From Donegal to Hawkins: Irish actress Amybeth McNulty on her role in Stranger Things
Amybeth McNulty at the Stranger Things season five world premiere in Hollywood. Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images
When Amybeth McNulty was 14, she was cast in a series that would transform her life. The Donegal teenager landed the lead role in leading to her moving from the small town of Milford to the bright lights of Toronto. The series, loosely based on the classic Anne of turned out to be a fan favourite and drew wide global audiences over the course of its three-season run.
“I was 14, and I was flown out to Canada, and I'd never been there before,” she recalls. “All of a sudden I'm living six months of my life in Toronto, in a very busy, multicultural city, and going back to Milford and hanging out on a farm with my sheep as an only child in this very separate, wild, away-from-the-world place.”
The show’s success changed “everything in every way” for the youngster, who had fallen in love with drama in her native Donegal. It helped, she says, that the crew on her first major production embraced her childlike curiosity.
“They really fostered my interest in camera work and the props department and sound and lighting, they answered any question I had. They let me hop on the cameras to teach me how to use them. I could ask the director any questions. It was a complete learning experience. It was like going to university for acting, but for some reason, I was then getting paid instead of paying. It completely changed my life.”
Years later, McNulty would land a role in an even more iconic series. In 2021, she was cast as the cool student and musician Vickie in joining the hugely successful show from series four. A nut since the very first episode arrived on Netflix, she admits to doing a dance when the casting was confirmed.
“It was completely wild, very unexpected,” says McNulty. “I was one of the first people around my group that watched it - so from day dot, I've been a massive, massive fan of the show. I saw the audition come in. I knew what it was. Obviously, you're going to fight to be in something like that — but I never thought that it would actually happen. I was chuffed as a fan of the show to be a wee cog in the machine for it. It feels wild. It still feels very surreal, like it almost didn't happen.”
Part sci-fi, part thriller, part love letter to 1980s classics, became a cultural phenomenon, with the fifth and final series now on the streaming platform. Created by the Duffer Brothers, the mystery set in the town of Hawkins, Indiana drew more than 140.7 million views for its fourth series.
Its use of Kate Bush’s in a key scene of season four sent the song rocketing up the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in 38 years. McNulty was delighted that Bush's music was now being heard by a whole new generation: “She needed to be loved as much as this for her entire career and I’m very glad this was a part of it.”
Now aged 24, McNulty, who has 6.9 million followers on Instagram, landed her first major role a decade ago and was placed in the spotlight just as social media was in rapid growth. Still in her early teens, was it important to have peers who understood that experience?
“Very much so. You know, it's funny, before I knew anything about me being on the show, I actually became friends with quite a lot of kids in when we were younger — 14, 15 — when it was really ramping up for all of us, them certainly more so. We were in a similar boat of: ‘I don't really know what's going on on the internet’. We're all children. None of us really understand what's happening. We had this kind of safety circle.”
McNulty was raised in Milford, near Letterkenny, to a family who celebrated her love of drama classes. Raised largely by her late mum Siobhán and grandparents Liam and Eileen, she refers to the late Liam as her dad, and fondly remembers how he gently encouraged her interest.
“He was a teacher and a driver - but he was also a non-professional actor. He was involved with Scottish Opera, he did directing in Ireland, and was in little stage productions in the Millennium Forum [in Derry].”
When she first developed an interest in drama classes as a child, she remembers feeling “dumbfounded” on learning it could possibly be something she could do for a living. Accessing classes and shows through Letterkenny’s long-established An Grianán Theatre also helped open up a sense of possibility.
“Without Donegal and specifically without An Grianán Theatre, I would not be doing what I'm doing,” says McNulty. “They not only fostered that initial love and fascination that I had with it, but completely invigorated me to aspire to do better.
"I went to youth theatre and I did every summer school, every summer show. I did the Christmas shows. They used to joke that I had a little bed under the stage.
“They let me join at five years old, because they were like: ‘Well, she has a love for it. What are we going to do, stop her?’
And when I didn't have wifi to send self tapes for Anne or for Stranger Things, I would go up to the RCC (the Regional Cultural Centre) behind An Grianán, and they would send it off for me. It was a real community base for the career that I have, and without them, I genuinely have no idea what I would be doing.
In the early hours of the morning before this interview, Killarney actress Jessie Buckley has delivered an emotional speech as she celebrated her Golden Globes win for Yet again, Irish-grown talent looks set to be making an impact on the world stage. Like many, McNulty is cheering the latest Irish success story.
“I've been obsessed with Saoirse Ronan since I can even remember being alive,” she says. “I’ve kind of been waiting for the rest of the world to notice how well Irish actors take to these things. In my opinion, it's down to pure community and fascination within human beings that is such an integral part of being Irish.
"Having a fascination in other people. Talking to one another, and having deep conversations and creativity and music and all of these things that are so a part of our soul, so innately. In our small communities and wee farmlands, what do we have? We have storytelling. That's how we get through the day. That's how we're intrigued by life.”
- series five is now on Netflix
