Philippa Dunne had almost given up on her dream of being an actor, until her life-changing role in Motherland came along. She talks to Janice Butler about perseverance, how becoming a mum helped her “dump a load of worries” and her new, darker role in RTÉ’s Tall Tales & Murder.
“I’m shooting the Amandaland Christmas special at the moment,” Philippa Dunne apologises warmly as she connects into our call from the back of a cab in London. “Like most days of filming, you think you’re going to be done by a certain time, but it always goes over. I thought I’d be home by now.”
There’s a buzz of energy when discussing the Amandaland festive special, which ranked as the UK’s number one comedy in 2025, pulling in over 7 million viewers.
“It’s going well; we’ve one more week left, and then that’s it, it’s done,” she says. “It’s only a couple of weeks of filming, but it’s good to have the gang back together. It feels fun while we’re shooting it, so I hope that transfers onto the finished product,” she adds.
Photo: BBC/Merman/Natalie Seery
For years, the Mayo native has been comedy television’s secret weapon, delighting audiences with her razor-sharp comic timing, warmth and gift for finding humour in the everyday.
Her turn as the hopelessly eager-to-please, high-vis-vest-wearing Anne Flynn in the BBC’s Motherland made her a fan favourite, a status only cemented when she reprised the role in spin-off Amandaland. The performance proved a standout once again, earning her a BAFTA nomination.
Dunne also impressed as the anxious mammy of Nicola Coughlan’s character Claire in Derry Girls, and more recently, she’s been showing a new side to her repertoire as something altogether darker, starring as Ma Baker in the RTÉ and BBC darkly comedic crime drama, Tall Tales & Murder.
For many Irish viewers, Motherland, which was produced and written by Sharon Horgan, didn’t come onto their radar until it popped up on Netflix, after being hidden late in the BBC schedule. It was assumed that Philippa was an overnight success, but in reality it was hard-won.
Philippa Dunne at the premiere of Tall Tales & Murder. Picture: Peter Houlihan/Coalesce
For years, the industry tested her patience to its limits, with her ready to quit before the role of Anne came her way in 2016. “The amount of times I’ve almost thrown in the towel and given up,” she recalls candidly.
“I’d say, ‘That’s it, I can’t do this anymore. I’ve given it my everything. I’ve given it all of my twenties, all of my holidays, all of my free time, and it still doesn’t give you something back.’ I would have a talk with myself every so often and say that I needed to get something more secure. But then, by the end of that week, something would come in and it would keep me going.”
“Honestly, I couldn’t do anything else. I’ve always wanted to be an actor, and I’m so lucky that it’s worked out. I do think luck is a big part of it – luck and perseverance. If you’ve got enough of that, hopefully something will come good of it.”
While Dunne was born in Dublin, she grew up in Castlebar, Co Mayo, where the acting bug bit her in the most relatable, Irish way possible. “I think it was just from watching a lot of TV as a kid, shows like Friends,” she laughs. “And that’s not bad parenting; it’s from poor weather. The weather in Mayo is shocking, so you would spend a lot of time indoors watching telly.”
“I was also quite imaginative and good at playing, so that coupled with TV was probably where the interest came from. But of course, there’s no direct route to it, so I had to figure out how I could make it work. I thought as long as I stayed involved in performing somehow and kept throwing mud at it until it stuck, I figured someday it had to pay off,” she adds.
The ambition to pursue a career in the arts was a departure from her family’s professions, so it wasn’t a dream she felt she could openly share. “It wasn’t something I would have discussed at home, really. I was from a long line of teachers and civil servants, so the pensionable, dependable, permanent job was the path. Anything that went outside of that wouldn’t be entertained, as such.”
Philippa Dunne at the premiere of Tall Tales & Murder. Photo:Peter Houlihan/Coalesce.
She moved to Dublin to study an arts degree at University College Dublin with “no idea” what she would do afterwards. Her turning point came not in a drama lecture, but while working a part-time job in a grocery store where she met “her people” and they formed the creative group called Diet of Worms (which included Rory Connolly, Niall Gaffney, Shane Langan, and Amy Stephenson).
“I was so grateful to have met them,” she says softly. “To meet people who are on the same wavelength and have the same goals and ambitions is wonderful. I knew I’d found my gang. And they’re still some of my best friends.”
By 2012, life demanded a massive gear shift. Philippa moved to London – not for the bright lights of the West End, but for economic necessity. Her fiancé (now husband), who worked in construction, had to leave Ireland to find work following the financial crash.
