Bríd Ní Neachtain told David Hennessy about the short film Clodagh which has made the short list for an Academy Award, the emergence of Irish language cinema and her career that incorporates being part of the original cast of Dancing at Lughnasa and Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin.
Portia A. Buckley’s short film Clodagh has been shortlisted for an Academy Award.
The news was announced in December that Clodagh and another Irish short, TJ O’Grady-Peyton’s Room Taken, had been selected for the short list of 15 films advancing from a list of 180 qualifying short films.
Now both films will hope to make it to the final list of nominations.
Nomination voting begins this week on Wednesday 8 January and concludes on Sunday 12 January – with the final list of Nominations for the 97th Oscars® announced on 17 January.
Clodagh and Room Taken hope to follow in the footsteps of An Irish Goodbye which took the Academy Award in 2023.
Clodagh has also just made a long list for a BAFTA.
Portia A Buckley’s Clodagh has been featured in The Irish World before.
We chatted to Portia A Buckley and Katelyn Rose Downey for previous features.
The story follows a lonely, devout and rigorously honest housekeeper Mrs Kelly, played by Bríd Ní Neachtain, who discovers a young Irish girl with an exceptional gift, Clodagh (Katelyn Rose Downey).
But Clodagh’s raw talent creates a moral conundrum for Mrs. Kelly.
The film co-stars Aidan O’Hare (Jackie, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, KIN) and Jim Kitson.
Katelyn Rose Downey is a rising star whose credits include The Princess, The Nun 2 and now the Blade Runner TV series.
We chatted to actress Bríd Ní Neachtain recently to get her reaction to the short listing.
Bríd was part of the original cast for Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa.
Originally from Connemara, she has been doing work in the Irish language going back as far as her start at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.
Her screen credits include Irish language soap Ros na Rún, the film Róise & Frank and Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin.
You must be thrilled, how does it feel to be on the short list?
“It was Just amazing to get the work acknowledged.
“When you start out to do anything. whether it’s a theatre project or film or television, you want to do your best and it was great to get this news.
“We shot it over six days and from the start, I felt this was just a beautiful script.
“I’m just thrilled.
“I’m just thrilled for Portia and for everyone that’s been involved really.”
Did it strike you as something special from your very first reading, from the very first page?
“It did. Yeah, it did.
“The agent sent it on and you just know, as an actor, ‘There’s something special in this’ because it was character based and especially for me as Mrs. Kelly.
“Now at the time I didn’t know that Katelyn (would be involved).
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, where are they going to get a dancer, a 14 year old that can actually do it?’
“And then the first day of shooting Portia sent me just little clips of her and I thought, ‘Ah, this is going to be fantastic’.
“So really from the start I felt it was special.
“It was special.”
You say you couldn’t have imagined Katelyn and what she would do, finding her was a real stroke of luck, wasn’t it?
“Absolutely.
“From Mrs. Kelly’s point of view as well.
“I mean, here you have a very devout housekeeper: Involved with the church, doing the right thing, her praying, all of this sort of thing.
“And suddenly she sees this little wonder.
“And I think Mrs. Kelly is different after.
“If we continued with the story, you’d have a different Mrs. Kelly because through Clodagh, something changed. She changed her.”
Yes because Mrs. Kelly is very strict, very concerned with rules. However, there’s a difference between what’s right by the rules and what’s right for Clodagh. Clodagh wants to dance and she wants to dance for Mrs. Kelly and why should a silly rule stop that?
“Exactly but, as we were saying earlier, there’s a right and there’s a wrong, there’s black and there’s white.
“That was her dilemma really and the scene in the church where Mr. Kitson comes and he says, ‘It’s only a little lie’.
“He says, ‘We need her as much as she needs us’.
“And that was Mrs. Kelly’s dilemma, Do you follow your heart or do you follow the rules?
“She did.
“She changed all of them in that small community.”
There we saw the reaction that fiddle player Mr Hickey gets a great reaction from a live audience, Bríd got to see it herself at the Cork Film Festival in November where the film was honoured with the Grand Prix for Best Irish Short.
“I saw it.
