Clarke has worked hard since moving across in the mid-1990s. Theatre at The Tricycle in Kilburn and at the prestigious Glasgow Citizens. Back to Dublin for work at the Abbey. An array of dramatic turns in telly and film. She will, however, be best known to most readers as the perennially distracted Aunt Sarah in Lisa McGee\u2019s inimitable sitcom Derry Girls. Always missing the point, lovable in her absorption, she is a comic creation for the ages.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I need to be careful about what I say here,\u201d she says good-naturedly. \u201cI feel like everything I did before doesn\u2019t exist in many ways. And I find that frustrating. I played Lady Macbeth. I played Medea. I\u2019ve done Schiller. I\u2019ve done all of this, and it\u2019s sort of like that doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lest there be any confusion, she loves the character and she cherishes the sitcom for capturing teenage normality amid the violent abnormality of the violence. \u201cLisa just created something so beautiful and perfect,\u201d Clarke says. But there is a busy life to be discussed before we get back to Derry Girls.<\/p>\n
Born in the mid-1970s, Clarke lived through some of the grimmest times for Belfast. The children of that era didn\u2019t understand everything that was swilling around them, but they often grasped more than their parents would have preferred.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to London at 18, and it was only when I got here that I realised how insane it was,\u201d she says. \u201cMy childhood was very happy. But, yes, of course. I remember the road on fire. I remember vividly the hunger strikers dying. Bobby Sands died on May 5th, the day after my birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n
You get the sense that she has spent much of the interceding time recalibrating her emotions about that period.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith hindsight, I\u2019m very aware of the actual horror of growing up in all that, and how that must have been for my mummy and daddy with two sons and three daughters,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd, of course, our boys were of the generation that went off to New York. I have very vivid memories of that time, and the feeling of that time, and the fear. You had school assemblies every week, praying for people \u2013 his daddy had been shot, or his brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Kathy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/UX64RKDBFZEOFNUFW6NFXKJGJI.jpg\")
Kathy Kiera Clarke (left) as Aunt Sarah in Derry Girls <\/p>\n
From an early age, theatre was a release. Clarke was lucky enough to attend St Louise\u2019s Comprehensive College on the Upper Falls. The school delivers well across the disciplines, but is particularly noted for expertise in performing arts and media. When the rest of us were smoking cigs in the bicycle shed, Clarke was (even if she didn\u2019t yet know it) laying down the foundations for her busy career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe English department would put on a play \u2013 an O\u2019Casey or whatever \u2013 and then the drama department would do My Fair Lady or whatever. So we lived in the drama room. And in our last year in school, we founded a theatre company. We won a competition, and the prize was that we came here and performed in the Olivier. Some of us got offered work from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She took the work and she moved. One can only imagine how performing at the Olivier \u2013 the largest of three spaces at the National Theatre on London\u2019s South Bank \u2013 might turn a young actor\u2019s head, but that still sounds like one heck of a leap in the dark. Particularly as she already had secured a place at Trinity College Dublin. How did her parents react to her throwing that in for the uncertainty of the actor\u2019s life? Did they take it on the chin?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey actually did,\u201d she says. \u201cI was saying this to a friend the other day. We lost my mummy over a year ago now. And it was very sudden.\u201d<\/p>\n
As we speak, Clarke is appearing in Heartsink, a new play by Farine Clarke at the Riverside Studios in west London. Dealing with a doctor\u2019s experiences after becoming a patient, the piece ends up touching on the rawest form of loss. Clarke tells me part of the reason she took the part was she was still on her own \u201cjourney with grief\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking about this one conversation I had with my mummy in the last months of her life,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd we didn\u2019t know she was dying. It was just a conversation I was having with her, and she said something so pure and simple and beautiful and heartbreaking. She said: \u2018I had to learn to let you go very young.\u2019 How selfless is that? How full of love is that? So, no, there was no pressure put on me. It must have been really hard for them to say \u2018sl\u00e1n\u2019. There\u2019s me packing my bags and I didn\u2019t know anybody in London.\u201d<\/p>\n
I just made a strong decision that could have been very, very wrong<\/p>\n
\u2014 \u00a0Kathy Kiera Clarke<\/p>\n