“We were planning to get married, so I came over to live with him,” she explains. But leaving her tightly knit Dublin network was a difficult choice. “It was absolutely terrifying. I was leaving this group of people that I loved working with, to have nothing and no one in London. But I do have this belief that if you take risks in life, you get rewarded.
“Nothing will change if you stay in the same place forever; you do have to keep changing and reinventing in order for your life to make leaps,” she says. “But I was sad leaving Dublin. It had been my home from age 18 to 31; I lived my formative years there, really. Starting afresh at 31 was terrifying.”
Nicola Coughlan and Phillipa Dunne on Derry Girls
The leap of faith paid off, and it eventually led her to the audition room for Motherland in 2016, where she sat around the table with the likes of Anne Maxwell and Lucy Punch, people she had looked up to and was now going to be working with.
“When Motherland started, I was barely working. And then I had my daughter in 2020. It was typical—the minute I had my daughter, the work started coming in,” she laughs. “It’s always when you don’t want the work to come, it does. I started getting busy when I had my daughter, but I’m never going to give out about being busy.”
Becoming a mother to her daughter didn’t just complicate her schedule; it helped strip away the self-doubt that plagues so many actors.
“I think a lot of the clichés are true with becoming a mum,” Philippa says. “You don’t get to sweat the small stuff as much anymore, because you don’t have time. Your priorities are completely transformed overnight. You stop obsessing over yourself, which is a great relief. Not worrying about your own little everything is the most freeing thing ever. I just stopped giving a crap about so many things.
“It gave me permission to dump a load of worries and just focus on what’s really important,” she adds. “And it’s true, the older you get, the less you give a damn. All those other lovely clichés that my mother used to spit out and I didn’t believe her—they’re all true. Getting older and having kids; there’s so many advantages to it.”
Philippa Dunne and Lucy Punch. Photo: BBC/Merman
When her daughter was just 10 weeks old, Philippa had to return to work for season three of Motherland and her daughter appeared on screen as Niamh, the infant daughter of Dunne’s character, Anne.
“The character of Anne had a baby anyway, so they said, ‘Do you want to bring your own?’ I was still feeding her at the time, so it made sense. My mam came and stayed and helped out on set. It’s all a haze now, but she was very well behaved. I can’t show it to her when she’s older,” she laughs.
Coming off the back of the monolithic success of Motherland, there was always a lingering anxiety about whether its spin-off, Amandaland, could replicate that same lightning-in-a-bottle impact. But as the critical acclaim and soaring viewership prove, it very much has.
“I’m glad we’ve moved through the Motherland comparisons, and we’re now allowed to be our own show,” Philippa admits. “I knew there would be a lot of comparisons, but it’s nice that we’ve created our own thing, and it stands on its own. The risk has paid off for sure.”
With a third series already greenlit, she isn’t quite sure when cameras will roll. “It should be coming along soon,” she notes, but the safety net of the renewal isn’t lost on her. “To have work in the pipeline as an actor is a great security blanket, a weight off your mind and something to look forward to.”
Tall Tales and Murder
She’s also been back filming in Ireland for the RTÉ/BBC dark comedic drama, Tall Tales & Murder, which is finishing up on RTÉ One but streaming on RTÉ Player. Shedding Anne’s soft-hearted nature to step into the shoes of crime boss Ma Baker and starring alongside Aidan Gillen and Ella Lily Hyland has been a joy, she says.
“That was the huge draw to it. I read the scripts, and I thought it was fantastic; so different and such a unique show. There are so many different things folded into one and it’s different genres plaited together, and I think it really works.”
“Ma is so different; I was always hoping that something like this would come along where I could show a totally different side to me, and I got to do that with this. I loved making it, and I’m glad it’s going down well,” she adds.
It’s been greenlit for a second season, but she’s not certain yet on her role in that, and if she does know, she’s not revealing much.
The woman who once contemplated leaving the industry behind has managed to pack in a lot in the last 10 years, along with a BAFTA. “I still think that was mad,” she laughs.
She has absolutely no intention of slowing down or resting on her laurels. “I’ve never taken my eye off the ball. I’m no less ambitious or hungry than I was 10 or 15 years ago. I still want more, more, more. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with my body of work,” she says with determination.
“I’ll always be hoping for more, different things and hoping that my luck doesn’t run out.”