Transcription
I've no, I have no idea what he actually said there. So it was kind of interesting walking in the door to a round of applause, you know, have no idea what he just said. What did you say? Pretty much just your name.
[Laughter]
So Aiden, what's the best movie you've seen recently? The best movie that I've seen recently, I'll give it a bit of backstory to it as well, just to make it, you know, just to string an edge a little. Because sometimes, like, you know, I don't talk much at all. But it was on Netflix, right? Which, you know, I have a kind of a love-hate relationship with. Like that's a good joke, like a lot of us do, you know. And given up most of the stuff on it, you don't want to see. And if you're a producer and if you make something and Netflix wants it, they don't pay you much. So the idea is not to get your stuff on Netflix. People think it's, you know, like a lot of courage and all that kind of stuff. It means people can see it, but you're selling it for like rock-bottom to them because they've got like thousands of things. So every now and then I look up, like, see the New York Times or, you know, the Guardian or the Irish Times will do like 50 best films on Netflix. So I picked like five of them. And the first one, like, I'd heard of it vaguely, but, you know, of course, it had won the Palme d'Or, can you know, the year before. So it had lots of recognition. But, you know, some Netflix, I don't, I don't think I've ever met anyone else has seen it apart from maybe one guy. And it's called, and you've probably all seen it, Shoplifters. Anyone? Nobody. One person. Did you like it? So that's the stir, that's the state of the world at the moment. Like a film wins the main prize that can, and one, two people in this room had seen it. And I only found it through Netflix. And it's a Japanese, a Korean, it's Japanese, right? It's just a quite strange film about a family, a kind of family. And you're just not really sure, you know, what's going on. It reminded me a lot of a, like a great Japanese film from years ago called Tokyo Story, made by the master Japanese filmmaker Ozu. Really slow, you know, like reading a book or, you know, the Chekhov story or something. It's like an amazing film. So I would recommend anyone who's not seen us to check it out. It's just, you know, it just pulls the kind of rug from under your feet like constantly. You don't really know what's going on. And you start to root for people who are doing, you know, bad things, kind of. And it doesn't, it's not easily resolved. It's got a lot of peculiar characters and characteristics. And then it just takes some turns that are like mind-blowing. And it's had a big emotional impact. And it's just actually quite entertaining as well. Look, and I kind of probably say any more about it. But, you know, I went to see The Irishman the other day and it didn't, you know, compare in any way, you know, in terms of just trying to be, and, you know, something that you'd be interested in. I found quite a boring story. And I loved all of those actors. I love them all. I love Martin Scorsese. And they all get, you know, did brilliant work. But the story just wasn't interesting enough.
You've spoken in the past, you've indicated a preference for like roles in lower budget productions versus roles in Hollywood blockbusters. Is that just to do with like the promise of the characters you may get or this thing about the creative process?
Probably just trying to sound good. Cool. I mean, no, I mean, seriously, I do try to mix it up. And I do have to earn a living. And, you know, I've been lucky, I suppose, working in mostly on TV in the last 12 years, 14 years, because this thing started happening in TV where they, you know, they made these novelistic dramas that were run for years and years and never had an ending. Like The Wire, which is the first one that I actually. Queer as Folk, I've been in before, which was a very, very short run thing, like 10 episodes. But it was that kind of thing, a kind of panoramic view of a city, you know. I, so the stuff I've ended up being in have been contracted to for like years and and has been, you know, quite high-profile stuff on HBO and things like that. And when I'm not doing that, I'll just take whatever the most interesting job is. And whether it's something that's gonna actually cost me money to do it, or, you know, I'm paying for everyone's taxis, or like the film that, you know, Barry and myself judged, you know, like this, there's a, it's just whatever the interesting job is. And, you know, I had one of the things I, I have done that I've really regretted doing was playing a small part in a big movie that I got slagged off like intensely because my performance is not good. And if you're only there for like two days or one day, it is. Yeah. And like I'm horrified. But, you know, you know, it's a, it's a good film. But like a lot of memes about it. I know, I wish somebody had directed me.
