The Wicklow-born actor has had a hell of a year. With her directorial debut winning acclaim and a second season of Bad Sisters already Apple’s hottest ticket, she talks taking control and breaking the stereotypes
Arriving on set to direct her debut feature film Kathleen Is Here, Eva Birthistle was nervous. 10 years in the making, the film (which hit cinemas in October) was a huge leap in a new direction for the long-time actor. Imposter syndrome was trying to get its claws into her. “All of these people are expecting me to know what I’m talking about,” she remembers thinking to herself.
As she recalls her nerves that day, the County Wicklow native – looking radiant in a pea-green cardigan, her striking blue eyes behind a pair of large glasses – she tells Irish Tatler that she turned to what she knew best to get herself through it. “It’s fine, I can pretend this is a role: you’re playing the director,” she decided.
“It took me a few days to hit my stride,” she says now. “I just had to get used to being the voice on set.” A supportive cast and crew helped, but so did the realisation that she could not only do the job well – she could also deal with whatever stresses low-budget filmmaking threw at her, and even enjoy them. “In the rest of my life, I’m a very indecisive person. And you obviously can’t do that as a director,” she says. “I must have really relished in the newness of that, going: ‘I can’t faff. Faffing is not okay.”
London-based Birthistle jokes that the film felt like a sibling to her young children Jesse and Joni (she’s married to Ross Barr, who the UK press has called “the A-List’s favourite acupuncturist,”). “You’re so protective of it, and it’s something that you spend so much time caring for,” she explains. Having her film screened was like “giving birth publicly”.
Kathleen Is Here is about Kathleen, played by Hazel Doupe, who is left adrift after leaving the care system at 18. Doupe impressively portrays Kathleen’s complex blend of steeliness and fragility as she tries to find belonging in some troubling ways.
Having never been through care herself, Birthistle felt a duty to get her depiction right. Her father helped her link up with a County Derry-based group called HEAL, which offers support and guidance to young adults leaving care. “There’s lots of information out there, but I think sitting with somebody in a room and listening to their stories first-hand is quite extraordinary,” she says. To her relief, two audience members who had been through the care system approached her to say the film felt authentic. “There’s no better response than that,” Birthistle says.
As an actor, Birthistle is particularly adept at tapping into her characters’ sensitivities. She often plays women who are put through the wringer, but have a core of iron. Her first big role was as femme fatale Regina Crosbie in the iconic Irish TV series Glenroe, but it was her award-winning turn in Ken Loach’s romantic drama Ae Fond Kiss in 2004 that put her on the global map. She went on to play Saoirse Ronan’s cabin-mate in Brooklyn in 2015, and a warrior nun in the TV series The Last Kingdom from 2015 to 2022. Her most recent TV role is the loving but stressed Ursula Garvey in the acclaimed Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters ( more on that later).
As a female screenwriter and director, Birthistle is part of a new wave of women helping to change Irish cinema. Since the allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in 2017, huge strides have been made globally towards making the film industry a safe and welcoming place for women. Birthistle has “mixed feelings” about the progress made so far.
“Yes, it’s different, and yes, it’s better,” she says, pointing out that part of her feature film budget came from Screen Ireland because she was a female director. “And you see shows like Bad Sisters, where it’s women at the helm of executive producing, writing, show-running.” But it’s not all positive progress. “Just recently I heard about the difference in pay that a certain group of women were getting compared to a certain group of men on a job within the same company. And it was shocking,” she says.
She has noticed more women behind the camera, and she has also found a demand from women in the industry for female-led projects, but cautions: “I think bodies, people and productions are definitely addressing [inequality], but I think there’s just some more hidden aspects of it that haven’t been addressed.”
Have the roles she has been offered changed in recent years? “Definitely they have, but I wonder if that’s also an age thing,” Birthistle says, who turned 50 this year. “The flip side is that the business is an ageist business, so you come up against people not being interested because you’re of a certain age.” She laughs a resigned laugh. “It never lets off.”
