My Childhood with Carla Geary: 'I was cheeky as a child... in a loveable way'

Carla Geary recently made her TV debut on The Traitors Ireland and says she's hoping to do more telly work. 

Three-year-old Carla Geary. She was signed up for disco dancing classes and was an instant convert.

Carla Geary says she was a cheeky child. As she says it, she giggles in the mischievous way that many of us have come to know and love from her recent stint on The Traitors Ireland.

“Cheeky in a loveable way, not rude,” the 27-year-old insists. “Me mam says I was born chatty. Whenever we’d go to town on the bus, she’d give me a lollipop so I wouldn’t talk the ears off the other passengers.”

Geary grew up in Ballymun and still lives in her family home with her mother Debbie and brother Craig. She says she “loved growing up there. I loved my school, which was a Gaelscoil where I learned Irish. I loved my dance classes that I took for years. I loved my friends and family who all lived nearby. I’m so proud of Ballymun and think I’ll probably live there forever.”

The childhood Geary describes is a happy one in which she was surrounded by people. “I have loads of great memories,” she says. “I’d always be out on my bike cycling up and down the road with friends and if it was the weekend, the whole family would gather at my nanny’s, and I’d be in the middle of them, in my element.”

Geary’s experience of school was positive too. So positive, she says she “would go back tomorrow if I could. I loved it that much.”

The activity she enjoyed most was dancing. Her mother signed her up for freestyle disco classes as a three-year-old, and she was an instant convert. She would practice five or six evenings a week and attended competitions at the weekend.

Carla is known for her recent stint on The Traitors Ireland. 

“We’d travel all over Ireland and as far afield as Scotland and Wales,” she says. “I danced until I was 16 and needed to focus on my Leaving Certificate. It helped keep me out of trouble for all those years.”

However, her childhood wasn’t without its challenges. One was the arrival of Craig when she turned seven. She recalls how her mother told her she would be a big sister while she was doing her hair in advance of a trip to see Westlife in concert.

Geary’s response was: “What? No way. I’m grand as I am.”

Her reaction to meeting her newborn brother was even less enthusiastic. “I vomited on him in the hospital,” she says. “I couldn’t believe I had a brother.”

Luckily for Craig, Geary overcame her initial hostility and soon came to see him as her own little baby. She says she was “like a second mammy to him, although I don’t know if mammies throw their children around in dance routines like I used to do with Craig when he was little”. The pair are close now and appeared together on a special episode of Googlebox Ireland last week.

“I’d be lost without Craig,” says Geary.

Her parents, Debbie and Mark, separating when she was 13 marked a more difficult time in Geary’s childhood. She describes it as “hard for a teenager to deal with, but I always had a great relationship with Ma and Da, and that continued. I still got so much love and support, just split across two homes.”

Meeting Chloe Foley when she was 16 was a turning point in Geary’s life. She had been unsure of her sexuality up to that point. “When my friends started getting boyfriends, I just wasn’t interested,” she says. “But when I met Chloe, I suddenly realised the reason I wasn’t interested was because I was gay. I liked girls.”

Traitors star Carla on the Gogglebox Ireland sofa with her partner Chloe, her brother Craig, and his partner Jahrea.

She worried about coming out, but now wonders why she was so anxious.”Ma was sound,” says Geary. “She asked me if I was OK with it and when I told her I was, she said she was delighted for me. Da was grand too, and none of my friends were shocked either. I should have known they would all be cool with it. I think my anxiety was just me being a teenager and feeling insecure in myself.”

Another hurdle in Geary’s path was not getting the points she needed to study primary school teaching. She always wanted to be a teacher and still thinks she’d be “good at it”. She had undertaken work experience in early childhood education in fourth year and listed that as her second option on her CAO form. “That’s what I’ve been loving doing ever since,” she says.

Geary puts her decision to apply for The Traitors Ireland down to the self-belief her granny instilled in her and a lesson she learned from her parents.

Her granny’s name was Florence, but Geary called her Nanny Lolo. “Nanny Lolo was a real inner-city woman, a proper townie who always spoke her mind,” she says. “Her house was two minutes’ walk from ours, and I’d go there for tea and cake after school every day.”

Nanny Lolo died in 2019 and never got to see Geary on television, but Geary says she wouldn’t be surprised by the turn her life has taken. “She always told me I’d be great on telly. I can just picture her on the phone to all her friends chatting about what I got up to in the castle. She always believed in me, and I know she’d be so proud.”

The lesson she learned from her parents was that “life is short and you may as well go for it”.

“When it comes to putting yourself forward for opportunities, the worst that can happen is that you’ll be told no,” says Geary.

Geary hopes that her self-confidence and willingness to take chances will lead to other exciting on screen adventures. “I had a ball on The Traitors and on Gogglebox,” she says. “I’d love to do more telly. Fingers crossed something else comes up for me.”