Mmm. But like what was interesting was, you know, Christopher Nolan and his director of photography, Wally Pfister, are just like, they were like, they were like, they were making a student film. But like, they're like, a hundred and fifty million to spend on them. Or literally just making it up and walk around them. Except with an IMAX camera and like in a plane, you know, in a real plane, you know, flying around. And I, I said to somebody, it was very, that seat, that seems very tricky because no one could hear what anyone was saying. The IMAX camera is really noisy, it's like a washing machine. Tom Hardy hadn't worked out what his voice was gonna be yet, so he had this mask on. And he was, I couldn't hear anything, anything that anybody was saying. And I can hear my own voice. It was all a mess. And I said to somebody, it's just been recorded. Yeah. Nice. I asked somebody, I said, well, you know, when we do this, I said to him, Christopher Nolan, and said, look, when we come in, AD, or this scene, I didn't go back into the, you know, go back and do the voices again because no one can hear anyone saying. Tell my heart, he's got this voice that he hasn't decided what it is yet. You know, I'll be able to let me read up this scene, it's gonna be better. Yeah. And the sound guy looked at me, said, oh, no, I'm Christopher Nolan was never ever do AD, or he considers it like a failure, you know, a sign of failure to go back and add any sound afterwards. And everyone else does this. But, you know, I get it. And, you know, I think he's a great filmmaker, like a really great filmmaker. Anyway, that's the answer to that one. And then, then something will come along like, you're ugly too, or whatever, which was a film, you know, it'll be made on a, I think actually, they had not a bad budget, was maybe, you know, half a million euros or whatever. But I've done ones that we've, we've made for like 15 grand, or nothing, you know. Yeah. And because they're interesting and because you want to mix it up. And, you know, once you know, you, you're able to pay the bills for a while, you just take whatever the most interesting thing is, you know. I don't know, you know, people, how many people see it or not, you know, it's always a, that's always a thing. You probably should think about a bit more. Up than the loads of things that no one's ever seen for a reason, probably.
So when referring to, sorry, well maybe this is another example, if you just kind of like saying something that you thought it would be when you say, is that a bad horse's head? No, okay. What was the thing about horse's head? I did this interview once where I kind of, I kind of make stuff up, you know, I've been interviews to keep, keep it entertaining, you know. It got like widely printed too. That a chat, relax, and kind of sex addiction and stuff, you know. It's all untrue. But I kind of did this interview for Irish Tatler magazine and mentions that, you know, when I go on Chatroulette, mmm, that I always wear like a horse, it's like a horse's head mask, you know, just so nobody can see. And this was before Chatroulette. That was just pure masturbation.
Question was I was gonna ask was in this innocent view, whatever you refer to the character you played in The Wire, Tommy Carcetti, as "I" instead of like "he" or something like that? Is that not reflective of a relationship you have either with certain characters or all characters you depict, or was it just like?
I think I tend to say "I" a lot, you know, because this is me, you know. And then I always found it a bit much when people were talking about him and I'm gonna bring him and he's gonna come in and he's gonna say this. What would he do? And like, it's not him, it's like me or it's you, you know. I never really got it when people were talking about the character as like this other entity because it's not them, you know. It's, but then you can't get away with saying the "I" all the time. So it kind of gets a bit mixed up. And sometimes you will, well, often you're misquoting interviews anyway. So what do you say? If you did say "I", did say "he" or whatever, I have a tendency to say "I" because that's just the way I think of it. Now, maybe I've stopped doing it so much. If you're saying that you've only noticed it with Carcetti, I just, that's just something I've always done because I just think it's me. Fair enough. No, nothing philosophical there, just like, no.
Yep. So across your career, has anyone stood out as being like particularly great to work with, either in terms of actors or like, you know, directors or whatever?
