Richard Flood on Grey's Anatomy, leaving LA for Rome and new RTÉ show The Gone

Irish-born actor Richard Flood is back on screens this weekend for the first time since hanging up his Grey’s Anatomy stethoscope last year. He chats to Esther McCarthy about leaving LA, the side effects of fame and his long path to TV stardom

Sun, 22 Oct, 2023 - 19:00

When I meet Rathfarnham-born, Rome-living Richard Flood via Zoom, he is warm and personable as he chats outdoors in the Italian sunshine.

The 41-year-old actor, who left Irish Grey’s Anatomy fans heartbroken when he announced his departure from the show last year, is excited about life and work, having swapped LA for Rome, and ABC for RTÉ this Autumn as he takes on a leading role in the broadcaster’s latest drama offering, The Gone.

“I’m here since January and I love it, it just suits me,” Flood says of the Italian capital. “I’m not sure what it is. The rhythm of the city is just the right rhythm for me.

“We’re very happy here,” he says, referring to his Italian actress wife, Gabriella Pession, and their nine-year-old boy, Giulio, “we really feel like we’ve found our place.

“Gabriella has a huge career here in Italy and she’s having a big year this year doing lots of international projects.”

When it comes to Richard’s own career — it’s been a rollercoaster ride.

Actor Richard Flood. Picture: Emily Quinn, photographed in The Castle Suite at Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Dublin

The Dubliner first came to prominence with Irish audiences as Tommy McConnell in Red Rock, with roles in Crossing Lines and Shameless bringing his talents to a wider audience. But, like most actors, the work was intermittent, and there were often periods of unemployment.

“I found it was very, very difficult for me to get on TV for a long time,” he says. “I couldn’t get there for some reason.”

But that all changed in 2019, when he scored a reoccurring role on one of TV’s most iconic shows, Grey’s Anatomy.

With 19 seasons broadcast and a 20th in the works, Grey’s is one of the longest-running shows in television.

At its peak, the medical drama has drawn in close to 38m viewers for a single episode, and even today, as live television viewing ratings have plummeted, it remains one of the most-streamed shows in the world.

It’s the type of show that changes lives — and Flood wasn’t immune.

“The whole family moved when I was doing Grey’s Anatomy because it’s a long shoot, it’s 10 months, and we were living over there [in LA] for three years,” he says. The day-to-day of working on a show as big as Grey’s is the same as any other gig, he insists.

Richard Flood and Ellen Pompeo in Grey's Anatomy

“When you find yourself on a set like Grey’s Anatomy, the job is exactly the same. The nuts and bolts of it are that you’re there, you’re understanding your character, and you’re trying to connect with the people across from you.

“The scale or the size of the show, or how many people watch it, or how big it is in the world is not really relevant. That’s the part that I love — being there on the set, everyone operating and working for the same goal. All the other stuff is kind of outside of my control. It’s not really something I think about.”

But while he might have found his job on set the same as any other, the impact of playing Dr Cormac Hayes did have an effect on his life outside of the fictional walls of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.

“People recognise you a lot more,” he acknowledges, “I suppose it does change things a little bit, but only for the better — I mean, people are always very, very kind when they recognise me or come up to me so it’s never a
hardship.

“And as a result of doing that show, you might get different opportunities like to be the lead of a show like this, you know, that type of opportunity might not have come my way previously.”

He’s referring to the leading role in a new RTÉ series that’s set to keep us intrigued over the coming weeks.

The Gone, a six-part thriller written by Irish novelist Anne McPartlin and Michael Bennett, sees Flood play top detective Theo Richter, who travels to New Zealand to investigate the circumstances behind the disappearance of a young Irish couple.

There he joins forces with a fiery but inexperienced young Maori Detective, Sergeant Diana Huia (Acushla-Tara Kupe) who’s on her first big case.

The mystery thriller fleshes out the characters as well as the plotting, and that was part of the draw for the actor.

“The character has a lot going on, a lot of backstory that plays out throughout the show,” he says.

“What I really liked about the script was that while the plot is very strong, and it’s very clear — I mean, it’s a missing person case — it felt like there was a lot more going on. It has a particular rhythm, and the rhythm shifts throughout the series as well. Changes gears at
different times.”

Richard Flood as Detective Theo Richter and Acushla-Tara Kupe as Detective Sargent Diana Huia – The Gone Series 1

For Flood, it marked his first major show since pediatric surgeon Dr Hayes decided to hang up his stethoscope, and involved another move across oceans — this time to New Zealand.

“It was a big trip. I’d just come back from LA as well, so for me personally, it was quite a big move. I’d been to New Zealand 15 years before to do a commercial for Carlsberg so I had been there, but this was a very different experience.

“I knew of the Maori people and something of that culture, probably mostly through the rugby, like most people. It was an amazing culture to really see and become familiar with and engage with and in a totally different way because a lot of the show is about that
culture.

“We had a lot of Maori people on set in the crew and in the cast. They speak their own language and a lot of their traditions and rituals are very much part of the show.”

The actor arrived in New Zealand shortly after the Irish rugby team scored an epic win over the All-Blacks in July 2022 – a much happier result than last Saturday – and it led to a lot of banter between the cast and crew of both countries, Flood remembers.

“When I got picked up at the airport it was one of the first things they said,” he smiles.

“It was constantly going around set, the fact that we’re number one in the world. I had to get it in early on. They were good about it. They’re good craic, the Kiwis. They’re very like the Irish in that way, very much a similar sense of humour. So there was loads of slagging going on, but it was all in good fun.”

Much of the action in The Gone is set in a small town looming under an enormous mountain that becomes central to the action in the series. For the shoot, they were based in the small, North Island-hamlet of Te Aroha, which looms large in the storytelling.

The result is a place and setting that looks completely unique and gives The Gone an original and other-worldly feel.

“We lived in this little town, literally a one-street kind of town, for eight weeks. They were a very welcoming community. I loved that because you go on location, everybody’s way from home. So everybody clubs together, having dinners and drinks and on set all day, it’s very much a bonding kind of experience,” he says.

“The landscape, that town, that mountain, are almost like characters in the show themselves. So that was very important to capture that epic scale of where we were, and it was amazing, stunning. Beautiful — every day was gorgeous locations and waterfalls and mountains and huge big fields.”

As we wrap up our call, talk returns to sport — and in particular, where Flood’s sports-mad son’s loyalties lie.

“Italy for the football and specifically Roma — he’s a huge Roma fan,” he says, “[but] he supports Ireland for the rugby."