{"id":587733,"date":"2026-09-02T07:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T07:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587733\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T07:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T07:56:12","slug":"the-year-of-domhnall-gleeson-no-one-talks-about-actors-dedication-but-i-had-a-perm-for-five-months-domhnall-gleeson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/587733\/","title":{"rendered":"The year of Domhnall Gleeson: \u2018No one talks about actors\u2019 dedication. But I had a perm for five months!\u2019 | Domhnall Gleeson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Domhnall Gleeson has got so much new stuff coming up, someone recently joked that this was the \u201csummer of Domhnall\u201d. Now the phrase is all over the internet, and Gleeson is mortified: \u201cThe worry is that somebody will say this to me now thinking that I believe it.\u201d He doesn\u2019t know where it came from \u2013 possibly his co-star Gayle Rankin on his new movie The Incomer. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly not something I\u2019m trying to push \u2026 but it would be great if it could be the headline.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s in a good mood when we meet at a London hotel on a hot afternoon. You could say he\u2019s good at interviews \u2013 charming, funny, garrulous, the perfect chatshow guest. He could just be acting, admittedly, but he seems to be a genuinely good-natured, grounded sort of guy.<\/p>\n

The Incomer, an eccentric Scottish comedy, is one of three new projects Gleeson has coming out in a matter of weeks. The others are the second season of the US Office spin-off The Paper and Werner Herzog\u2019s new film, Bucking Fastard, which is about to play at the Venice film festival. More of all this later, but first we must address Gleeson\u2019s most prominent, and least probable, recent role: as the star of a Taylor Swift music video.<\/p>\n

Gleeson as Daniel in The Incomer. Photograph: Universal Pictures. All Rights Reserved\/PA<\/p>\n

Directed by Swift herself, the video for Opalite<\/a> is a bizarrely goofy concoction with an equally bizarre origin story. It came about because the two of them appeared together on the Graham Norton show last October. Fellow guest Cillian Murphy joked that The Paper was worth watching for Gleeson\u2019s dancing alone. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to get in a Taylor Swift music video,\u201d he joked in reply.<\/p>\n

That was that, he thought. \u201cThen two weeks later, we got an email. Like, wild!\u201d Not just him: Swift asked every other guest on the show to be in the video \u2013 Murphy, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lewis Capaldi, even Norton himself<\/a>. \u201cNo one else in the world can come up with an idea like that and make it happen,\u201d Gleeson says.<\/p>\n

With Taylor Swift and Graham Norton, during the shoot for Swift\u2019s music video Opalite. Photograph: Spotify<\/p>\n

Gleeson has the starring role, as a lonely man who gets an upgrade on his painful relationship with a cactus when he is magically matched with fellow loner Swift. Then they dance together joyfully in matching glittery turquoise tracksuits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey told me the day before there was going to be a dance. I was like, are you fucking joking?\u201d Gleeson recalls. Are you good at that kind of thing, I ask. \u201cNo. I\u2019m terrible at it!\u201d He spent all night practising in front of the mirror. But Swift\u2019s direction did the rest: \u201cShe said \u2018full send\u2019, though I didn\u2019t know what that phrase meant. She was like, \u2018The moves don\u2019t matter. You just gotta go for and love it, and just trust in it and experience it.\u2019\u201d The first take after she said that was the one they used. \u201cThe believing in it and the joy of it helps you do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So did he go to her wedding?<\/p>\n

\u201cEr \u2026\u201d He ums and ahs. \u201cCan I plead the fifth?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sociable as he is, Gleeson is also very good at protecting his privacy. He\u2019d rather not answer questions about his immediate family (he has been married to the producer Juliette Bonass since 2023), and he\u2019s not on social media at all, he says. \u201cI think that\u2019s just like a line in the sand that helps immediately in terms of the personal not being public.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, Gleeson does a fine job of staying under the radar while also being everywhere. He is not exactly an inconspicuous figure, with his bright red hair and striking features \u2013 his Italian co-worker in The Paper says to him: \u201cLook at your eyes: scary, like goat\u201d \u2013 but on screen Gleeson is remarkably adaptable. He doesn\u2019t really have a type. He\u2019s played romantic leads (Richard Curtis\u2019s About Time, for example), evil villains (General Hux in the Star Wars movies, or terrorising Julianne Moore in last year\u2019s Echo Valley), real-life characters (Bob Geldof, AA Milne), comical idiots (Frank of Ireland). Family films, period dramas, westerns, sci-fi \u2013 he just seems to fit in wherever you put him. Even his age is strangely malleable: he\u2019s now 43 but looks barely any older than he did playing Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter<\/a> films.<\/p>\n