“Portia sent me a clip but I don’t like watching myself on screen, you know? I just don’t like doing it so I never watched it until we went to Cork with it and that was my first time watching it.
“Actually watching it with an audience is wonderful because you tend to forget, you’re your own worst enemy, at least I am, ‘Why am I doing that?’ Or, ‘Why did I do that?’ Or, ‘My God, what’s that about?’
“So you just watch the movie and you try and take yourself out of it, your own personal kind of view out of it.
“It got a great reaction in Cork as well when he comes in.
“And again, we were lucky that Jim plays music so that was another stroke of luck.”
Mr Hickey is a big part of it but there’s another character that provides a lot of depth even though we only see him for a minute. That is Aidan O’Hare who plays Clodagh’s father in one scene and shows what sort of situation she is coming from..
“Exactly, exactly.
“He’s desperate, and he knows that he’s got a special child.
“Mrs. Kelly in her, ‘Well, we never see you in church’.
“And she kind of has that moment of, ‘No, no, Go away’ or else going with the gut again and go, ‘Sure, I’ll give her a chance’.
“And the lovely little scene where Clodagh has a tiny little bit of glitter on her the side of her face and Mrs. Kelly is straight laced, no makeup, none of that.
“I think the line was, ‘There’ll be no Dallas Texas here’ which is very funny.
“His character is important because he’s desperate.
“He knows he’s got a special child and he wants the best for her.
“And I think he knows deep down, just give her a chance.
“And isn’t that what it is in life? Somebody getting that chance, and for Mrs. Kelly taking that leap of faith, just going with it.”
Directed by TJ O’Grady-Peyton, Room Taken follows Isaac, played by Gabriel Adewusi, who is desperate for a place to stay and finds an unexpected answer to his temporary homelessness when he takes refuge in the home of Victoria, an elderly blind woman, without her knowledge.
The film tackles pressing themes including the challenges faced by asylum seekers and the rising homelessness population in Ireland.
Victoria is played by the great Irish actress, Bríd Brennan who was also part of the original Dancing at Lughnasa cast with you..
“Yes, yes. I didn’t know that- I’m rehearsing The Ferryman at the moment, the Irish premiere of The Ferryman, the great Jez Butterworth play that played Broadway and won Tonys and all of that sort of thing.
“So I had just come home from rehearsals and the next thing I got a text from my agent to say that we got shortlisted and then he said that the other one is shortlisted as well.
“And I looked it up and I said, ‘Oh, there’s Bríd Brennan’.
“Bríd and I worked together on Broadway with Lughnasa and at the moment I am playing the same role that Bríd played in The Ferryman, Maggie Faraway.
“It’s amazing, and we’re great friends so it’s amazing how our paths are crossing professionally.”
As you say, you were in the original Dancing at Lughnasa and on Broadway with it and in the West End. They must be incredible memories and an incredible highlight of your career…
“Yeah, it was.
“Again, it was one of those plays.
“It started out in the Abbey Theatre.
“Brian Friel was- is one of our best writers.
“We knew we had something special.
“And for me as an actor, I always start with the script whether it’s a play or whether it’s a film.
“I always see my job as an actor to serve the script, serve the writer. That’s what I did.
“That’s what I wanted to do with Portia’s work.
“You start with the script.
“You serve the script.
“We’re useless as actors without the scripts.
“We serve the writer and then maybe we add a little bit.
“Lughnasa started in the Abbey Theatre.
“It was a huge success there.
“It moved to London and we thought, ‘This is about five sisters in Donegal in 1930s, would they really get it in the West End? Would they really get that?’
“But it was the same reaction, the same laughs, the dance.
“It got the same reaction the world over.
“That’s the universality of a piece.
“I think it’s the same with Clodagh that it has touched people, whether it’s here in Ireland or whether it’s across the water.
“I suppose it’s the mark of good writing.”
It was two years ago that another film you were part of earned a slew of Oscar nominations. You played postmistress Mrs O’Riordan in Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin which earned nods for Best Film, Best Director and for cast members such as Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan.
“It was great.
“I was familiar with Martin’s work as a playwright.
“I had done one of his plays.
