I have spent so many hours watching McSweeney in character as Sister Michael that it is almost a shock to see her without a nun\u2019s habit. We are meeting today, in a conference room in London, because McSweeney is taking over from Grace Dent as the new host of the Guardian\u2019s food podcast, Comfort Eating<\/a>. I arrived at the interview with a multipack of Taytos, a family\u2011size Dairy Milk and two cans of Guinness in my bike bag, because McSweeney chose this concoction as her favourite snack when she appeared on the podcast<\/a> as a guest, back in 2021. She also told a story about eating a caterpillar that had fallen from her moth-infested ceiling into her stir\u2011fry, purely because she couldn\u2019t be bothered to fish it out. \u201cListen: protein,\u201d she says today, remembering that caterpillar. \u201cFree protein where you can.\u201d<\/p>\n McSweeney as Sister Michael in Derry Girls (above) and as Della Fry in Amandaland (below). Photographs: Peter Marley\/ Since Derry Girls, the actor has made a habit of portraying slightly intimidating women. She plays the achingly sarcastic celebrity chef Della Fry in Amandaland<\/a>, and hosts the Irish version of The\u00a0Traitors, in which she commands a pack of wolfhounds and wears a lot of ruffs. But today, McSweeney\u2019s short, silver\u2011grey hair is brushed back from her face and she is dressed casually, in trousers and a simple top. Sister Michael is always lolling back in her chair and surveying you sardonically across a desk \u2013 but the real McSweeney leans forward and asks a lot of questions.<\/p>\n It is lunchtime, so I have brought a takeaway from the Indian restaurant Dishoom with me, as well as the Taytos. \u201cI love doing this podcast because it annoys people when I eat,\u201d McSweeney says, tucking into a fish curry. Part of the reason why she accepted the job as host of Comfort Eating, she explains, is because visibly enjoying her food \u2013 as a woman who is not stick-thin \u2013 is a kind of provocation. \u201cThey\u2019ve been told that somebody like me should not feel good about themselves,\u201d she says, grinning toothily at me. \u201cBeing a delicious fatty.\u201d<\/p>\n Ever since she first arrived at drama school, in the early 2000s, people have been telling McSweeney to lose weight. \u201cAgents, casting directors, teachers\u201d \u2013 McSweeney checks the list off for me now, almost breezily. \u201cI have been different sizes but it\u2019s never been an acceptable size,\u201d she says. \u201c\u2018Unruly\u2019 I call it \u2013 there\u2019s sort of an unruliness that has been forced upon my body that I don\u2019t feel about it, but other people feel it\u2019s unruly and it doesn\u2019t behave.\u201d All the other girls at her drama college were starving themselves, McSweeney remembers now. \u201cThey were starving in secondary school as well \u2013 it was the 90s! I don\u2019t know how I\u00a0managed to escape it.\u201d She is grinning at me again. \u201cI don\u2019t think I have the willpower to not eat. I don\u2019t really have much discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n It strikes me that continuing to like yourself and your body, in the face of such vicious scrutiny, is not so much a failure of will as its opposite \u2013 proof that McSweeney has a will of absolute iron. Responding to a particularly poisonous bout of online criticism of her looks back in 2023, McSweeney delivered a\u00a0kind of masterclass in the art of self-worth, tweeting: \u201cI\u2019m\u00a0really lovely. I like my hair. And I like food. And I\u2019m not sorry I\u2019m loud. I thought feminism fights for me to be loud. And my accent is gorgeous. My teeth are yellow and wonky that\u2019s true. But I sorta don\u2019t care. And sure are you perfect?\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI taught, I waitressed, I pulled pints, I went on the dole, I worked at music festivals. And I was shit at every single one of themPortrait: Jay Brooks\/ McSweeney says she wouldn\u2019t even bother to respond to online abuse like that these days, because \u201cit\u2019s so insane now on social media. There is no honesty to it because we don\u2019t know if they are bots or not.\u201d But when I push her on the willpower point, and suggest that there is something inherently political about refusing to lose weight in her industry, she agrees with me. \u201cI do\u00a0get perverse pleasure in [responding to those] people who expect me to feel bad \u2013 by insulting me, by calling me \u2018fat\u2019 \u2013 by going, \u2018And?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n McSweeney also credits her mother, who she describes as \u201cthe kind of mam who would be round the back having a cigarette reading Dostoevsky\u201d, with teaching her to aspire to a version of womanhood that wasn\u2019t about appealing to men. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t interested in me having boyfriends that much \u2013 she was, like, men will come, men will go; it\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe just instilled this utter independence in me that didn\u2019t centre in any way on a romantic relationship.\u201d McSweeney pauses for a moment here, and seems to reconsider. \u201cI mean \u2026 she wasn\u2019t completely immune to all that. No one is strong enough to combat that, you know? And there would be a bit of, \u2018Would you not brush your hair?\u201d McSweeney is putting on her mother\u2019s voice now and making pleading motions. \u201cPlease, just briefly! Just give it a quick brush!\u201d<\/p>\n Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney grew up in County Cork, Ireland. Her father was a\u00a0civil servant and her mother ran a cottage industry baking bread and cakes to sell to local shops, so the young Siobh\u00e1n woke up every day to the smell of fresh soda bread. But, like any teenager worth their salt, McSweeney only wanted what she couldn\u2019t have. \u201cI went to the neighbours at one point because they had white sliced pan and red jam, and I\u00a0thought, they\u2019re so lucky, I have to go home now and have my freshly baked brown soda bread and my local butter,\u201d she says. Her mother would make her school lunch every day with bread so fresh it was still warm. McSweeney remembers looking at her lunchbox and thinking \u201cno one suffers more than me\u201d.<\/p>\n McSweeney knew from an early age that she wanted to act. She says that as a child she would wish on a star every night that she would become an actor, and tells me that she once spent an entire day at school pretending she was in a sitcom, pausing every now and again to play the laugh track in her head. \u201cOr I\u2019d look to the camera\u201d \u2013 she mimes whirling her head around to lock eyes with an imaginary film crew. \u201cHow obnoxious! What a pest to be around.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markThe really sad thing about illness is that it often takes your appetite away \u2013 I want a lovely big bellyPortrait: Jay Brooks\/ McSweeney\u2019s parents, however, had other plans for her. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know anyone who was an actor. People on the telly didn\u2019t look like me, didn\u2019t sound like me,\u201d she says. \u201cMy parents were, like, so what would that mean? You would do the panto once a year? You\u2019re meant to work!\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to the Irish Times in August, McSweeney said that anybody in the creative industries has \u201can\u00a0angel and a devil on your shoulder, and the devil quite often is your parents going, \u2018Don\u2019t embarrass us.\u2019\u201d Did she feel as if her parents were embarrassed about her? \u201cYeah, absolutely yeah \u2013 it\u2019s embarrassing to have your child standing up there making a tit of themselves,\u201d she says. \u201cAlso, Ireland in the 80s, you blend in \u2013 the idea of standing out is quite \u2026 \u201d she tails off\u00a0thoughtfully. \u201cI\u00a0think it was a protective idea \u2013 when you are in the open you are open to abuse and people taking advantage. All these things are true and I understand fully why any parent wouldn\u2019t want that for their child.\u201d<\/p>\n McSweeney was virtually unknown before the release of Derry Girls<\/a>, which came out after her 40th birthday. She tells me that in a strange way she is pleased that fame came later in life for her, because she knows people \u201cwho have achieved success very early on in their career and their heads are turned\u201d. But the years she spent trying and failing to get parts were gruelling. \u201cI taught, I waitressed, I pulled pints, I went on the dole, I worked at music festivals,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I was shit at every single one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n She remembers being particularly \u201cshit\u201d at the waitressing. \u201cSure, I didn\u2019t know anything about food. I was pouring the wine the way my parents would drink wine, which would be wine right up to the top of the glass, and I didn\u2019t know about al dente,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u00a0thought, who is this Al Dente?\u201d<\/p>\n There was a point in the 2010s when she considered giving up acting completely. \u201cI hadn\u2019t worked in over a\u00a0year and I had just got a litany of nos,\u201d she remembers. \u201cAnd now it\u2019s getting harder and harder for not-rich people to be an actor.