Gleeson: \u2018I liked the buzz of hearing people laugh.\u2019 Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, he\u2019s so good at accents, I\u2019d almost forgotten that he\u2019s Irish. When I first met Gleeson a decade ago, it was on the set of Frank<\/a>, the indie satire based on the outsider musician Frank Sidebottom. We were in a freezing cabin in rural Ireland but Gleeson was playing a middle-class English guy, and stayed flawlessly in accent throughout (but not in character). That\u2019s the best way, he\u2019s learned from experience: \u201cOne day when I was doing Harry Potter I kind of went Australian by accident and couldn\u2019t retrieve it.\u201d It has its disadvantages, though: \u201cYou don\u2019t want to do any phone calls with anyone from home during your work day.\u201d<\/p>\n

In The Incomer he\u2019s passing as Scottish, which is more challenging: \u201cGoing to Scotland and doing a Scottish accent in front of an all-Scottish crew is a very different experience.\u201d It was kind of fitting, though: Gleeson plays the unwelcome visitor of the title: a mainland bureaucrat who comes to a remote Scottish isle to evict its only residents, a pair of insular siblings (Rankin and Grant O\u2019Rourke). Written and directed by Louis Paxton, and filmed right at the northern tip of Scotland, the film is a charming mix of surreal comedy, local folklore, rugged landscapes and tender companionship, plus a great deal of seagull action \u2013 catching them, eating them, being attacked by them, even pretending to be them.<\/p>\n

Gleeson as Ned in The Paper, with (from left) Ramona Young as Nicole, Oscar Nu\u00f1ez as Oscar Martinez and Alex Edelman as Adam. Photograph: Peacock\/Sky<\/p>\n

At heart it\u2019s a film about isolation and acceptance, he says. His character is as lonely as the siblings: an awkward, underconfident middle-manager type. He cuts a pretty pathetic figure visually, too: geeky dress sense, feebly unassertive, his hair a mess. \u201cI got a perm for that,\u201d he says. \u201cNo one talks about the dedication of an actor any more. I lived with a perm for four or five months after I did that film!\u201d But he wanted to have a \u201ccomedic silhouette\u201d, he says. \u201cSo the perm made just my head bigger, like a big lollipop sort of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a slightly more dashing middle-manager type in The Paper: the almost naively idealistic editor of a once great Ohio newspaper. The show is a gentle mockumentary sitcom in the mould of co-creator Greg Daniels\u2019 other hits, Parks and Recreation and The Office, but it touches on a serious issue: the decline of local news (the paper in question is an afterthought to the company\u2019s primary business \u2013 manufacturing toilet paper). It\u2019s not overtly political, but \u201cmaking something that is pro-journalism speaks for itself in terms of protecting it and caring about it\u201d, says Gleeson, who considers himself \u201cvery much on the left\u201d.<\/p>\n

As always, Gleeson did his homework. Months before starting, he went and hung out with real journalists on some of Ohio\u2019s surviving daily newspapers, shadowing them, attending editorial meetings, asking questions. It was eye-opening but also depressing. \u201cBy the time we were doing press for the first season, this person who I had shadowed a little bit, who was a very well-established journalist, was out of the job,\u201d he says. She\u2019d moved on because she could no longer make a living.<\/p>\n

Gleeson in Frank, with Michael Fassbender. Photograph: Cinematic\/Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s harder than it should be to do good journalism. People don\u2019t want to pay for it, and people who it\u2019s against don\u2019t want it to exist. So you can\u2019t pretend that\u2019s not happening, but the young people I met who were going into it, as well as those who were staying the course and fighting the good fight, I found overwhelmingly inspiring. So it gives me hope, even though maybe not optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a rare thing to interview an actor who actually sympathises with your profession, given how intrusive some of us can be: stalking their socials, ambushing their leisure time or even just asking questions about their lives, like I am now. But he knows the drill. \u201cI\u2019m trying to keep my personal life personal, just to talk about the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having a famous dad may have coloured Gleeson\u2019s stance towards celebrity \u2013 even if he was essentially a grownup before Brendan became well known outside Ireland in the late 90s. \u201cHe is much more intensely famous,\u201d says Gleeson of his father. Back home, Brendan can no longer walk down the street without being stopped. Domhnall gets a little of that, he says, \u201cbut not to the same extent\u201d. He goes into Dublin all the time and it\u2019s usually fine. \u201cI\u2019m quite unusual or individual-looking, but I\u2019m also quite different-looking in lots of things, so sometimes people don\u2019t put them all together, which is great.\u201d The perm drew some attention, though, he admits.<\/p>\n

Gleeson with Cl\u00e9mence Po\u00e9sy, Robbie Coltrane and Mark Williams in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n

His parents never encouraged or discouraged him, or his three younger brothers, from following in his father\u2019s footsteps. \u201cThe only thing: they asked me not to be a standup comedian. Probably just because I wasn\u2019t funny.\u201d He\u2019s not being entirely truthful here. His intention was to write and direct, but one day he agreed to accept an award on his father\u2019s behalf. He was still at school at the time (a state secondary school just outside Dublin). \u201cI was 16 and really shy, but weirdly it was like, \u2018I could do that if he needs me to.\u2019\u201d This was going out live on Irish national television. \u201cRight before I went up, they said, \u2018You\u2019ve got 30 seconds for your acceptance speech,\u2019 and I had this three-page speech that my dad had written. I was like, \u2018I\u2019m not gonna be able to say that in 30 seconds,\u2019 so I went up and sort of vamped, and made fun of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It turned out he was funny. \u201cI quite liked the buzz of hearing people laugh,\u201d he admits. His father\u2019s agent, Teri Hayden, was watching, and called him in for a meeting.<\/p>\n

