{"id":586583,"date":"2026-08-16T16:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T16:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/586583\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T16:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T16:44:10","slug":"jack-rowan-director-kieron-j-walsh-on-the-many-lives-of-skintown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/586583\/","title":{"rendered":"Jack Rowan, Director Kieron J. Walsh on the Many Lives of ‘Skintown’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJack Rowan<\/a> and director Kieron J. Walsh are hoping for \u201csome buzz\u201d at the Edinburgh<\/a> premiere of Skintown.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the catchphrase employed by Rowan\u2019s character Vinny and his best friend Jonty (Chris Walley) as they\u2019re just starting to believe there\u2019s life beyond provincial Enniskillen, the Northern Irish town colloquially captured by the film<\/a>\u2018s title. Ciar\u00e1n McMenamin adapts his 2018 novel of the same name, with the movie premiering in competition at the Scottish film festival on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\n\tBackdropped by the Troubles during the 1994 IRA ceasefire, Skintown follows Vinny and Jonty as the young men party with friends, cut deals, and make plans to escape small-town life \u2014 until local shenanigans threaten to blow up the long-held dream. Walsh crafts a vivid portrait of war-weary youth, \u201990s rave culture, and Ireland<\/a>\u2018s turbulent history. Add to that a brilliant supporting cast of Derry Girls\u2018 Jamie-Lee O\u2019Donnell and The Day of the Jackal\u2018s Hope Ikpoku Jr., and you have a real Edinburgh crowd-pleaser \u2014\u00a0a head-bopping period piece steeped in wit.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut this version of Skintown wasn\u2019t always the plan. \u201cIt was a bumpy ride,\u201d begins the Dublin-raised filmmaker about the nine-year journey to make Skintown and its many iterations up to this point. Rowan\u2019s role was once set for Anthony Boyle, who remained committed to the project for two years before production stalled and Netflix\u2019s House of Guinness offer came in. Walsh told him: \u201c\u2018Mate, you\u2019ve got to go and do your thing. It\u2019s a big role.’\u201d But admittedly, upon Boyle\u2019s departure, Walsh was \u201cbereft.\u201d All it took was English actor Rowan \u2014\u00a0armed with a spot-on Enniskillen accent \u2014\u00a0to revive his vision. Skintown was back on.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe beauty of that is, when Anthony had the part, it was his right. I was never in the picture,\u201d says Rowan, star of Noughts + Crosses and Peaky Blinders. \u201cHe didn\u2019t end up doing it, which opened up an opportunity for me to come in. No one loses out.\u201d That includes the audience: His performance is one of the buzziest things about the raucous, roguish Skintown.<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, Walsh and Rowan have a lot of fun discussing the making of this film (and showcasing the regional nuances of the Northern Irish accent). They talk about a wild, 22-day shoot blessed with brilliant weather, Edinburgh Film Festival being \u201cback with a vengeance\u201d and why a character like Vinny is long overdue: \u201cI think Northern Irish people in particular really wanted to see a story like this on the screen. This hasn\u2019t been explored before: ordinary people, living in the crossfire, [and] young people trying to live normal lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKieron, how far back did you know you wanted to adapt this story?<\/p>\n

\n\tKIERON J. WALSH I first met Ciar\u00e1n McMenamin in 1998, believe it or not. We\u2019ve been pals, and we\u2019ve worked together \u2014\u00a0I\u2019ve cast him \u2014\u00a0many times. He started writing stuff and he used to give it to me every so often to have a look at, and I was encouraging. And then he sent me a photocopy of an unpublished manuscript, basically before any publisher had got anywhere near it. He hadn\u2019t even gone out to publishers, and he gave it to me. He said, \u201cWill you have a look at that? It\u2019s a book.\u201d And I was like, \u201cOkay.\u201d So I took it [on my] holidays and read it on the beach. I was halfway through it, and I rang him, and I said, \u201cThis is going to make a great movie.\u201d This was nine years ago. That\u2019s how long it takes to get films off the ground now, I\u2019m afraid. So he was a bit kind of like, \u201cI just wanted you to have a look at it as a novel.\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, I\u2019m a director. I have to respond in the way that I see fit, and I think it will make a fantastic film.\u201d I managed to convince him to roll along with it on [the] condition that he\u2019d get to write the screenplay.<\/p>\n

