I started auditioning like a madman here in Toronto. It was nine auditions a week. I was just in the grind. I got a show here. I got a show there. I was just getting by. And then The Westies came along last year … and boom!
The Westies is set in the 1980s in New York. There were all these union rackets and no-show jobs. All this classic gentleman-gangster stuff. JK Simmons’s character and Cliffie, my character, and all the older Westies – that’s our thing. We’re like: okay, we finally hit the jackpot. Then the young guys come in, and it’s all coke.
We had the premiere in Chelsea. Over the next couple of days I hung around in New York. I went for a walk around the old Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood. It didn’t look anything like it. It’s completely changed. You’re not actually shooting in New York. Where could you shoot that would look like that?
But I don’t feel like there’s any paddywhackery going on there. The plastic Paddy thing doesn’t feel like it’s happening to me with this.
Tony McMahon, the accordion player, was my dad’s brother. My dad grew up in Ennis and then moved to Dublin. He met my mum in Dublin. Her family is from Kilkenny. I grew up in Inchicore, back in the day when Inchicore was just that little cul-de-sac with kids running around. I went to Gaelscoil Inchicore when it was just being founded.
My dad was a social worker, and it was just a tough living. So my mum was like: “Let’s go try out Canada.” So we ended up in Winnipeg. That was a bit of a culture shock. Winnipeg’s got some really rough parts. Going from somewhere so insular like Inchicore into a big spread-out place was interesting.
I had auditioned for a play that they were doing at the Olympia Theatre just before I left Ireland. I got down to the callbacks. I went all the way to the end of it, and they said I lied about my age. They said: “You’re too young. We can’t put you in a show.” I was 11.
I lost interest in it a little bit from 16 to maybe 18 or 19. And then, when I finished high school, I started to go to these Irish amateur groups around Winnipeg, and we would tour plays. We did The Field and O’Casey plays. I really got into it. And then, when I was touring out in the US, somebody saw me there who was involved with the Gaiety School of Acting. They were like: “You’re probably good enough. You could get in. You should try and get in.” And then it took me two years to figure out how to do that. But I moved to Dublin, and then I went to the Gaiety. I worked as a roofer when I wasn’t doing that.
I got a scholarship to go over to Oxford right after the Gaiety School got done. I worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I actually got trained by John Barton. So then a couple of years of working, doing Shakespeare, touring Shakespeare plays – and writing comedy shows and stuff.
Tadhg McMahon as Cliffie on The Westies
And then to Toronto, and I kind of started from scratch, but I really started to focus on TV and film. It was tough. I really wasn’t getting anywhere. So, in 2012, I made my own short film, Shooting Oliver. It was a comedy on the set of an action movie. And when that came out, I had a demo reel. The people who were making Brooklyn [with Saoirse Ronan] saw that, and I auditioned for that. I got a small role.
The Irish scene is definitely bigger in Toronto. It was pretty small in Winnipeg, but I was really involved in it. There’s an Irish club that’s in downtown Winnipeg. It was a two-storey building. In the basement, they had a bingo hall, which would get money coming in all the time. And I would work in this bingo hall too.
I would do the cooking in the kitchen. Upstairs there was a pub where we would do dinner theatre. We had a 100-seat theatre. You come in. You buy your ticket. You’d sit down. You go to the little pub and have your pints of Guinness.
Here in Toronto, I’m not as connected to it. There’s a trad session every Sunday; I go down and see. But there are so many young people in these pubs around this neighbourhood, and I hang out with them. I have got an Irish writer buddy that I hang out with here.
Going to Ireland always feels like going home for me. My accent is gone. I flip my accent on and off depending on what show I’m working on. People ask the question: “What? Are you American?” And then I have to explain the whole thing. Some people say things like: “Oh, you have a confused accent. It sounds kind of strange.” But Ireland is always going home for me. I just walk in and I’m right back. I feel like we’re the luckiest Irish generation in some ways. My cousins are traditional musicians. I chat to them on WhatsApp all the time. It’s not like you go and you’re just gone any more.
In conversation with Donald Clarke
The Westies is on RTÉ One on Tuesday nights and on the RTÉ Player