I visited Marian Keyes for tea and biscuits — here’s everything we spoke about
Marian Keyes: “I wanted to buy shoes instead of paying the electricity bill. I knew that I was never going to be CEO of a company, I knew it was impossible.”
Within a few minutes of stepping into Marian Keyes’ home, we’re sat across from each other, shoes off in a pink library.
Surrounded by an impressive collection of novels and animal trinkets, her sanctuary features any book lover’s dream — a rolling ladder.
Before curling up on a green velvet sofa, she makes sure to fluff the pillows behind my back for extra comfort and doesn’t take no for an answer when offering a plate of chocolate teacakes.
An intention to feed guests was made clear the previous evening when a text signed off ‘Xx’ asked what I’d like to eat today.
The Limerick native is as warm and witty as her books, and a conversation with her quickly feels like debriefing with the girls around a cuppa.
She tells me one of her dreams has come true as , an RTÉ comedy drama series inspired by her novels, released this month.
“It was a long, long time in the making. With any of these things, I never let my heart get involved because in all the years that I’ve been writing, so many things have been optioned and so few things have been made,” she says. It was only when the audition process started she believed it was going to happen.
Drawing on two of Keyes’ novels, and , the six-part series centres around five sisters — Anna, Claire, Helen, Maggie, and Rachel — bound by love and a tendency for self-destruction.
Keyes’ role was advisory. She didn’t have any play in the script, but answered a plethora of “small questions” about her characters — such as who Daddy Walsh would vote for.
“When I wrote the first book, I didn’t know who he’d vote for, but the minute they asked me, I knew it was Fianna Fáil. He’s a pure Fianna Fáil man.”
When she first peeked at the five women cast, it was almost like the characters she carefully crafted walked straight off the page and “became real people”.
“They were all talking together and over each other. That is exactly the dynamic that I see them having. Very enmeshed, supportive, competitive, combative, and warm,” she says.
Despite not feeling territorial during the audition process, she did have strong opinions about Luke Costello’s casting.
“He’s been in the world for like 28 years, people really wanted him to be as sexy and hot as Luke.
“I just had to go and say to them, ‘Don’t fuck this up’. And they didn’t. I’ve seen the first three episodes and Jay Duffy’s just properly sexy. Like, he’s really, really, really hot.”
If the Walsh sisters resonated with so many, perhaps it’s because reading their adventures feels like a warm hug. One that implies everything will work out in the end.
In 1995, her debut novel read like a response to the “lies of post-feminism”. She wanted to write about someone like her.
“We were told ‘The war’s over now, you are equal to men. You get paid the same and every opportunity is yours if you want it. You can be as promiscuous or not as men and nobody’s going to judge you’.”
But in 1990s London, none of these statements rang true to a young Keyes, who didn’t recognise herself in the women’s magazines featuring “ball-breaking strident women”.
“Me and my flatmates had to borrow from each other, paying the rent was a big deal.
“I wanted to buy shoes instead of paying the electricity bill. I knew that I was never going to be CEO of a company, I knew it was impossible.”
The author says she wasn’t aware of the obstacles in her way — and didn’t even have the words to articulate the “inequities and the roadblocks” to advancement.
Eager to write about a woman resembling herself, she wrote about women living messy lives. And hers, she says, was “messier than most”.
“They represented different versions of post-feminist women and I think there was something for everybody to identify with. I think people felt seen in that first novel.”
Keyes was never shy about writing about the things we don’t like admitting to ourselves — such as the jealousy that can often arise in female friendships.
“You can really love your friend, but when they get something that you want or have, it messes with the balance of power.
“There was something enjoyable about just saying, ‘these are the feelings I have and I’m not proud of them, but they’re there’. When my friend got a promotion and was getting more money, I was happy for her, but it made me feel like I’d swallowed a rock or something.”
Keyes describes us, human beings, as scared little creatures.
“The more we know that other people are scared little creatures too, the easier it makes it to accept those shameful feelings.”
In her 20s in London, she lived surrounded by funny stories told by even funnier people. Then and there, she got real-life training in turning embarrassment into entertainment.
“The most mortifying, especially with men, terrible things would happen, awful sad things. But we’d come home and we’d tell each other. We’d make each other laugh and we’d process our stuff that way,” she recalls.
Every night, she writes down three things she is grateful for. Most recently, her mother’s health scare was at the top of the list.
“They said she’d probably be on a trolley all night. She decided to go home. The next morning, she felt better. In that moment, high on my gratitude list is my mother is not in hospital.”
Keyes is keen on celebrating the absence of disaster. For a long time, her default was being “sensitised to disaster”.
“Even something as natural and unavoidable as the death of a parent. When the nursing home said my dad had 48 hours to live, I really thought ‘This can’t be happening’. It’s such a human response, but if you are lucky enough to have a dad, he’s probably going to die before you. I’m sorry, is this really dark?,” she tentatively asks.