\n\tNine years! What work went into that nine years to get Skintown on screen?<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH It\u2019s extremely hard, and the older you get, the harder it gets, which is a bit disappointing. C\u2019est la vie. But obviously you\u2019ve got someone who\u2019s written his first novel, and so he\u2019s quite attached to it. Everybody\u2019s attached to their first baby. So it took a while to let him free up from the material and realize that that\u2019s the novel, and the screenplay can be a different thing. And he was actually very forthcoming on that side of things \u2014 he was actually pretty cool with that. [He] invented new characters, got new plot lines. But it does take a while. Then getting the various funding bodies lined up was happening at the same time. We were in development with Screen Ireland, Northern Irish Screen\u2026 That\u2019s just the length of time it takes. And the script [was] getting better and better and better. It worked out for the best.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJack Rowan stars as Vinny in \u2018Skintown\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of EIFF<\/p>\n

\n\tYou had a brilliant cast to bring that script to life. Jack, what was your first reaction reading Skintown? How much did you know about the Troubles?<\/p>\n

\n\tJACK ROWAN Well, my dad\u2019s from Ireland, so my life\u2019s always been split [between] London and going over to visit my grandparents. It\u2019s always been somewhere that I love and subconsciously you learn the history over time. Actually, my dad\u2019s a good parallel with Vinny because he was pretty much the same age as Vinny in our story, maybe two years later. He was born in \u201969, then left in the \u201990s. So he knew no different than the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Having this script come my way\u2026 I remember reading it for the first time. Obviously, I auditioned. It\u2019s one of those roles where you\u2019re like, \u201cPlease, man, please, can this be mine?\u201d Because selfishly, it\u2019s just an amazing part. Then getting the part and reading it again and reading it through the eyes of, \u201cWow, I\u2019m actually going to be stood there. I\u2019m going to be saying those lines.\u201d Yeah, it was a very proud moment for me. It feels like the earliest acting I did was imitating my dad\u2019s accent. (Laughs.) And it would always make everybody laugh. They\u2019d say, \u201cDo it again, do it again!\u201d To put it on screen and have it out there forever, it\u2019s almost like I\u2019ve got a piece of my dad that\u2019s out there forever.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt is one of the best Northern Irish accents I\u2019ve ever heard on screen. Kieron, you\u2019re the better judge. But I can\u2019t believe [Rowan] did not grow up in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH It\u2019s not even [just] a good Northern Irish accent. It\u2019s a really good Enniskillen accent. That\u2019s the difference, and that\u2019s because Jack \u2014\u00a0apart from being incredibly studious and committed when it comes to his acting \u2014\u00a0his father was from, what, half an hour from Enniskillen?<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN Probably. He grew up in Cookstown, which is about an hour\u2019s drive.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH Yes. So you were hearing this accent from him and your grandparents, right? Because I remember you imitating your grandfather a couple of times. It\u2019s the smallest little inclinations, the tiniest details. That\u2019s what blew me away. It was so precise, but also completely understandable. It wasn\u2019t like you were going, \u201cWhat the fuck did he say there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN It was funny at the end when I came back after the shoot, and I was speaking in the accent every day, and I met with my friends and stuff. I\u2019d say the same line. I\u2019d go, \u201cThis is a general Belfast [accent]. Boom! This is Enniskillen. Boom!