‘It breaks my heart how s**te Wales are’, said actor Jamie Dornan

12:16, 04 Mar 2026Updated 12:41, 04 Mar 2026

Trimble and Dornan burst out laughing during their discussion about Wales

Former Irish international Andrew Trimble and Hollywood actor Jamie Dornan couldn’t contain their laughter as they discussed the state of Welsh rugby ahead of Friday’s Six Nations clash between Wales and Ireland in Dublin.

Steve Tandy’s side head to the Aviva Stadium looking for the first Welsh Six Nations win on Irish soil since 2012, but go into the match as heavy underdogs. While their last performance was much improved as they fell just short against Scotland in Cardiff, Wales are yet to win in this year’s tournament or, indeed, since their last championship victory in March 2023.

They take on an Ireland side that had questions asked of it earlier in the tournament but produced a phenomenal performance last time out in a record away win over England at Twickenham.

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A big rugby fan, Dornan – the star of films including Fifty Shades of Grey and Belfast – joined former Ireland back Trimble and comedian Vittorio Angelone on their Hands Away podcast to dissect the tournament action so far and look ahead to Friday night’s showdown in Dublin.

While he admitted Wales’ current plight “breaks his heart”, Dornan couldn’t help but laugh as he revealed a text message he had received from a Welsh friend following the narrow defeat to Scotland.

“Oh, I felt bad for them,” said Angelone as he reflected on the result. “I just wanted it… it was so close to being the moment for Wales.”

A chuckling Dornan replied: “I know, one of my best mates is Welsh and I text him afterwards saying ‘I’m so sorry, I’m just so sorry’,” as Angelone and Trimble burst out laughing.

“He goes, ‘you know what, it was great just to be in the game for 74 minutes, to actually be competitive in a rugby match’.”

Trimble interjected: “It’s so sad though isn’t it? It’s not normal,” with Dornan adding: “He’d be raging that they lost, like he really cares about it, you know. So it really broke my heart, that’s what he was able to take away as some positives, that they were at least in with a chance for most of the match.”

“Goodness, they’re so bad that we actually feel sorry for them and we don’t even slag them,” said Trimble, as Angelone added: “We should slag them, let’s slag them!”

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The former Ulster star replied: “Yeah, let’s do them a favour and slag them,” prompting more laughter from Angelone and Dornan.

As the chuckling continued, Angelone then suggested Wales’ dominant first-half performance against Scotland meant it was “the first Six Nations game where people bought tickets at half-time,” while Trimble compared Darcy Graham’s momentum-shifting try off the back of Finn Russell’s quick restart to a “pantomime” moment.

“It was a pantomime ‘behind you!’,” the Ireland international said, to more laughter. “Finn Russell’s about to pull your pants down, everybody please turn around and see what’s happening!”

Angelone added: “You can have all the sort of financial corporate stuff going on with the club teams and the union and all that stuff.

“You can have a difficult patch and maybe there’s not players coming through the systems or whatever – but you are are all professional rugby players and you can’t turn your back on a kick-off.”

Dornan admitted that he wanted to see Wales get back to their former glory, adding that he was heartbroken to see “how s**te” they have been in recent times.

“Scotland looked unbelievable against England and I thought they were going to wipe the floor with Wales, but to see the Welsh put up a fight was brilliant,” he said.

“I am of the belief that world rugby really benefits from a good Welsh side and a good Australian side, and I think for years now we haven’t had either. I think it’s quite damaging.

“Historically, when I think of brilliant rugby, I think of those two nations and it breaks my heart how s**te Wales are.”

However, when it came to the all-important question of whether Wales would be able to get a result in Dublin, the actor shook his head and laughed as he simply said: “No”.

Wary that they might be setting themselves up for embarrassment, Angelone said: “This is going to get clipped up if we get beaten,” but Dornan added that he was “confident” Farrell’s side would get the job done.

But later in the podcast, the Fifty Shades star appeared less certain as Angelone said the Wales match would be “not too much of a concern” for Ireland.

“We can’t talk like this actually,” said Dornan, to which the comedian replied: “You were the one who said it!”

“I know, I know,” the actor added. “But I’m now going like Jesus, Wales, they would just love to come and cause an upset!”.

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