Yeah, a lot of people. I mean, they're usually the ones that you were with at the start, for the people who gave you first breaks and stuff. Like, I'm really bad at auditions, which is how most actors get work. And I've had, you know, I could count them on one hand, the amount of jobs I've got from my auditions because I, I don't have a tendency to not want to please or to, you know, I suppose I thought acting was some kind of rebellious profession. It's not, you know, it's all about kind of complying and giving people what they want and being a good boy, you know. And going into a room and stranger and trying to, you know, pull off a scene. I just never, you know, I needed like a week or two days, but not like five minutes. So. And it misses a position where the people who did give me work were really interesting directors who'd come in, didn't really go with the audition process. And, you know, and if I was making films, I probably wouldn't, you know, do the traditional audition process either. So, you know, very early on, I ended up working with this director called, I'm Tony a bird, he's no longer with us, on a film for BBC called Safe, which was, you know, we made it in the 1993, I think it won the BAFTA that year for Best Drama. And it was about a group of homeless kids living in this hostel. Or not living in it, because I played this guy who was, you know, they just didn't want in there, you know. And it was probably my first proper lead, or one of my first proper lead screen roles. And she cast a lot of people who were, a lot of them are, we were, you know, genuine real actors like Robert Carlyle was in it, Andrew Tiernan, Steven Mackintosh, you know, really good actors. And there was a lot of improvisation. There was a very loose feeling to it, but it was like intense, you know, the feeling of, you know, that we were doing something, you know, that meant something, something that was scary, something that, like, you know, didn't really have a program, you know, process. Mmm. You know, we were just shooting it on the streets in London. And there was this actress in it who I did most of my stuff with, called Kate Hardy. In case, I think we're born on the same day, actually. She's like, maybe a day, a day younger than me or something like that. And, you know, she had come up from, she'd done all these, you know, and all these really great films. Like Mona Lisa was one of the films she was in. She was the kid that they were looking for in Mona Lisa. I don't know if any of you have seen Neil Jordan's film, Mona Lisa. It's from, I think, from '86. It's a really good film about the London kind of seedy underworld and prostitution and crime and love and revenge. And Kate had been in that. She'd been in The Krays. And she taught me like loads of edge because I didn't know what I was doing. You know, because I haven't been to drama school. I'd been in Dublin Youth Theatre. And there's a lot of improvisation and stuff. It was very kind of unstructured, you know. I've been in some plays and all the rest of it. But I definitely didn't really know what I was doing on camera. I haven't really worked out that you've got it, you know, we're doing this scene today and then we're doing that one. But this one's already happened. I was just doing them as if they were all the first scene. Or, you know. And Kate was just like, really, really loose and just like, just [ __ ] do you want? Just like, you know, let's just make this exciting. All we've got to do is make it, you know, surprise each other, you know. Don't use the script or use it, or, you know, let's do something else. And I really got the idea that this is it. It happens now, in the next five minutes, or it doesn't happen at all. Mmm. So. And that's great because you're not going to be doing the same thing every day. Like I've done a lot of theater. And, you know, of that. But, you know, the opportunity, opportunity to just do something completely different every day, every every five minutes. Uh, anyway, so Kate was great. Antonia was great. The writer, Jess Butterworth, he's since become, you know, is huge playwright. His plays Jerusalem and The Ferryman has like one or two Tony Awards. And Olivia, would they want everything? I did his first play in London at the Royal Court. It's called Mojo. You know, set in the music industry and Soho in the 50s. And thought that all of those people who were in that cast, like Andy Serkis was in it, you know, who I ended up doing, you know, all that Gollum in Lord of the Rings and like so many other things. And Tom Pollock, Tom Hollander is a brilliant actor who's, you know, people know him from Rev and stuff like that now. But it was, it was the play. And it was G's first play. And it was a like a big hit. And we were in like the Royal Court in London, you know, which is, you know, probably one of maybe the best new writing theater in the world. Like a blazing hot summer of '95. Just a group of people again, just daring each other to do better, you know. Which was a very similar feeling to the, the, you know, the Safe shoot I was talking about. You're with the right bunch of people, suddenly everything shunts forward by like a lot. I mean, you take a lot more risks. And you just don't care. Mmm. You know, you don't care if it goes wrong. And and Jazz was like 25 or something. Mmm. You know, so that was a really exciting time. And we're working with those people. And then there's a few people you just seem, you know, along the way. Like I went to Neil Tobin's funeral last week. Neil, like, signed my Equity card. I mean, people don't even, you can work now, adept, be in parts of the union. But you know, you couldn't want to start now. You have to have a certain minute words you're trying to get like, you know, contracts to do like a voiceover somewhere. You got like 50, 50 words. And then you're gonna get the next step towards your union card. And still they're not. So Neil signed my card. I never, never worked with him. And there was a lot of these older actors that I was very inspired by. But that's not the answer. That's the question is different. So thanks for the metal, by the way.