\u201d They\u2019d go, \u201cI can hear it. I can hear the difference.\u201d So it\u2019s subtle, but it means a lot. You wanna put them subtleties in there.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH A car in Belfast is \u201cCar.\u201d A car in Enniskillen is \u201cKee-yar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI want to ask Kieron about the early iterations of this film because I read that it went through a few different casts. Maybe it was a bumpy ride at times. But Jack and Chris, finally, must have been a dream come true.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH It was a bumpy ride. Films have a life, you know? And that life of a film, despite what some producers think, it\u2019s not really in their hands. What festival it gets selected for, what actor is going to be in it, where it\u2019s going to be shot: All of these things are up in the air. Then as soon as one thing lands, it sets the film in a direction, and that direction can be switched a different way. So originally, for Jack\u2019s role of Vinny, we actually had Anthony Boyle, and he stuck with the film for two years. Then he got offered some enormous Netflix thing [House of Guinness], and I said, \u201cMate, you\u2019ve got to go and do your thing. It\u2019s a big role. It\u2019s well paid. You\u2019ve been with [Skintown] for two years.\u201d So he went off to do that. And I was actually bereft, to be honest. I was like, \u201cWhat am I going to do?\u201d And between myself and the producer Yvonne Donohoe, we racked our brains. Yvonne had worked with Jack, and I\u2019d seen Jack in a film called The Boys from County Hell which is set\u2026 Where was it set, Jack?<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN A fictional Irish county. But Northern Irish [accents].<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH Yeah, so I\u2019d seen that film and I couldn\u2019t believe he was English, for a start. I said, \u201cHe looks absolutely perfect for it.\u201d So we did a couple of auditions and he knocked it out of the park and I\u2019ve never looked back since that day. I\u2019m blessed.<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN And the beauty of that is, when Anthony had the part, it was his right. I was never in the picture. I never auditioned or anything. If he\u2019d done the part, I would have never had the opportunity. He didn\u2019t end up doing it, which opened up an opportunity for me to come in. But he\u2019s only not doing it because he\u2019s doing something else. So the beauty of that is, everybody only gains. No one loses out.<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you film in Enniskillen?<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH We did a little bit of filming in Enniskillen, towards the end. When you\u2019re making films, the distance from your unit base is very important to the budget. If you\u2019ve got to drive any more than 45 minutes, you incur all sorts of penalties. There\u2019s a possibility of overnights, all of that stuff. So, we had to select certain places and create an Enniskillen. But we did shoot in Enniskillen for three days towards the end of the shoot, with Jack walking about, establishing stuff and a couple of scenes. The rest of the film was shot in Antrim [in Northern Ireland], and actually in the Republic of Ireland in Dundalk. So it\u2019s a proper union of the two jurisdictions.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Kieron J. Walsh<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotographer: Steve Langan<\/p>\n