When I airily ask how she coped with the long periods of unemployment that young actors endure, she explains that, from the beginning, she was actually pretty busy. She moved over for a production of Frank McGuinness\u2019s Factory Girls at the Tricycle with Michelle Fairley and Eileen Pollock. She did that production of Medea at Glasgow Citizens. You can see her in the video for Blur\u2019s 1993 single For Tomorrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the early years it was pretty constant for me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was later years that it wasn\u2019t so constant. That was very difficult, when I would literally be standing packing my shopping and thinking: well, you\u2019ve made a terrible mistake here. What have you done here? I\u2019d be thinking: I would like to have a nine-to-five job where I could plan my life and have autonomy. It was difficult later when those times happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of which should clarify that, by the time Derry Girls arrived, Clarke was loaded with experience. You won\u2019t need to be told much about the phenomenon. From the moment it landed in early 2018, McGee\u2019s show was a popular sensation. Four schoolgirls from that city and one visiting English boy knock about the Foyle in the latter years of the Troubles. They get into scrapes. They learn about love and life. It was generous without being cutesy. It was wise without being preachy. And, like all the best ensemble comedies, it was cast in considerable depth. Everyone has their favourite Derry Girl, but many audience members will prefer secondary characters such as Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney\u2019s weary Sister Michael or Clarke as the supremely dim, sometimes accidentally on-the-money Aunt Sarah. I wonder if Clarke saw the potential in her from the first script she read.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did see the potential in her. Absolutely, I did,\u201d she says. \u201cI was in a lean time \u2013 a bit frightened about where things were going. And I remember people, in the months leading up to it, sending me texts: \u2018There\u2019s this thing called Derry Girls casting. They\u2019re casting the kids at the minute.\u2019 I remember talking to my agent \u2013 they were like: \u2018We\u2019re on it\u2019 \u2013 and I said: \u2018Well, they\u2019ll be wanting mummies and aunties.\u2019 I read it and just thought: oh my God, this is just brilliant. It\u2019s so funny and I had one meeting for Sarah, and I got her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody can doubt Clarke\u2019s contribution to the character. The script is, of course, first class, but as much of the comedy derives from the actor\u2019s eerily walleyed performance. She perfectly conveys the character existing at an oblique angle to all those around her.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe could have been, in the hands of any of our amazing actresses from home, been played 25 different ways,\u201d Clarke says. \u201cI just made a strong decision that could have been very, very wrong. I said to Lisa: \u2018I think she\u2019s like someone who appears to be on Diazepam all the time, but she\u2019s not.\u2019 She\u2019s really innocent. Rather than being a very confident single mother, she\u2019s had sex once and got pregnant. Of course, that\u2019s there to be extracted to begin with. But then, as Lisa did with all of the characters, she started to write for me, because obviously we\u2019d put flesh and bones upon the incredible creations that were in her head.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Derry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/EAJ7KGE4PT3T2SYXXSKQXIUL7I.jpg\")
Derry Girls: Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney, Louisa Harland, Kathy Kiera Clarke, Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Jamie-Lee O\u2019Donnell, Nicola Coughlan and Dylan Llewellyn at the TV Baftas. Photograph: Jeff Spicer\/Getty <\/p>\n
They surely knew early on that the show was going to work. It would have been less clear Derry Girls would gather such a fervent following. With delightful neatness, it became Channel 4\u2019s most popular sitcom since the equally Irish Father Ted more than two decades earlier. It was the most watched show in Northern Ireland<\/a> since records began and, defying those who felt the accents wouldn\u2019t travel, went on to become a hit across the planet.<\/p>\n [\u00a0Derry Girls\u2019 Saoirse-Monica Jackson: \u2018Dyslexia shaped me. I\u2019m always thinking two steps ahead\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n \u201cAfter the first episode went out, I went out for dinner because I didn\u2019t want to be anywhere near a TV or phone,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd my phone blew up. When I turned it back on, everybody was going: \u2018oh, my God, this thing is fantastic!\u2019 I think it was recommissioned pretty much immediately after the first episode went out. People from every country come up and want to talk to you about it, and want to share their own experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n So what did it to for Clarke\u2019s career? Her face has now been in a million homes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve talked to Pauline McLynn<\/a> and I\u2019ve talked to Ardal O\u2019Hanlon<\/a> and, you know, with those iconic comedic characters, it\u2019s a double-edged sword, career-wise,\u201d she says. \u201cEspecially when you\u2019re at a different point in your career. If it\u2019s a launch pad and you\u2019re a much younger actor, the scope is all there for you. But if you\u2019re at a point in your career where castability is already something you\u2019re struggling with, or they don\u2019t quite know where to put you, then suddenly they go: \u2018Ah, there\u2019s a box to put her in.\u2019 Do you know what I mean? That\u2019s a long-winded way of saying it\u2019s a double-edged sword.\u201d<\/p>\n She has no such reservations about the show itself. It seems she can barely move for strangers expressing their love.<\/p>\n \u201cIt actually happened to me last night again,\u201d she says. \u201cSomebody will come up and say it helped them through a very difficult point in their lives and thank you for it.\u201d<\/p>\n She sounds genuinely moved. And why not?<\/p>\n Heartsink by Farine Clarke runs at the Riverside Studios in London until Sunday, May 10th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI have a very, very early memory of being in primary school at the height of the Troubles,\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4501,9686,93,61,60,99,2443,976,42415],"class_list":["post-429885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-belfast","tag-common-ground","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-london","tag-northern-ireland","tag-weekendreview","tag-your-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}