So just circle back to me, he said, I mean, it goes, so I've landed no rules audition. Not I was wondering, how does one like land a role if not via auditioning? Is it just friends recommending you or?
Okay, well, we're talking earlier, you know, before we commanded that I was in this, you know, Dublin Youth Theatre. Which you have to audition for, goodness. But even then, I didn't know, just into that either. I just didn't know how. So I hung around. Mmm. You know, my sister was in it. And I hung around. And one day she was in a play. It was called the do-it-yourself Frankenstein outfit. And she was playing a robot. So I made myself a robot costume. And like, just went along and joined in. I just walked on stage in a scene and kind of walked around like that. And that was, I think that was my stage debut. And I wasn't even supposed to be in the play. All right. I literally show up, I just walk on and do it. There's a pretty much a direct line between every job I've had. And, you know, I've got, like I said, I've got some from audition. It's my first stage role, professional stage role was in London. And, you know, I was kind of hustling around town. And I had like a few headshots and a few CVs. And it was a kind of network of people who say, oh, well, something such as in town and he's auditioning for a play in London. And that was when I did get from one audition. And, you know, that eventually led to Safe, to play Mojo, who I was telling about. Like everything, it was just like a clear line of this director has seen you in this, I'm gonna get the possum to that, to to that, you know. And this is how it works. Like I ended up in Game of Thrones because I've been in The Wire. And, you know, said, you know, if you've, you know, if you've been around a bit, people though, other thankful, he's right for the job, he's not worth a job, he's a good actor, he's a bad actor, whatever. And then very early on, there was just, it was like, literally some person has seen you in this play, the costume, this TV thing, someone else who worked on not costume, not but but not from auditions. And, you know, convincing people, I suppose, that you're, you know, a lot of directors, you know, they want someone who they can, you know, they're not sure about, who has, you know, who they can't read. Mmm. You know. And that's probably got me a few jobs as well.
Okay, so just one last question from me. How have you found working as an actor in a country with like a relatively small film television industry, relative to like the UK or the US? Have you like enjoyed like traveling a lot for work?
Or in like, I've had to. I lived outside of Ireland for 20 years because there was no work here. I mean, there was like, I was 17 and then I got my started professionally. But there weren't just weren't any other 17-year-old actresses, right? So all this said, the parts of 17-year-olds were being played by people who were like 25. So they just didn't take you seriously, you know. You're like a kid walking around with your photograph and they're just like, well, you know, you're just a kid, you know. He's gonna do it. And it's like, well, let's David Hurley, he's like 15 years older than me. Grace. So I went to London. You know, I'm damn stay there for 20 years. Mmm. And, you know, works in America a lot then. But like, I had, I had, I had had a couple of roles here like very early on. But they were day-day player stuff. You know, I thought it was great. Like the first year I was working, I did like three days on two films. I thought this was the best thing ever. I got my first paycheck was actually signed by George Harrison from the Beatles because he had this company called Handmade. You know, who made like Life of Brian. And it was a song called Lonely Passionate Judith Hearne, where I had a, my character was called Youth in Liquor Store. And I had to sell some booze to Maggie Smith. And I had like four lines. And I forgot one of them. And it's in the film. You can see me kind of going on, just stumbling through. They kept it in. And then, you know, and I have worked here a bit. But it's all, it's always, it's nearly always got to be somewhere else. And, you know, I never, I suppose I did a TV series, Circle of Hay, like, which was big. And no one wanted to work. Yeah, people didn't want to do stuff on RTE or just thought, oh, we can't, we don't do good drama here. So, you know, why even, you know, try. And you think I deliberately wanted to, like, I'd come back from, I've been in America. And I didn't, you know, I was like, I had plenty of things. I had some good offers. I was like, well, why not? So, you know, so we attacked that. But it was a better script. It was about somebody really bright, Stuart Carolan, putting something together that was like, just super topical. And I'd kind of, you know, I just wondered, I'd always wondered why. And in a country this size, there's so many of us, you know, I'm killing each other. But, you know, it's to do with drugs and money and, you know, Celtic Tiger and all. Seven people have an excess money to spend on cocaine, basically.