\n\tHow long was the shoot?<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH 22 days.<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN An absolutely amazing 22 days.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of, \u201cOh my god, are we going to get this done? Are we going to be able to do this?\u201d And everybody just jumped on. It was remarkable actually, when I think about it, how the stars lined up. The weather \u2014 we were shooting the rave scene in the sand dunes and it was night shoots, loads of supporting artists. If it had rained, it would have been a disaster.<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN But as you say, the stars aligned. I really felt a lot of people had a lot of passion for this project. A lot of people came at it with love. I said, \u201cThere\u2019s something in this, man. There\u2019s a reason everything\u2019s on our side here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH I think Northern Irish people in particular really wanted to see a story like this on the screen. This hasn\u2019t been explored before. We haven\u2019t seen this side of Northern Ireland before \u2014\u00a0ordinary people, living in the crossfire, [and] young people trying to live normal lives. It\u2019s hard enough being a young person growing up in any part of the world, but then you\u2019ve got this guerrilla warfare going on all around you in an occupied territory. It\u2019s just an interesting world.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt covers so much: war, friendship, youth, dreams. What do you hope people come away stewing on after watching Skintown in Edinburgh?<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN Firstly, I want them to have a fun ride, right? Just enjoy the film. Come away and go on Spotify and search up some of the songs, maybe be inspired by the clothes. But with the human element, basically no one has a say in where they\u2019re born, right? You\u2019re just born. That\u2019s it, and then you get on with it. We see that in conflicts even now. The media or whatever always try and make us feel different, try and make us feel distant. Actually, everybody\u2019s just the same. Everybody just wants to get on with it. This isn\u2019t necessarily a film about the Troubles. It\u2019s actually just a film about people getting on with their lives\u2026 I just would hope people watch it, enjoy it, appreciate it, and have as much fun watching it as we did filming it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH I would totally agree with that. That\u2019s the primary [hope] \u2014 that people go to the cinema to enjoy themselves \u2014 and hopefully that will be the case with this. But I think, for me, what\u2019s interesting about the film is there\u2019s a very dark sense of humor in Northern Ireland. Perhaps in other parts of Ireland [too], but particularly Northern Ireland, they have the ability to laugh at their own misfortune and turn it to their advantage. And I suppose what [Vinny and Jonty] have done in this one, they\u2019ve turned an aspect of the Troubles to their advantage and tried to work with it rather than fighting against it. That\u2019s quite interesting.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s also interesting to look at what it was like growing up as a young person in Northern Ireland at the time. That\u2019s 30 years now since the Troubles finished. And it\u2019s not really been recorded \u2014\u00a0what it was like for young people to grow up there. You\u2019ve got all of the \u201990s paraphernalia, the music, the clothes, the lifestyle. But it\u2019s different in Northern Ireland. It\u2019s just different, and it\u2019s just skewed a different way because of all the other things that are going on. [You] look at a world that you haven\u2019t seen before. There\u2019s an abandoned cinema. For me, cinema was like a window to the world, a window where you could see what it was like out there. But that\u2019s been shut down, so you can\u2019t even see what it\u2019s like outside of Enniskillen. So [Vinny] wants to get out, and by the end of the film, it\u2019s not about escape. It\u2019s not about running away, because as he says, \u201cRunning away never did anybody any good.\u201d You have to face up to things and come to some conclusions about yourself. It\u2019s not really just about running away. It\u2019s about learning. It\u2019s a coming-of-age film, really.<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN I have this memory, before doing this part. As you say, sometimes people don\u2019t know what it was like for people growing up there. And my dad\u2019s a nomad character, very quiet. I was sort of interviewing him without him knowing, and I was telling him some lines, and I was doing the accent, and he was laughing. Again, the dark humor \u2014\u00a0he understood it straight away. Then there was one line which actually changed in the final script, but the line originally was like, \u201cI\u2019m sort of stressed out\u2026\u201d (Rowan slides into his Enniskillen accent.) \u201cI had Brits pointing guns at me yesterday, cops last night, and then these two!\u201d [Vinny] is basically having guns pointed at him from all directions, and my dad took a drag of his cigarette and he laughed and went, \u201cThat\u2019s what it was like.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH (Laughs.)<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN I was like, \u201cOkay, okay.\u201d You learn a lot, even as a [29]-year-old.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH Is your dad gonna come up to Edinburgh?<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN It actually only hit me recently. I\u2019m probably going to ring him today [to ask].<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat can festival runs do for a film like this, with so much love and care put into them?<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH Well, obviously Edinburgh had a little bit of a rough patch there a few years back, right? But it\u2019s back with a vengeance, man. It\u2019s great. I did have a short film in it, I think it was my graduation film from the Royal College of Art. There was a film by a friend of mine that was premiering there called I Went Down, an Irish film that also played there, and I was at the premiere of that, and it was just a buzz, an absolute buzz.<\/p>\n

\n\tROWAN Some buzz.<\/p>\n

\n\tWALSH (Laughs.) Some buzz! When the opportunity came round [for Skintown to premiere in Edinburgh], I was like, \u201cLet\u2019s grab it.\u201d Because this festival will get this film. They will get the subtleties in this film. I think a lot of people will get the film anyway. But I think the subtleties of the film, the flute bands, the sectarianism. That exists in Scotland as well. So I think they\u2019ll be able to connect with it. I\u2019m delirious about it. Delirious! Can\u2019t wait to see that in front of an audience there.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been shortened and edited for clarity. The 2026 Edinburgh International<\/a> Film Festival runs Aug. 13-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jack Rowan and director Kieron J. Walsh are hoping for \u201csome buzz\u201d at the Edinburgh premiere of Skintown.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[250773,250774,146,878,85,399,12110,46,265440,1299],"class_list":["post-586583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-edinburgh-2026","tag-edinburgh-international-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-il","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-jack-rowan","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}