JAMIE DORNAN says it is hard to understand “how mad and how affecting it was” growing up in Northern Ireland during and after the Troubles. “I remember checking for f***king bombs underneath dad’s car,” the actor says, adding “and by the way that was a daily routine for so many people”.
Dornan, right, stars in Sir Kenneth Branagh’s new film Belfast, a semi-fictionalised account of the director’s youth in the city in the late Sixties. Dornan, 39, grew up nearby in the town of Holywood and went to school in Belfast. “I remember [checking for bombs] with dad, and I’m talking from the most privileged of backgrounds from home,” he said.
“All that stuff that we took as normal is bonkers, absolutely bonkers,” Dornan explains, recalling how he would meet his friends outside McDonald’s in the centre of the city at the weekends. “And every other Saturday,” he tells the Empire podcast, they were not “able to do that because of bomb scares”.
Dornan went on: “That picking a side nonsense — we were all forced into that.” He recalls being told in the street, “Look, give me an answer or you’re going to get your head kicked in”.
Garai raises damp in her new horror
WHEN Romola Garai was scouting locations for her new film, the actor and director wanted to capture an integral part of the English home. “I was really keen to have black mould around the windows,” Garai, right, told an event at the BFI about her horror Amulet.
“You know, that sense of dampness … the sense of it being very British, that kind of English house where everything’s got that dampness,” she explained to the audience. Britain and damp — a sadly iconic duo.
Sexiness is not a sin ... star hits out
SINGER and It’s a Sin star Olly Alexander tells us complaints about his “sexualised” television performance “look like homophobia” to him. The Years and Years star said the 179 complaints over his raunchy BBC appearance with Kylie Minogue and the Pet Shop Boys on New Year’s Eve had only made him more determined to shock. “It’s inspired me to go on being even more scandalous,” he said. “I just think it’s hard to be this sexy, it’s my duty ... they’re just jealous”. Watch out.
When audiences behave badly...
NEIL MORRISSEY says running his Staffordshire pub is a bit like being on stage. “There’s backstage, there’s front of house, and you want everyone to have a good time,” the Line of Duty and Men Behaving Badly star says. But it’s probably not as fun as working with Dame Julie Walters. The pair were on stage together one night and “there was a really loud bleeping in the audience”, Morrissey told The Stage. Another audience member complained loudly that they couldn’t hear the show. Walters replied, “I’m terribly sorry, I’d like to help, but I’m in the play”, while the cast fell about giggling. You don’t get that at the pub.
SW1A
NIKKI DA COSTA, the former head of legal affairs at No 10, thinks the PM has “no other option,” but to publish Sue Gray’s report into the Downing Street parties in full. Da Costa says he may be forced to because next week Labour could use an arcane Commons prodecure, the humble address, to force its publication regardless.
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TRANSPORT Secretary Grant Shapps is leading what some are calling an “avengers” team charged with saving Boris Johnson’s bacon. Coincidentally, Shapps is also advertising for a researcher. The job description includes “engaging regularly” with MPs. Given recent headlines, serious engagement is needed.
Tom’s all starry eyed for Benedict
THE POWER of Benedict Cumberbatch was on full display as Tom Hiddleston took in the view at a screening of The Power of the Dog, Cumberbatch’s new western, at BAFTA Picadilly on Friday. In the audience were Top Boy actors Ashley Walters and Nicholas Pinnock. On Saturday chef Gizzi Erskine made it down to the City for the Ned’s Club Burns Supper, held in the warrenous former bank.
