unravel them, episode by episode. It’s a deep-seated comedy.”

Much of the series was filmed on location in and around Co Wicklow, with O’Dowd’s home town of Boyle in Co Roscommon — where he previously set Moone Boy — also featuring strongly.

The series gave Walsh the opportunity to work again with British actor Considine, with who she previously worked with on another Irish movie, Wolf.

“Paddy and I just got on like a house on fire,” she says. “I adore him, and I adore getting to do scenes with him, because it’s new and scary and brilliant, and we bring out the best in each other.”

She also enjoyed working with US star Hendricks, who plays a powerful TV executive who brings a big-budget show back to her hometown.

“Christina was my first scene to shoot, so that’s pretty nerve wracking,” recalls Walsh. “It was about four pages of dialogue, which is pretty long for telly.

“I remember thinking: ‘Oh, my God, don’t fuck this up now!’ And she walked into the room, and I’m not kidding, there was a fanfare in my head of, dada dada dada!” she smiles, referencing Mad Men, the iconic series that made Hendricks a huge star. “She was really a consummate professional, utterly brilliant, because she was working long hours, and she was first in, last out, because she and Paddy were such main characters throughout.”

CHARACTERS AND STAGES

The youngest of a family of six, Walsh grew up in Cork’s city centre, across the road from the former Evergreen Bacon Factory, and went to school in South Presentation.

From the age of 12, she started attending Saturday morning drama workshops at the Crawford Gallery, before going on to do theatre studies at Dublin’s Trinity College.

There were many people who fostered her interest in drama in the early days, including her sister Catherine, who is also an actress.

“Catherine left home to join the National Youth Theatre in Dublin and then she did Trinity. I remember thinking: ‘That’s so urban’,” she says of her older sibling. “She was literally Sarah Jessica Parker before Sarah Jessica Parker! And she made it really possible. She was the one who came back and said: ‘Actually, this is where you belong’. As soon as I was in drama classes, my path was kind of decided.

“Geraldine O’Neill was my drama teacher for those Saturday morning workshops, and she brought a lot of us through. Siobhán McSweeney was under her as well. Fiona Shaw would have been a huge inspiration because she was so theatre-focused and so utterly revered — she’s the Roy Keane of the theatre world.”

Her first professional role, in Rough Magic theatre company’s Danti-Dan, written by Gina Moxley, underscored her love of theatre. It also put her on the radar of playwright Enda Walsh, who was bringing his new play Disco Pigs to the stage.

“Enda saw that, and then brought Disco Pigs to me and said: ‘Would you come back to Cork and do this?’” she says.

There is a glorious photo in the Irish Examiner’s archive, taken by Eddie O’Hare, of the fresh-faced Walsh and Murphy boarding a bus in a photoshoot for the play, which would go on to become a huge success.

Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh in 1996 around the premiere run of Disco Pigs. The Enda Walsh play was produced by Corcadorca. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

“That first summer was like the most perfect summer,” she recalls of the run. “I was one year down in drama school, thinking I knew everything. I had one professional play under my belt, meeting Cillian, who was cool and in a band, but hadn’t done a play. And it was such a basis for an amazing, long friendship — not just with Cill, but with Enda and Pat Kiernan and Aedin Cosgrove who designed it.”

IT'S THE SMALL THINGS

Recently, she got to work again with Murphy on Small Things Like These, one of the most powerful Irish films of recent years, an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s much-loved novel and Murphy’s debut as a producer. Fresh from filming Oppenheimer, Murphy had optioned the novel which was filmed on location in Co Wexford.

He plays a coal merchant in 1980s Ireland who becomes concerned about the welfare of the young women in a Magdalene laundry in the local convent he delivers to. Walsh is excellent as his wife and mother to their family of girls.

“To come back together and work together again was nerve-wracking, actually. I remember going for a walk with my sister around The Lough in Cork,” she says, and expressing her nervousness. “Then you have to let all that go and go: ‘Actually, you know this story better than anyone’. My dad was a coal man. We lived in a tiny house.”

Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh pictured at the Irish Premiere of Small Things Like These at The Light House Cinema, Dublin.

Early in her career, Walsh starred in Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters, while other recent films have included Ann, director Ciaran Creagh’s film about Ann Lovett. Is it important to her to have a part in telling these stories?

“It is. It means the most to me, I think because I grew up within it. I was born in ’77. We know the darkness that Ireland was under in that time,” she says.

Last year, Walsh and her Scottish husband Stuart McCaffer moved to Ireland from London with their teenage daughters Tippy and Ethel, and now live near the sea in Dún Laoghaire. The couple met in the early days of Disco Pigs during an Edinburgh run, when Walsh needed a haircut and formed a connection with the barber she met that day. McCaffer now works as a sculptor and the family has embraced the move.

“Both of the girls were up for a move. I felt maybe this was a good time, and Ethel is now in a beautiful school in Bray. To be close to the sea every day when I walk her down to the Dart, and we hear the sea and we’re like: Yeah. It’s totally the right move.”

BOLDNESS AND ADVENTURE

As she returns to our screen for the new Sky series, Walsh is also planning a truly unique project as part of this year’s Cork Midsummer Festival.

The Second Woman is a theatrical marathon that will see Walsh playing out the same scene with 100 different men over the course of 24 hours. Inspired by a scene from the John Cassavetes film Opening Night, it centres around a conversation about a relationship that has lost its mojo.

“As soon as it was mentioned, I was like: ‘That’s exactly the kind of thing I want to do’,” says Walsh. “I had seen a production of it in London with Ruth Wilson, and I know of the two women who are the writer creators of it [Nat Randall and Anna Breckon].

“I love their work. I love what they do. I love their boldness and adventure. Twenty-four hours in the theatre, it will just feel epic.”

The prospect of bringing the unique show to her home city means a lot to her, she adds. “To do it somewhere like the Opera House gives it a real sense of grandeur, of playfulness on a massive scale, and also to do it for such a large audience, that’s brilliant.

“To bring this work to Cork is a huge honour for me, and just to give people the opportunity of meeting work like this, that’s so exciting and different.

“I want people to have the opportunity to be in Cork and thinking: ‘Yeah, I get to see this shit here.’

“You don’t have to be in London, you don’t have to be on Broadway. You get to see it down by The Lee.”