Three years later, in his first year at the Dublin Institute of Technology, he was cast in Martin McDonagh\u2019s IRA black comedy The Lieutenant of Inishmore. That\u2019s when he got hooked on acting: \u201cI didn\u2019t have a thing of, \u2018I don\u2019t want to be an actor because of my dad.\u2019 It was just by doing it I went, \u2018I do want to be an actor.\u2019 And the play was in London, so there was a bit of distance from my dad. It wasn\u2019t like doing it in Dublin and feeling him looking over my shoulder the whole time.\u201d Four years later the play transferred to Broadway, where Gleeson received a Tony nomination. His career was up and running.<\/p>\n

Family affair \u2026 Gleeson (centre) with (right) his dad, Brendan, and brother Brian in The Walworth Farce, in Dublin. Photograph: Artur Widak\/Nurphoto\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

He has worked with his father and his brother Brian, who is also an actor, many times since: in McDonagh\u2019s short film Six Shooter, which won an Oscar in 2006; in the Harry Potter movies (Brendan played Alastor \u201cMad-Eye\u201d Moody); he and Brian fought to the death in Darren Aronofsky\u2019s Mother! and were best buddies in the 2021 sitcom Frank of Ireland. And all three of them performed on stage together in 2006 in Enda Walsh\u2019s The Walworth Farce.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not necessarily a jolly love-in when they work together. \u201cIt can be difficult at times, and I\u2019m sure we all drive each other mad, but that happens with everybody you work with.\u201d But then it\u2019s not meant to be fun, he believes. \u201cThere\u2019s no point being there to be nice to each other. The point is to change the other person\u2019s performance with your own, the point is to bounce off each other and create sparks.\u201d Not in a negative way, though. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in having a bad time at work. That\u2019s all bullshit: to make good art, you have to have a bad time \u2013 fuck all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s now worked with some of the biggest names in the business \u2013 the Coen brothers, Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Julianne Moore, Margot Robbie, Taylor Swift \u2013 but Gleeson still gets awed by people, he says. \u201cWhen I met the Coen brothers I found it hard. I bumped into Paul Thomas Anderson at something once and I found that very difficult to keep my shit together.\u201d That was almost the case with Werner Herzog, but luckily, their first meeting was over Zoom, \u201cwhich is so depersonalising and demythologising, just because it\u2019s all, \u2018Sorry, can you hear me?\u2019 There\u2019s nothing fancy about it. After that I felt prepared to meet him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gleeson: \u2018You don\u2019t know what the next challenge is going to be.\u2019 Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Gleeson only worked a few days on Bucking Fastard, but it was a memorable experience. Kate and Rooney Mara play twins who do everything together \u2013 speaking, living, dressing. They even fall for the same man. Gleeson plays their social worker. Unbelievably, it\u2019s based on a true story. Herzog met the real-life twins, Freda and Greta Chaplin (the title is a spoonerism they both made, in unison, in court). \u201cI think maybe he was interested in making a documentary about them,\u201d says Gleeson. He began to suspect that although his character is Irish, he was based on Herzog himself. \u201cHe told me a couple of stories about meeting them and what it was like to be around them, then I realised my character in the film has some similar experiences. One of the scenes is basically something that happened to him, with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herzog, of course, has one of the most famous and highly imitable accents in cinema. Was Gleeson tempted to try it? \u201cWhen I realised that my character has aspects of him in it, for a second in your mind you\u2019re like, \u2018Should I do it?\u2019 Then you\u2019re like, \u2018No. Absolutely not. No, no, no.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for Gleeson? He doesn\u2019t really know, he says, though he hopes The Paper will get another season. He\u2019s always got stuff in the pipeline, he\u2019s always in demand for all sorts of roles, genres, accents. Not having a \u201ctype\u201d has proved to be a professional asset, and it keeps life interesting. \u201cIt\u2019s where I\u2019m happiest,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t know what the next job is going to be, you don\u2019t know what the next challenge is going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before he goes, he apologises again for not answering some of the more personal questions I\u2019d asked him, which really isn\u2019t necessary at all. Maybe it\u2019s the other side of the coin of his versatility. We don\u2019t have to know everything about people just because we see them on screen \u2013 and often it helps that we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Season two of The Paper launches on Sky and NOW in the UK on 10 September. The Incomer is in cinemas in the UK from 4 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Domhnall Gleeson has got so much new stuff coming up, someone recently joked that this was the \u201csummer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-587733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}