And do you think Love/Hate changed that? Or do you think that attitude is still present?
That's a no. No, I think people feel like they can. I don't really know much about, you know, what goes on in RTE. I don't, I don't watch TV that much. You know, someone said to me the other day, RTE is like, it's finished. There's no money. It's like, I, I just wasn't really in up on the story. Mmm. I know that they do good, you know, they used to do really good current affairs programs and debates and sports and stuff like that. And there's so much reality TV which numbs my mind that I don't, I just try not, I just don't really watch television. So I don't think. Well, look, BBC, where I forgot all my first jobs of BBC, who had this history of doing like fantastic dramas and one-off dramas. Mmm. You know, amazing stuff. And even, you know, they still do. But that era is kind of, you know, it's kind of still there. But it's been replaced by this other thing, which is even better. You know, maybe even before that, Twin Peaks. A lot of people talk about like The Sopranos as being the start of the, the second or the golden age of television as it is now. And I was like, well, what about Twin Peaks? You know, because that was, I thought that was it. But that was like 10 years before. Mmm. But, you know, the fact that it's the first thing people, who people who don't know each other, you know, people who meet, that's the first thing that anyone talks about now. What, what are you watching on TV? Mmm. You know. And it's like that or the weather. I mean, we started talking at the weather straight away. Mmm. It was raining. Yeah. Anyway, I don't really know what the story is for RTE, you know. But I don't have any, I wouldn't, you know, say although I'm not, you know, I take a job in BBC's, you know, a job in RTE or whatever. Mmm. That's all. It's a good role. Doesn't matter where is. Mmm.
Cool. Okay, so we'll take some questions to the floor now. Say, was a question like, raise your hand, please. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Mmm. Now, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. Sorry, were you finished? Yeah. I didn't see it. I was really surprised to be asked to be, you know, in a video game. And it was, but it was, you know, all motion capture and all this stuff, which I was quite familiar with. If I used to be great friends with Andy Serkis, who kind of, kind of pioneered a lot of this stuff, you know. But he went off to do Lord of the Rings. I was like, a four-week voiceover job. I'm like, then was in, you know, New Zealand for like ten years or something, you know. I mean, and we, stuff I haven't seen. I'm gonna see him like four times since, you know. I mean. So I was gonna familiar with. And he'd always talked about it. And he had done at that time. They let their ask me to do this Lord of the Rings thing. And then they asked him to do King Kong. And he was like, I'm gonna be just, I can only be the guy who does this. I can be the best guy in the world at this, you know. Either do it or I don't. So he said, I'm gonna do it. You know, any kind of is. And em. So when the video game thing, I'm up for me, it was like a really strange environment. Never before. You're working in just a big white cube, you know, with like cameras like everywhere in a suit with like a lycra suit, like bits of, you know, like little clans, noses all over you. And, you know, it was really difficult, right? But I did enjoy it. And I played the game a bit. But I only got, I couldn't finish it. I wasn't good enough. So my son Joe played it. And he was, are you happy to tell me when he killed me? You recorded this. And I played my play because you can play as, I'm the kind of, yeah, I played the villain in this thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's, it's a quite good character called Paul Serene, who invents a like a Hammond is for any minute machines. It's a time-travel game, which I don't think it had been done before. But so there's parts of the game, like the main protagonist or whatever, is Shawn Ashmore, who's in all the X-Men films. And so I'm his friend. And we become nemesis or whatever. But this parts of the game where you can play as yourself. And it's like, so sitting there playing that's really strange thing to do. Because I mean, the image is like hyper real, you know. But and you can kind of go around playing as yourself. And not many people get the opportunity to do this. It's not something I'd be kind of, you know, to do again. But it was a really interesting experience because I just never had done anything like it before.
