Cork actress: ‘It is gorgeous getting to see people from Cork who are f*****g brilliant!’

Eileen Walsh is one of our finest actors. Over a long career, the Cork city woman has won awards for her stage and screen work, and continues making bold and often brave choices with her chosen roles.

After making her name alongside Cillian Murphy in Corcadorca’s premiere run of Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs, she appears on screen with him in the highly anticipated adaptation of Claire Keegan’s story, Small Things Like These.

Enda Walsh adapted the story for the screen. Although Eileen and Cillian have worked separately with him since their Disco Pigs days, this is the first time all three have worked together since the play ended its tour in the late 1990s.

The actor says working together after all these years meant bringing together everything they have learnt since they last collaborated.

“We all bring the weight of our knowledge and experience, but once you’re in the room, it’s still the same things that make you laugh, and only the people who have known you for that length of time know those inside jokes. There is a short-hand.”

Walsh also says that the timing felt right to reunite. 

“Both Cillian and Enda have had such tremendous careers; it was important that we all brought our experience to the table. 

Nobody could have played Bill like Cillian did, and nobody could have written or adapted Claire’s script like Enda could. It felt like the right time for all of us to bring that weight to the room.

Timing also played a part in discovering the book, says Walsh, who read it several years ago and felt connected to it immediately.

“I did a TV series a couple of years ago set in Cork called The South Westerlies with Orla Brady. She gave me a copy of Claire Keegan’s Foster (later made into the Oscar-nominated film, An Cailín Ciúin). which I fell in love with. I gave that copy to Enda.

“Years later, my sister Catherine and I were doing a play with Enda called The Same, and Catherine got covid. I bought Small Things Like These and slipped it under her door.”

It was a message from Murphy that brought the story full circle. 

I was doing The Crucible at The National in London, and I got a text from Cillian that said I’m doing this film. Would you have a read of it? It was Small Things..., and Enda had written the script. It felt like everything had come full circle.

Walsh would jump at the idea of getting back into a room with Murphy, no matter what the project, but she says it was sweeter that she loved the book and got to work with Enda again as a trio.

The story, set in the 1980s in New Ross, follows Murphy’s Bill, a hardworking coalman who can no longer ignore the fact there is a Magdalene Laundry nearby after he sees the condition that some of the girls, particularly Sarah, played by Zara Devlin, are living in.

Walsh plays Bill’s wife, who fears that her husband’s knowledge of the laundry might put their own family in jeopardy. Walsh says it is important that stories like this acknowledge the conditions that Irish women had to live under.

It felt important to mark the weight of shame for women for decades in Ireland. It felt very weighty to try and express all of that in moments of silence. 

"She has a very deep love for her husband, but a love that is surrounded by a community who are very watchful. I think (as a country) we are grappling with coming to terms with that time.”

Walsh says Ireland has a dirty history when it comes to the treatment of women, and films like this have a role to play.

“We have a dirty, dirty history, but it is coming to light. It is being dealt with. The Taoiseach coming forward years ago and apologising is a wonderful step forward to healing and admitting that those women were kept without reason or choice. Still, it was too late for some people. All we can do is recognise and respect it and pay where it needs to be paid.”

Walsh says watching Murphy play Bill brought back memories of her father and that, like the family in the film, she comes from a family of daughters.

“I’m the youngest of five girls. My dad was a JCB driver, and he worked down the docks in Cork. 

He also delivered coal for O’Shea’s in Cork. He worked so hard for very little money. He was a hard, hard worker, and it meant so much to me that I got to play this character.

The actor recalls her father coming from work covered in coal dust, just like Murphy in the film.

“I have a photograph of my dad after working on one of the boats that came into Cork. He would go in and clean out the bowels of the boat from animal feed and coal. He would come home covered in dust, and he couldn’t get clean.

“He carried the weight of that job for seven days a week, and even when he would try and clean himself, the dust would be in his nail beds.”

Walsh and Murphy laid down a path for many young Irish actors to follow, and Walsh is proud to see so many young Cork actors successfully following in their footsteps.

“I babysat Alison Oliver’s best friend Lily and years later, Lily brought Alison to see me do Plough In The Stars in the Opera House. Alison told me she wanted to be an actor and look at her now. It’s incredible. The opportunities for younger actors now are just amazing, but it’s always talent-driven; Alison is phenomenal.”

Walsh recently saw Eanna Hardwicke in a production of The Cherry Orchard in London and says his performance was stunning.

“It’s gorgeous getting to see people from Cork who are f**king brilliant. They put in the hard work, so they deserve everything coming to them.”

Looking back on her early days in Cork with Murphy, Walsh says she always knew this was the life she wanted, but over the years, she has come to learn the importance of working with good people.

It always felt like this was the thing I was good at, without being egotistical. I love this, and this is something I can do, but as you get older, Disco Pigs was 28 years ago; as you get older, you suddenly realise the magic of being a brilliant script with a brilliant person to act opposite, and a brilliant person in charge directing it.

“Those opportunities are few and far between, so when it does come together, as you get older, you really appreciate the good ones. And this is one of the good ones.”