Keelin Shanley: 'She managed cancer in an incredibly strong way, that was driven by hope'
Keelin Shanley, on the set of RTÉ's Morning Edition - a dedicated journalist and investigative reporter
The life, work and legacy of late RTÉ presenter and investigative journalist Keelin Shanley were remembered Monday night in a special documentary on RTÉ 1, and available on RTÉ Player.
Centred around an interview conducted by acclaimed programme-maker and personal friend, Judy Kelly, as she faced the realities of stage 4 breast cancer.
Trying to distill such an experience and a body of work was surely a huge undertaking, and one that Kelly took incredibly seriously.
But the interview that forms the basis of the documentary also allowed her to show the viewers a little bit more of the person behind a towering figure in public broadcasting.
“Keelin was actually quite private - her personal life wasn't ever something that she particularly talked about or anything, the work was what she did.
“I think she was just a fascinating and interesting person, and I felt that this documentary was an opportunity for people to see Keelin, get more of a sense of her as a person, as well as her career.
“She didn't look back, ever, she was a real forward-looking person, but when there was very little time ahead, she started looking back at her career, and I think she felt, rightly, 'I've done some good stuff here', and I think she'd quite like for people, for her children, maybe to have a document or a reminder of that.”
The documentary’s roots lie in the presenter’s battle with cancer, and was initially to focus on Shanley’s pursuit of a clinical trial in America.
As circumstances dictated, however, she was unable to avail of a trial - and conscious of focusing her remaining time on her family, opted for an informal interview with a friend as a means of recalling her experiences and perspective.
“What happened was, she called me, and I'd been friends with Keelin for a long time. When she got sick, I was actually going to potentially go to the States with her, she was looking for treatments.
“The plan was that I would go over and film some of that experience, of looking for this treatment, but once she found out she couldn't get on (a clinical trial), there was no hope that at that point, I think she thought, 'we'll do an interview and see what happens’.
“She felt, I think, proud of what she'd done and what she'd achieved in her career. It was really the two of us, there wasn't even a cameraman. It was very intimate, it just felt like a small thing, it didn't feel like something that she was embarking on.”
In respect of the career-ranging interview, filmed in January of 2020 - before the Covid crisis - Kelly had to put herself in Shanley’s own shoes, when reflecting not only on how to go about a line of questioning, but also in terms of the ease of conversation and curiosity that informed much of her subject’s acclaimed journalism.
“I was just extremely nervous on the way to the interview. You're obviously very hesitant to ask very difficult questions.
“I said to somebody before that years ago, when I worked on a Prime Time Investigates with her, she was just so incredibly good with getting people to feel comfortable enough to reveal some difficult things.
“I remember saying to her, 'how do you do it?'. She said, 'really, people want to tell their stories. They're happy to have the opportunity to tell you about their lives.' I had her in my head as I was asking her the questions.
“The interview was three and a half hours long, and it took a lot of energy out of her. You don't see it necessarily in the interview, but she was exhausted, so that's quite a pressure as well. The last thing I wanted to do was exhaust her, so I basically asked her as much as I could around her career, and then around the illness.”
It’s a very personal piece of work, taking the interview and building around it with visual material from Shanley’s family archives (co-directed by husband Conor Ferguson), as well as the body of work she created in the RTÉ newsroom as a presenter and journalist for the likes of Prime Time Investigates, and the Six-One News.
“We want people to see it wasn't just the Six One, younger people may not know her from Prime Time and other documentaries, so I was quite keen to get a sense of her body of work. I mean, it was really important that her children would be happy with it, actually.
“I know that they looked at it with us beforehand, and they felt quite proud, which is really nice. That's one of the most important things, I felt.
As she takes her leave to look over final details ahead of its airing, Kelly shares what she wants the public to know about Keelin Shanley, and take away from the documentary.
“I'd like people to maybe know her a bit better, I suppose. I'd like them to see... Keelin was quite an unusual person, I suppose, in the way that she dealt with her illness, but also her career.
“She managed cancer in an incredibly strong way where she was driven by the hope of treatments. It seems to me that if she had a 5% chance of success, that 5% would fill her up, and then the 95% possibility that things would go wrong, just didn't come into her head.
“I think a lot of people would probably just fall apart from the circumstances she was in, she just was able to kind of push away a lot of the stress, and think about Conor and the kids.
“And in that interview, we laughed loads. My main feeling was laughter afterwards, like really dark humour, about her own funeral and things. So she just was somebody who was unusual that way, she wasn't setting herself up as any kind of example of 'how to do it', obviously.
“I want mainly, I suppose, for people that knew her to feel that it confirms what they felt about her.”
- is available for streaming on RTÉ Player.
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