[Music]
You mean, assume it's like literally just the technical side of it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I suppose you just develop that thing over time. Like I said, I'm gonna do that thing's Safe. I didn't even know what a mark was, you know. I mean, I'm just like, whoa, you know, they can, they fill me if I'm over there. I didn't think about it's gotta be in focus or anything like that. It was just very loose. And that's that comes across in that film. But like, I'm, it's just, you can see the inexperience all over it. But that's also what's good about it. People look like they really aren't trying or, you know, don't even know what they're doing. But like, it's just very kind of spontaneous. So I suppose over like, you know, the first film role I had was, he's a long time ago, you know, I was like 31 years ago, you know. So I suppose you just learn as you go. But literally when I join, when I was hanging around in that Youth Theatre before I got my first part in the play, it was like learning the ropes, you know. You're just looking at other people and go, that's how you do it. And I got my first professional play. And, you know, that's how you do it. And you just look to the older guys or girls. And they kind of, Mmm, tell you what to do. So I feel like technically, I do know what I'm doing. But you kind of don't take it, you don't want to get that across. You know, like I've been filming this thing in Vancouver. And the guy who, and the showrunner or whatever, the guy who's that, you know, when the main writers was just sent us an email end of shooting. And I was saying, yeah, well, look, you know, I think we worked hard. But, you know, what we're trying to, trying to not look like we're trying, or that we're, you know, it's about hitting all those marks. But just almost unconsciously, you know. Yeah.
Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I think it was, it was very appropriate that it was a kid who'd been like sitting in a chair for a long time. A kid had been pushed out the window, you know, in the first episode. Sort of, I giving this away for. You know, there was a lot of flack about the last season of Game of Thrones. I was a standard, I'm not a standard, just, you know, the way people are, the mentality. But there is nowadays when people get on Twitter and all of these things and just slag the [ __ ] out of everything. I really hate it. You know, I'm not on any social media. And, you know, it's this kind of really nasty, you know, strain of behavior that's kind of come with all the technology. And for people to turn on the writers of something that, you know, people had adored for seven seasons in such a nasty fashion as they did. I was just taken aback. I really was, you know, cuz they're really talented. And that's to. And that story was impossible to end. I was, you know, I wasn't in the last season. And I was, but I was in a lot, right? You know, they made this like amazing thing that was, I was thinking, how can you end it? You can't really write. And even when the character is that were there was this thing that went around for years where people were like, very far away from each other. And, you know, there was a lot of talk about, you know, um, faraway lands. And Carson eventually they started interacting. And, you know, it's like, right, okay, this is, you know, it's a different beast. You know. And then you've got this final season, which I thought, like, some of the best, the best scenes, the best sequences of Game of Thrones were in the last season. I don't have any doubt about that. You know, they ended it in, in the only way that they could end it, which was, you know, strangely reminiscent of how it began. Right. There's people sitting in a kind of land that seems to have some kind of stability. But there's also uncertainty and threat, which is, you know, I suppose that's kind of what the world is like all the time. There was a part of me that wanted it to end about 20 minutes before it did. It's just, it was an image that I was like, that's just so fantastic. It was a dragon flying away, holding Daenerys Targaryen. I was like, that's just stunning. I thought the episode before it was [ __ ] amazing. I'm sorry for my language. So what was the question again? Oh, we happy with the ending? Oh, happy with the ending? Yeah. I was, you know, I thought it was impossible. Yeah. We have to with the ending of your character? Because in the season, he dies. It seems like he gets like wasted, Jupiter-like every season before that. You know, it's fine. I mean, I always wanted, you know, well, actually, I don't even want to answer that question because I like to keep secrets. Okay. And a lot of actors don't. You keep your secrets enough, I feel, you know. And they wanted, they doing all these interviews and they're telling you, well, this is what I was thinking. And this is what this is about. But, you know, I've always preferred doctors, you know, you have, you know, don't tell you what's going on. I know he had Pacino in here once, didn't he? Did anyone ever see if I'm The Scarecrow? Well, you should seek that one out. And, you know, this, it's like, it's a bit kind of, some of it's a bit over the top. It's Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, you