{"id":653313,"date":"2026-10-13T09:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T09:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/653313\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T09:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T09:48:13","slug":"my-childhood-with-traitors-ireland-star-carla-geary-i-was-cheeky-as-a-child-in-a-loveable-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/653313\/","title":{"rendered":"My Childhood with Traitors Ireland star Carla Geary: ‘I was cheeky as a child… in a loveable way’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carla Geary says she was a cheeky child. As she says it, she giggles in the mischievous way that many of us have come to know and love from her recent stint on The Traitors Ireland.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cCheeky in a loveable way, not rude,\u201d the 27-year-old insists. \u201cMe mam says I was born chatty. Whenever we\u2019d go to town on the bus, she\u2019d give me a lollipop so I wouldn\u2019t talk the ears off the other passengers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geary grew up in Ballymun and still lives in her family home with her mother Debbie and brother Craig. She says she \u201cloved growing up there. I loved my school, which was a Gaelscoil where I learned Irish. I loved my dance classes that I took for years. I loved my friends and family who all lived nearby. I\u2019m so proud of Ballymun and think I\u2019ll probably live there forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The childhood Geary describes is a happy one in which she was surrounded by people. \u201cI have loads of great memories,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d always be out on my bike cycling up and down the road with friends and if it was the weekend, the whole family would gather at my nanny\u2019s, and I\u2019d be in the middle of them, in my element.\u201d<\/p>\n

Geary\u2019s experience of school was positive too. So positive, she says she \u201cwould go back tomorrow if I could. I loved it that much.\u201d<\/p>\n

The activity she enjoyed most was dancing. Her mother signed her up for freestyle disco classes as a three-year-old, and she was an instant convert. She would practice five or six evenings a week and attended competitions at the weekend.<\/p>\n

\"CarlaCarla is known for her recent stint on The Traitors Ireland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d travel all over Ireland and as far afield as Scotland and Wales,\u201d she says. \u201cI danced until I was 16 and needed to focus on my Leaving Certificate. It helped keep me out of trouble for all those years.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, her childhood wasn\u2019t without its challenges. One was the arrival of Craig when she turned seven. She recalls how her mother told her she would be a big sister while she was doing her hair in advance of a trip to see Westlife in concert.<\/p>\n

Geary\u2019s response was: \u201cWhat? No way. I\u2019m grand as I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her reaction to meeting her newborn brother was even less enthusiastic. \u201cI vomited on him in the hospital,\u201d she says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe I had a brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily for Craig, Geary overcame her initial hostility and soon came to see him as her own little baby. She says she was \u201clike a second mammy to him, although I don\u2019t know if mammies throw their children around in dance routines like I used to do with Craig when he was little\u201d. The pair are close now and appeared together on a special episode of Googlebox Ireland last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be lost without Craig,\u201d says Geary.<\/p>\n

Her parents, Debbie and Mark, separating when she was 13 marked a more difficult time in Geary\u2019s childhood. She describes it as \u201chard for a teenager to deal with, but I always had a great relationship with Ma and Da, and that continued. I still got so much love and support, just split across two homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meeting Chloe Foley when she was 16 was a turning point in Geary\u2019s life. She had been unsure of her sexuality up to that point. \u201cWhen my friends started getting boyfriends, I just wasn\u2019t interested,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when I met Chloe, I suddenly realised the reason I wasn\u2019t interested was because I was gay. I liked girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TraitorsTraitors star Carla on the Gogglebox Ireland sofa with her partner Chloe, her brother Craig, and his partner Jahrea.<\/p>\n

She worried about coming out, but now wonders why she was so anxious.\u201dMa was sound,\u201d says Geary. \u201cShe asked me if I was OK with it and when I told her I was, she said she was delighted for me. Da was grand too, and none of my friends were shocked either. I should have known they would all be cool with it. I think my anxiety was just me being a teenager and feeling insecure in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another hurdle in Geary\u2019s path was not getting the points she needed to study primary school teaching. She always wanted to be a teacher and still thinks she\u2019d be \u201cgood at it\u201d. She had undertaken work experience in early childhood education in fourth year and listed that as her second option on her CAO form. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve been loving doing ever since,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Geary puts her decision to apply for The Traitors Ireland down to the self-belief her granny instilled in her and a lesson she learned from her parents.<\/p>\n

Her granny\u2019s name was Florence, but Geary called her Nanny Lolo. \u201cNanny Lolo was a real inner-city woman, a proper townie who always spoke her mind,\u201d she says. \u201cHer house was two minutes\u2019 walk from ours, and I\u2019d go there for tea and cake after school every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nanny Lolo died in 2019 and never got to see Geary on television, but Geary says she wouldn\u2019t be surprised by the turn her life has taken. \u201cShe always told me I\u2019d be great on telly. I can just picture her on the phone to all her friends chatting about what I got up to in the castle. She always believed in me, and I know she\u2019d be so proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lesson she learned from her parents was that \u201clife is short and you may as well go for it\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to putting yourself forward for opportunities, the worst that can happen is that you\u2019ll be told no,\u201d says Geary.<\/p>\n

Geary hopes that her self-confidence and willingness to take chances will lead to other exciting on screen adventures. \u201cI had a ball on The Traitors and on Gogglebox,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d love to do more telly. Fingers crossed something else comes up for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carla Geary says she was a cheeky child. As she says it, she giggles in the mischievous way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[172173,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-653313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-my-childhood","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653313","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=653313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}