Meet Emer O'Neill, the new presenter on RTÉ's Today show
Today Presenter Emer O’Neill. Picture: Andres Poveda
EMER O’Neill says she’s a lucky woman. The new co-host of RTÉ’s Today show was wracked with nerves before she made her first appearance on the live programme back in May. She was filling in as one of several guest presenters during Sinead Kennedy’s maternity leave.
O’Neill couldn’t sleep and couldn’t eat, but then presenter Dáithí Ó Sé walked into her dressing room and all her nerves disappeared. “I think if I’d have had my first live show experience with anybody else, it could have been very different.
“Whatever you say, it’s going live on the TV and you can be so wary of ‘don’t mess up, don’t curse, don’t say the wrong thing’. But Dáithí was so relaxed and took away any of that fear that I was going to mess up.”
She was left speechless after hearing the news that she got the gig to co-present the show with Ó Sé on Mondays and Tuesdays for the coming months while Kennedy continues on maternity leave.
It’s been a whirlwind two years for O’Neill, who battled post-natal depression after her second baby, worked on RTÉ’s Home School Hub as Ireland’s PE teacher, become an activist speaking out against racism in this country, and wrote a children’s book, which was published yesterday.
Her time on Home School Hub was amazing, says O’Neill. She got great feedback from her appearances on the show, and loved seeing parents and their kids doing her exercises on Instagram.
“My heart was just full. You’d see me on the TV and you’d see these little kids in front doing their squats and their jumping jacks. I had a quite a few parents of biracial children thank me because it was huge for their kids to see someone who looked like them on their screens.”
Racial diversity is very important to O’Neill. Her daughter Sunny Rae was just one month old when she spoke at the Black Lives Matter rally in her hometown of Bray, after the death of George Floyd in May 2020.
Speaking out didn’t come easy to O’Neill. “I was 35 years old before I ever opened my mouth about my experiences with racism and there’s a reason for that — I was scared. I didn’t have a great track record in terms of responses to talking about it. I never wanted to make a big deal about things or bring more attention to myself, that I was different.”
She thinks that having children prompted this shift. What she might accept for herself, she wouldn’t accept for them.
“To think that my son or daughter would go through some of the things that I have in my lifetime makes me physically sick and I’ve started hearing things coming from my son’s mouth that remind me so much of me when I was a child. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone and the thought that that’s happening to my own kin is heart-breaking.”
It’s why she wrote her book, The Same But Different.
“It is me in the book and I talk about how other kids make fun of my hair or my skin, and I feel different, and that I wish I could be like everyone else.
“The reason behind the book is thatI want other kids to know that they’re not alone if they’re feeling that way. Also, it’s a book for people and children who are not from an ethnic minority background because I think it’s very important to see the world from different lenses. I hope that it will start really important conversations in the home and in the classroom.”
O’Neill and her family experienced horrific harassment when she first began speaking out about racism. Their house was egged, O’Neill’s name was graffitied around Bray, acid was thrown on her neighbour’s car in a case of mistaken identity.
“I was very scared for my kids and my husband. I’m used to dealing with discrimination and feeling ostracised, but my husband has not had to go through those things and neither have my kids, yet. The idea of that being so close to home was really, really tough for me.”
However, she says that the support 100% outweighed the negative comments and harassment.
“There were days when I just wanted to curl up under the duvet and pack it in, but I had so many people behind me that it gave me strength.”
O’Neill comes from a single-parent family. She was born in 1985, and her mother was from Ballindaggan in Co Wexford and her father was from Nigeria. Her parents had met when her mother was working overseas as a nurse. Her father died just before O’Neill graduated from college in the US.
Her mother, Phyl, had considered putting up her child for adoption, worried about the consequences of bringing up a mixed-race baby in 1980s Ireland.
“It’s always been just me and my mum, and she taught me that whatever life you want, you’ve going to have to create it. I’ve always wanted to make her proud because she sacrificed just about everything for me. We’re a team. That drive and the belief that she’s had in me all these years has been huge.”
A former basketball player who represented her country, O’Neill says she tried for a long time to break into the TV and media scene, but it didn’t work out for her until now.
“I’m plus size. I was put into a box because of that, and then I was put into a smaller box because I was a woman of colour, so there weren’t very many opportunities coming my way, but I think breaking through on Home School Hub was definitely the first thing that put me on the map, so I’ve just ran with it ever since. I’m trying to do the best that I can with the opportunities I’m given so that I can pave the way for other boys and girls to feel that they can have a dream and believe they can accomplish something. I learned early on that hard work, dedication and a belief in yourself pays off.”
When she was younger, O’Neill had issues with her body, “how I looked and my skin, all of it, everything about me, to be honest”.
“I’ve always been taller and bigger than everyone around me. I was nearly 6ft in first year. I wouldn’t want to wear heels because I didn’t want to be too tall, I’d find myself hunching over to fit in with the girls around me.
“I would still sometime struggle with my body size, so I have to tap into appreciation for what my body can do, as opposed to the way it looks.”
Motherhood second time round was very different to her first experience. “During my first pregnancy, I was a single parent and I was living at home in my mum’s house, and I was very worried about the future.”
With Sunny Rae, O’Neill had her full pregnancy and delivery during the pandemic. She says that looking back, she feels angry.
“My husband was there for 40 minutes of the birth, just right at the end when she came. Other than that, I did the entire thing on my own. It was tough but I was surrounded by a load of other women who were doing the same.
“My husband didn’t get to see Sunny Rae again until she was a week old. I didn’t get to see my son for the week. It was mentally very challenging. There were times where I just sat on the bed crying. You couldn’t even cry in peace.
“You’d go into the bathroom and try and have a cry and there’d be people in there too. When I got home, it was much better. My family were great and I had the support of my husband.”
She met Sean when her son was only a few weeks old. She had moved back to Ireland in April 2014 and Ky was born that June.
“I had gone through the entire pregnancy alone and came back to Ireland to restart my life.”
She was out with friends when she met Sean. He rang the next day to ask her and Ky out for lunch.
“From that day, we’ve never left each other’s side. We’re together seven years, he’s been there for me and Ky from day one. He grew up in a family where his parents fostered or adopted over 60 kids in his lifetime, so family to him has a different meaning to maybe some other people; it doesn’t necessarily have to be blood. It was honestly by the grace of God that we were put in each other’s path.”
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