know, is these two kind of, you know. But the sequence at the end of it is just this amazing scene with Al Pacino in a fountain, walking around. And you're like, where is this coming from? It's not explained. But he just kind of suddenly just breaks. Mmm. You know, it's not explained. So I always, you know, I don't have to be just like totally not answer the question. I mean, I always thought, well, I always wanted people to like that card for a little finger. And it is written that way in the books, you know, that he's charming. And he would have to be charming to, you know, to get into those circles he did. And, you know, manipulate the way he did. But, you know, there was this romantic thing that was also, you know, my main thing was this is someone who's driven by being spurned, you know. And that's, you know, we all know that that's the fact character was about, you know. He didn't, he loved somebody that he couldn't have. And then there was this whole strange relationship with Sansa Stark, which was his undoing. And it was about a warped, a warped romantic idea, which, you know, I'm really glad didn't come to anything.
Anyone else? Yeah. Just stuff I played quite a lot of them. You know, I think I haven't had many roles that weren't I wasn't meant to get, you know, because I don't get them to the traditional way I feel. So there's a lot of them. You know, I did this thing called Queer as Folk when I was about 29, which at the time, you know, it was, I just thought this is as far away from myself as I can get. And I was thinking, how did I get this job? Okay, I'll tell you how I got it. Christopher Eccleston didn't want to do it, right? So he suggested me to these people in Channel 4. I was like, well, this is, you know, I feel I'm not this guy at all. So let's do that. And that was quite a big one for me. And that, it was the first time I'd had like a big, you know, recognizable, like people stopping you on the street kind of thing. And I kind of just loved it. I was playing this wild, wild, voracious gay man in Manchester, you know, like an, you know, quite a hedonistic setting, but it just with multi-layered, you know. Um, that one. Oh, and these ones that you won't know. You know, we did a film called Treacle Jr. I mean, I've got a relationship with a director called Jamie Travis. We've done three films together. And, you know, we never really have money. The first one had some money. Um, David Bowie actually put up a quarter of the budget of the first one, which is quite interesting. Jamie had directed like some really good videos for like Radiohead and Coldplay. He made this video for Radiohead song, Just, which is the one where the guy's lying on the ground and he's not telling him anyone what's wrong with him. Um, and that really got him noticed, you know. He got, you know, multi MTV Awards for a film, for a video he did for Coldplay called The Scientist, which is all backwards. And all of his videos. And those are the ones that people know. But like, there makes them all as films with like a story, a narrative, you know. It's never just a band playing. And we've done a few things together. And we did this thing called Treacle Jr. that we really wanted to do because it was, and it was as a result of probably being in Game of Thrones and trying to do something that was lighter or a character that was likable. And it's just funny and stupid and goofy. And we kind of had several different stories that were trying to make at the same time. And ended up playing this guy who is based on a guy that I used to know, or Ante, you might know him. He's a guy in Dublin called Aidan Walsh. And he used to call himself Aidan Walsh, Master of the Universe. And, you know, he'd go for election. And he was a musician. And a, you know, he was quite innovative. Like he was the first guy ever to like video weddings in Ireland, right? Because he just, he saw it. He was like, he'd been brought up in all these kind of pretty rough orphanages and stuff, you know, abandoned as a child. Set up a rehearsal studio in Temple Bar that like all these bands, you know, used to rehearse in. Bands went on to become really big. He directed My Bloody Valentine's for his video, right? And he used to have like beer mats with like cut into weird shapes for when people came to the studio to like, they had to join, you know, match them up because to make sure that they weren't like imposters or people pretending to be, you know, Simon Carmody from The Golden Horde. He was, you know, he had a lot of these things going on. I've always found him really fascinating. You know, he got beaten up, his video business ends because someone just battered him. And stills camera as he was like, not your, you know, he's the kind of guy that people pick on. And I just really wanted to play him. So we'd been kind of talking about doing some. I thought we ended up making this film called Treacle Jr. where I played this character based on Megan Walsh. And that was one that I found really important for me, you know. Not that many people saw it. Except then one night after Glastonbury at coverage on BBC, they showed it like right after it, like midnight on like the Saturday night or whatever. And like, you know, millions of people saw it. I bet no one here.
