Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney has admitted she’s had to fight for every single part she’s ever gotten.
But the Cork native admitted she is “terrified” at how her home county will be represented on screen to viewers in her new series of Holding.
Opening up about her acting career, Siobhan reckons she was only able to secure her role in Derry Girls because the show’s creator Lisa McGee and executive producer Liz Lewin already knew her work.
READ MORE: First look at final series of Derry Girls as Channel 4 show promises utter chaos
“If I handed in my CV, nobody would have seen me, but Lisa and Liz knew my work and knew that I could do it.
“I’ve fought continuously from day one with every single part I’ve ever gotten. I think people just often think actors should look a certain way, stories should be told a certain way and that only certain stories should be told.
“Like, before Derry Girls came out, if you’d pitched that to an awful lot of commissioners, they would have gone, ‘Nah, put a few more blokes in it; make it The Inbetweeners.”
Siobhan is currently starring in Graham Norton’s Holding, which is being directed and produced by Kathy Burke, playing the role of Brid.
“I could play the role of Brid with my eyes shut, because I empathise and understand her so completely.
“But nobody else in the world would have cast me as Brid apart from Kathy Burke, and nobody would have written it apart from Karen Cogan and Dominic Treadwell-Collins,” she told the Sunday Independent’s Life magazine.
But she also admitted she is “terrified” at how West Cork will be represented on screen when Holding airs on Virgin Media.
I’m f***ing terrified, I really, really am. As an actor you go in and do your job to the best of your abilities and then you walk away hoping that you’ve done yourself proud.
“With this, I feel a deeper connection to the character but also to the place, and as a result, I have all the anxiety of a producer with none of the benefits,” she added.
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