“I remember as actors we all got the same word from agents, ‘Martin McDonagh’s making a movie and could you self tape for it?’
“I just got two little scenes, I didn’t get the full script at that stage.
“You just got the scenes because you were just doing the self-tape at the time.
“As you can see my hair is blonde and I thought, ‘Oh no, she wouldn’t be blonde’.
“So I put on a scarf, I did the self-tape, and word came back, ‘Martin really loved the tape. Could you do it without the scarf?’
“I went, ‘Alright, okay, I went back to square one again’.
“And then he came back and I met him on Zoom and we had a conversation and he said, ‘I’d love you to do it’.
“And it was just wonderful working with him.
“I loved his work. I still love his work but working on such a big movie, you knew you were in a big juggernaut of a movie with great writing, with great actors like Brendan Gleeson, Colin, Farrell, Kerry Condon, and as an actor, all of that work stretches you.
“You get stretched as an actor and then, of course, Oscar nominations and stuff it was absolutely great, wonderful.”
The last time we saw you in London you were here for the Irish Film Festival London in 2022 when the Irish language film Róise & Frank closed the festival.
Of course you have been working in the Irish language since your early days at the Abbey and were part of the cast of Ros na Rún, Irish language film has really taken off with An Cailín Ciúin..
“That’s right and Kneecap now getting shortlisted for the Oscars. It really is.
“I feel personally it comes down to a vision.
“Alan Esslemont, who was head of TG4, had this vision, ‘Let’s tell our stories in Irish, our language’.
“We’re used to watching films in German, we don’t bat an eye and so he had this vision, ‘And let’s put the money into it’.
“And it has really taken off and I felt very proud of that.
“It went to Santa Barbara and it won the Audience Award in the big festival there.
“And you kind of go, ‘Yes, we can tell our stories in our own language’.
“I did a few of the circuits with it.
“A lot of people came up and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s such a beautiful language. Never lose your language’.
“And it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful.
“And now with Kneecap again getting shortlisted and obviously An Cailín Ciúin nearly going all the way, it’s great.”
And just as Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoí were lucky with finding Catherine Clinch, Portia was lucky to find Kately for Clodagh, on Róise & Frank you had your own find in Ruadhán de Faoite who played Maidhcí…
“Exactly, I think Ruadhán was 14 when we shot it.
“And then, of course, COVID got in the way so the film was kind of parked for two years but by the time it premiered, Ruadhán was taller than I was because he was actually a young man.
“But again he was so focused, a bit like Katelyn on the set: So focused, no pretension but just there for the work.
“It’s fantastic to see all those young kids coming up and no pretention but just there to do the work.”
And coming back to Clodagh I think there was talk of doing it in a longer form or a feature, is that something you would be interested in?
“Oh my god, yeah.
“I remember one day we had a conversation and we were going, ‘Oh, I wonder what would happen between Hickey and herself and Clodagh…’
“It would be fantastic.
“Actually a friend of mine that saw it the other day said, ‘Oh, I just wanted to know what happens now’.
“It’s definitely kind of got the seeds of a feature.
“It would be fantastic. It would be great.”
The trickiest part may be getting Katelyn Rose Downey to be available again because she is doing Blade Runner, things have taken off her in a big way..
“She’s doing fantastic.
“When I met her in Cork, she was just back from Prague.
“She was doing something, I think it was Blade Runner.
“But she loved it because dancing is so much part of her, it wasn’t just the acting.
“The dancing was such a huge part of it so I think for her, it was quite special.”
And back to the nominations I bet you are thrilled that this film made in rural Ireland is vying for an Oscar nomination..
“Absolutely.
“I think there was 179 or 180 films in all and to be down to the last 15 you kind of go, ‘This is great’.
“I’m just thrilled for Portia and for Michael (Lindley, Portia’s co- writer) and for all of us really, and not just us in front of the camera, the crew because everybody really worked hard and we all believed in it and it’s quite rare that you get that where cast and crew are together and believing in something.
“It’s wonderful for all of us and it’s a great achievement.”
The Academy Award nominations will be announced on 17 January 2025.