\u201d McSweeney had received grants from the EU and a scholarship to study drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama \u2013 and that kind of funding literally doesn\u2019t exist any more. \u201cI get really panicky thinking about the other Siobh\u00e1ns who don\u2019t get what they\u2019re meant to do,\u201d she says, and her face is unusually serious for a moment \u2013 but then she looks at me and her eyes begin to twinkle. \u201cI mean it should be better, it should be a bit more useful than being a clown \u2013 but, you know, it\u2019s what I\u2019m meant to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of the struggle when she was being rejected at auditions was the lack of decent roles available for women. In previous interviews, McSweeney has said that casting directors explicitly told her that even though she was the funniest person in the audition room, they were going to give the part to a \u201cprettier, younger, less funny\u201d woman. \u201cI graduated into a world where I really hoped somebody had a girlfriend because there was no way on earth a programme was going to centre on a woman,\u201d she says to me now. But she wouldn\u2019t even be in the running for the girlfriend part because \u201cthey wanted somebody who was more \u2018girlfriend material\u2019, ie, more acceptable \u2013 so, bland and pretty\u201d.<\/p>\n McSweeney says she would never be considered for the main character, \u201calways the satellite\u201d. She rolls her eyes. \u201cAnd now I\u2019m the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n McSweeney tells me that she is deliberately taking on more presenting work because properly meaty, complex acting roles for women on TV are still so rare. As well as The Traitors Ireland, McSweeney hosts The Great Pottery Throw Down<\/a>. She landed the job after an appearance on a Great British Bake Off festive\u00a0special in which she had\u00a0a meltdown over making a trifle\u00a0and\u00a0ended up sitting on a bench with Sandi Toksvig, drinking champagne (\u201cThey went, that\u2019s\u00a0who we want\u201d).<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n With presenter Sandi Toksvig in the 2020 Great Festive Bake Off (above) and on the set of The Great Pottery Throw Down in 2023 (below). Photographs: Mark Bourdillon\/Love Productions <\/p>\n McSweeney is also an acclaimed theatre actor. She played opposite her Derry Girls co-star Nicola Coughlan last year in The Playboy of the Western World<\/a> at the National Theatre, and says that being onstage is what she has always enjoyed the most (she remembers being a child and \u201cseeing red curtains on the telly and having a funny feeling in my belly\u201d). But presenting is \u201cwork I\u00a0find interesting \u2013 and it also pays more than the theatre\u201d, she says, with characteristic honesty.<\/p>\n Presenting jobs pay better than TV shows do, too \u2013 even the most successful ones. McSweeney has said publicly<\/a> \u201cI think I got 40 quid\u201d in residuals when Derry\u00a0Girls sold to Netflix. The programme has been viewed for a total of 17.3m hours<\/a> on the platform. Can that figure possibly be true? McSweeney nods enthusiastically. \u201cWhen Netflix bought it we got fuck all!\u201d<\/p>\n When she was 27, McSweeney lost her mother, who never saw her daughter succeed as an actor. In\u00a0her Bafta acceptance speech<\/a>, which has been viewed 467,000 times on YouTube, McSweeney told a story about how, as her mother lay dying, she pleaded with her to retrain as a teacher. \u201cIf she could see me now, winning a Bafta for playing a teacher,\u201d she said, wearing a red vinyl dress and laughing, lifting her bare arm above her head to punch the air with her award: \u201cJoke\u2019s on you, Mam!\u201d<\/p>\n Would her mother feel pride, if she could see her daughter now? Or relief? \u201cEr, relief,\u201d says McSweeney, quick as a flash. Then she pauses for a second. \u201cAnd I\u00a0think she would like \u2026 I have a lot of opinions and she would like the way I speak about certain opinions.\u201d In\u00a0the\u00a0same Bafta speech, McSweeney thanked the people of Derry, calling out the \u201cignorance and stupidity\u201d of their political leadership, and she is a\u00a0vocal\u00a0critic of both English and Irish policy. Last year she was among those who campaigned successfully for the thousands of UK-based survivors of the work\u00a0camps\u00a0for \u201cfallen women\u201d that were in operation until the 90s in Ireland \u2013 known as the Magdalene laundries \u2013 to be given compensation<\/a> without losing their rights to benefits.<\/p>\n Would her mother have been proud of her feminism? \u201cI think she would have been as close to proud as I would allow her to be,\u201d says McSweeney, almost shyly. \u201cAnd\u00a0my dad, too \u2026 He was a natural feminist rather than a learned one \u2013 couldn\u2019t think of anything I couldn\u2019t do because of my gender, that would make no sense to him.\u201d<\/p>\n McSweeney accepts the female performance in a comedy programme award for Derry Girls at the 2023 Bafta Television Awards. Photograph: Stuart Wilson\/Bafta\/Getty Images for Bafta<\/p>\n
Channel 4; Natalie Seery\/ BBC\/Merman Photograph: Peter Marley\/ Channel 4<\/p>\n
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