Culture That Made Me: Young Offenders star Shane Casey picks his touchstones
Young Offenders actor Shane Casey. Picture: Enrique Carnicero
Born in 1981, Shane Casey grew up in the Turner’s Cross area of Cork City. In 2016, he starred in film as Billy Murphy, a role he reprised in the subsequent hit TV series. His play has been performed in numerous theatres, including Cork Opera House in 2019. His film credits include and . The latest series of is currently running on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.
Peter Sellers has been a hero since my days going to Stiofáin Naofa acting school in Cork. His work with Stanley Kubrick is incredible. I heard Sellers was almost void of personality himself. I found that thing interesting about putting the character upon you and being awkward. It's become more obvious now with personality disorders and the embracing of neurodivergence within the arts, which is great. Sellers had a lot of things going on. There's an interesting film about his life called
Recently, I bought myself Kitt, the Knight Rider car as a treat. The worse Knight Rider was, the more I enjoyed it. Your man from Knight Rider, Edward Mulhare, was from Quaker Road in Cork. He was related to my babysitter. This was an amazing thing because he grew up near me, and he did it. I heard from a friend of mine that Edward Mulhare and his co-star, David Hasselhoff, rocked up mid 1980s for a couple of pints in the Fox & Hounds pub — one of the biggest stars in the world in Ballyvolane! You can imagine dozens of kids standing outside the Fox & Hounds and Hasselhoff talking into his watch going, “Kit, Kit, where are you?”
Alan Partridge and awkward comedy is the world I've landed into. Billy in is awkward. Coogan's genius is that he's still there, he survived, he's changed the format. He's done it in different ways — he's done books; the original television shows were incredible for rewatching. How he can shift the tone up and down from it being almost reality to the obvious high comedy of, “Dan! Dan!” – shouting at someone across a carpark. There's a bit of Partridge in all of us. As you get older, you start addressing that within yourself.
Hall & Oates down at Live at the Marquee in 2019 came at the right time. I went with a very good friend of mine, Andrew Ryan, the comedian. We both needed that gig. One of those, “Like, OK, that was good.”
I love the Crawford. I wanted to get married there but it was closed for covid. Seán Keating’s The Men of the South painting that was in there for years is amazing. I went there when I was on the hop from school. I tried to create a play for kids in there that I need to return to. It’s about a kid stealing money out of the Share box — and I'm not saying I did it because I didn’t — in the bathrooms in the Crawford. I went into this curated piece a few years back for kids and about kids. On the wall was a picture of my uncle holding a collection box. I was like, bloody hell; stuff here.
From that period 1986 to 1992, Coronation Street was brilliant. It was on less than now. It was a good grounding for somebody to go, “Oh, they're realistic actors.” I loved the Ken Barlow and Mike Baldwin feuds. They had a couple of good scraps in The Rovers. Coronation Street was good for bringing in people who might not necessarily be actors. Brian Hibbard, lead singer in the band The Flying Pickets, rocked up and ended up being Baldwin's ganger, doing jobs for Baldwin. He was good. I remember him leaving Coronation Street. The big thing with Baldwin was that he had a Jaguar. Your man legged it with Baldwin’s Jag, sold it for a Merc and he’s filmed in this Merc going down the coast to get the ferry. That’s good.
There's great romanticism about being broke in the arts. I can safely say I lived quite close to that life of the two actors in in a house in Sunday’s Well with one of my best friends. We could hear things in the walls on occasions, and it wasn't through drinking perfume or whatever. We were in and out of each other's pockets. I'd have money and I'd bring him to the cinema or he'd have money. What that film addresses are actors who’ve been to drama college, finding their tribe, then the breakdown of friendships or somebody's gonna move on and work and other people mightn't. It's a magnificent film.
I saw in the Triskel Arts Centre recently as part of the film festival. I’ve seen it dozens of times, but seeing it on the big screen, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before — there’s an element of loneliness in it even though the two of them are together. Paul McGann [‘I’ in the film] was in the audience, and Bruce Robertson, the director, was sitting in front of us.
There’s nothing like seeing Cillian Murphy in the Opera House. He was in a play with Stephen Rea in the Opera House — Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk — in 2014. That was great. The excitement for it was incredible. It’s seeing our friends in other things. The wall dropped at the back. I remember Stephen Rea coming out and thinking, oh, the rules are broken now; this is good.
I got the tail end of Henry's in 1999. For about six months, it was my place, somewhere I went on my own. Without getting into details, I couldn't get into another nightclub — Gorby's — so I ended up in Henry's. The meeting of different people from the city was amazing to see, on the staircase at the end of the night, the love that was in the room, probably encouraged by other things.
It was a special place, but I remember bringing my cousin from Dublin there. She didn't get it because it was dirty. The paint would destroy your clothes. There was chicken wire on one of the windows in the main room, but the unity of a Saturday night or a weekender was incredible. It's lovely to see Stevie G still affecting the tapestry of the city in a positive way. The Fish Go Deep lads are tipping away. The old ravers are still around.
I've gone through three or four copies of Christopher Sandford’s biography of Steve McQueen. I always hand it off. It's a story of resilience. This man ran away from home, worked aboard ships, in the Dominican Republic in a brothel. It's a story of childhood neglect and how somebody became independent and successful despite the bad things that happened to him. There’s a downside to it as well, but it's a great biography.