If Keyes is always waiting for the other shoe to drop, her dad was the kind to wait for the “entire shoe shop to drop”.
“Jesus, my poor dad, he never stopped worrying. He was really proud of me for getting sober and for getting a good job. Although he really worried about me for doing something as insecure as writing,” she says softly.
“I have a little thing with this photograph in it and a little prayer on my makeup desk upstairs. I see it every day, I often have chats with him in my head.”
Throughout the years, she says Ireland has changed a lot. Keyes used to say shame “hangs in the air in Ireland”.
“It doesn’t, that was the church that we were steeped in from the day we were born. Even when I had reached an age where I could intellectually think for myself, overcoming that very early conditioning, it’s incredibly difficult.” According to her, the Catholic Church would make you think “you’re fucked from the get-go”.
“The idea of original sin. You’re only born and you’re already a sinner. In some ways it seems ridiculous, but in other ways it really doesn’t. My generation were brought up to think, you are flawed, you are stained, and you are weak.
“It’s an awful lot to put on a person. It’s toxic shame, shame that is not earned.”
She mentions Annie Murphy and Bishop Eamonn Casey, and the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in the 1990s.
“It was around then that maybe the wheels started coming off, the image of the church. I look at people 30 years younger than me. They just don’t have that shame and fear.
“I think Ireland has changed hugely and having the referendum on same-sex marriage and on legalising abortion — both of them say so much about this country.
“We’re not not as crippled by toxic shame. I just want that for us, to feel good, happy, and proud.” The openness and limitless vocabulary used by Gen Z to describe anything they might be going through is what she loves about her niece’s generation.
“The way you see injustice and protest it, I get so much courage from my niece, I learn so much from her.”
In her latest novel, , she wrote about menopause and sex, hitting back at the “deification of youth and beauty in women”.
“Once a woman is no longer objectively fanciable, the thought of her having sex becomes unattractive. I think it’s got something to do with ageism.
“The behaviour of a menopausal woman was just mocked when all it is is adolescence in reverse.
“I read somewhere the other day that if men’s testosterone dropped as much as women’s oestrogen drops when they begin menopause, they’d be put into hospital and given everything to nurse them back to health.” She might be writing about sex, but Keyes says she never sets out to be provocative — only representative.
Plus, she loves a good love story. “I love the idea of people having love stories when they’re older, because people can fall in love right up until the day they die. People connect, that never stops.” In between sips of tea and more biscuits, we go back to shame. Looking back, there is one element she struggles with.
“My earlier books were written at a time of different values. Fat phobia is now recognised as a terrible thing. But in the noughties, there was this thing called the circle of shame where they’d take photographs of women and show their back fat.
“I didn’t know any different and they’re now immortalised in my novels. On the one hand, I wish I could go back and excise them, but on the other, I feel I have no right to airbrush that history because they’re part of the environment of the time.
“I wish they weren’t because they hurt so many people, including me because I’ve always felt at such war with my body.”
She is used to addressing alcoholism but never gets tired of being asked about it; particularly not if it may help someone else out there.
“I would be dead if I hadn’t got into recovery when I did. I’m not dead. I’m alive and available. I try to be loving and to be a decent person.
“The one thing that I have felt really lucky and grateful for, it’s when other women have heard me and thought, ‘Oh fuck, I think I might be an alcoholic too and if she can stop, then maybe I can’.”
There is one thing she doesn’t get asked about enough — her husband, Tony Baines. They first met about “a thousand years ago” at his 30th birthday party in London.
“My flatmate, Suzanne, my sister’s best friend, worked with him. He had a party and Suzanne, being Irish, brought along 27 of her closest friends.
“She said he was really clever, loved Irish writers and music, and that he voted Labour.”
She feels lucky the pair have found each other. And when she speaks of Tony, her eyes sparkle a tad more than usual.
“He’s very different from me. He’s game for anything. A sea swim is on, count him in — and count me very much out. He’s a very ‘yes to life’ kind of a person, but he never makes me feel shit about being a ‘no to life’, he’s fine with me being an introvert.”
As previously established, a conversation with Keyes feels like a chat with the girls, where you cover everything from A to Z — even funerals and hurling.
While climbing “some mountain in Donegal”, Tony and herself stumbled upon a funeral and were forced to stay.
“You’re never alone at a funeral in Ireland. You could meet your next fella, make new friends, you get fed. Honestly, they’re bizarrely upbeat.”
She may hail from Limerick, but she has lived in many counties, including Clare, Cork, and Galway. But when the hurling is on, which she compares to “graceful but brutal ballet”, her heart lies with The Banner County — where her mother is from.
“It’s the place where I feel closeness, it’s very peaceful. I like the gentle beauty of Clare.
“And Clare hurlers would be the ones. Even my husband, who’s English, he follows them,” she laughs. “It’s like magic.”
- airs Sundays at 9.30pm on RTÉ One
- This article was first published on September 27, 2025.