As an actor, she says there’s power in saying ‘no’. “If this part doesn’t speak to me, then I wouldn’t do it,” she says. “And that’s not to say, of course, there’s been times where I’ve been flat broke and a job has come in that’s not a great job but you do it for the money – every actor has done that. There’s no shame in it whatsoever.”
But in her thirties, when she grew jaded with endless scripts about girlfriends and wives, she just stopped doing them. “Because it was just a version of a woman..rehashed in various forms. But it was fucking boring,” she says, a flash of grit behind her eyes. Now there are more interesting roles out there, but they can be hard to get. “There’s a lot of actors that want them, understandably – it’s good material. And I think there’s still probably not enough female writers.”
Which brings us to Bad Sisters, the second season of which drops on Apple TV+ this month. In the five Garvey sisters, writer Sharon Horgan has created sparky, memorable characters. “It’s about flawed, complicated, messy, funny women. And people love it because it’s relatable,” says Birthistle. “It’s funny, it’s challenging, it’s ugly, it’s sexy, it’s all those things. That’s real. People don’t want a version of a woman. They want the whole woman represented on screen.”
Fans of the first season were eager to find out where Horgan would go with the story, as it was originally based on a Belgian series called Clan. She brings us back into the sisters’ lives two years on from the events in season one, a progression that Birthistle found “seamless”. The last time we saw them, the sisters were living with a big secret. “Secrets can only stay buried for so long,” teases Birthistle, careful to avoid spoilers.
She can, however, talk about a new character, Angelica, played by Irish acting legend Fiona Shaw. Birthistle’s face lights up as she describes going from being intimidated by Shaw’s iconic status on stage and screen to realising the Corkonian is “the loveliest, down-to-earth, playful” presence. “Being on set with her is just a complete joy. She’s so interested in everything and everybody. She became an honorary sister – she’s part of the family now.”
So what can we expect from Birthistle’s character Ursula, a nurse who had an ill-fated affair in season one? “She’s struggling to get a life that she’s happy in,” Birthistle divulges. How Ursula deals with this plays a pivotal role in season two, while the Garvey sisters as a gang try to deal with Angelica sniffing around their business. Needless to say, things get complicated quickly.
“Ursula tries to manage stuff on her own without really asking for help. And it always comes across in a sort of selfish way, that she’s looking after number one,” Birthistle says. “And at times she is, but her heart’s absolutely in the right place. It’s just she gets so panicked that she’s unable to grasp a situation in its entirety. She just feels like it’s all closing in on her.”
As always with a Sharon Horgan show, there’s humour amidst the darkness. “This series, like the last series, manages light and dark really well – Sharon does that so brilliantly.” Though Horgan has multiple roles on set, she moves between them “with such grace and calmness. She’s able to do many, many things in any given day. It’s fiercely impressive,” Birthistle adds.
On screen, Birthistle, Horgan, and their fellow ‘sisters Sarah Greene, Anne-Marie Duff and Eve Hewson have a tight bond. It turns out that in real life there’s a deep love there too. “We get on like a house on fire so that really helps. And we miss each other when we’re not with each other,” Birthistle says, adding that after each day’s shooting, they’re straight into their Bad Sisters WhatsApp group. “We call each other up for advice, we’re constantly sharing photos and messages, and it’s really, really special – and I think that does show [on screen].”
As for her own writing, Birthistle is currently working on sourcing funding for a new film, and would “never say never” to writing for TV. Adding screenwriting and directing to her portfolio has ironically made it a little easier to juggle all the aspects of her busy life, she has realised, giving her the chance to stay at home and write.
2024 marks 20 years since her breakout film role in Ae Fond Kiss. What would she say to that young woman if she met her now? “Don’t stress it too much,” she says, recalling her worries back then about carving out a dream career in an intense industry. “Just keep going, doing what you’re doing. Turn up at the auditions. Do your best. Don’t stress it. It’ll be okay.” Sound advice from a Bad Sister.
Photography: Brian Daly
Styling: Karen Clarkson
Fashion assistants: Claudia Floch and Maïlys Pereira Hair: Carlos Ferraz @ Carol Hayes Management
Makeup: Beverley Pond-Jones