So I think we've got time for one last question. Yeah. Yeah. Given the game, given the game away again now. I mean, look, Peaky Blinders was, I think Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, only wanted to do five seasons. And I was brought in in season four. I thought I was just doing that one. And, you know, remember the conversation I had with him was great. She says, yeah, because it, you know, I rang him up or he rang me up or whatever. And he said, I've got this character called Aberama Gold. I was like, great, done. I didn't know anything about it. So I got to do the second season. I mean, it is disappointing. But I'll tell you what I am disappointed about is that all of the actors in there, all had scenes cut this year. Everyone. Because he's such a, yeah, you know, voracious, rotten writer. Like the way he writes, Stephen, I can just write stuff like, you know, he, it was overwritten. It was loads of this stuff. Shop that never ended up in, in there. So I had done, you know, several scenes, mostly around Polly, you know, which were quite romantic. I just didn't make it. And because I wanted to balance that the violence with some romance, you know, I really did. I wanted to play a violent romantic. What I saw does, you know, he's like, okay, this guy's a killer. I was like, okay, but let's try and show his side that's like, just, you know, not that. So some of our romance hit the floor. They did. At one point, the first script I read, it's like, for those who don't want to know what happens, there was a certain way that I am exited. And I insisted with the director, Anthony Byrne, he's from Dublin, who didn't love hey, like this, like this whole show looks like it's such a Irish mafia thing, like to be making a name in England. Roll these actors and the DP and the designer, everyone. I wanted to suggested that I go out exactly the same way as I came in, in a flurry of hey, love you, stab wounds. And it was this great, my favorite moment in it was something that Antony Byrne came up with on the day, which was like an entrance. Pretty much the first time I showed up in this season, I came through a wall. Like literally ran through the wall. And, you know, he's written as something else. Was kind of very, very Batman thing of like, he comes, you know, oh, hey, how's it going? And there's my brother. He comes through like the roof, kind of hanging by his ankles. Like, you know, it just seems really ridiculous. It was, it was very, it was very Batman. And the building that we were filming in was a heritage building. They couldn't put a hole in the roof. But they built this fake wall. So he came up with this plan of, you know, an entrance. And we had five minutes to shoot it. And that's something that happens quite a lot. I'm noting the schedule so tight. And Killian, when I first saw Killian Murphy, you know, working, they'd spent like, Adrian Brody, come on. And he spent like seven hours or something, you know, talking about, you know, who am I? And all this. It was like, we could be, you know, we could do the scene. You know. And Killian did his stuff and just nailed it in like five minutes. And I was like, you know, you know, as a page or two pages of dialogue, he did it twice. And, you know, the first, the first one was, you know, the best. And that's the way it is. And we came to shoot that scene. And we had like, you know, it's like five minutes. I had to come through the wall. So I was very breathing. We talked about this thing about the technical thing. I was like, very, very specific about where do we need to look, where do we need to point the gun, which, you know, angles that have to be at, where is the camera? Put luminous tape and everything because it's gonna be dust. I know I'm gonna get one shot at this. Tape that had that mahat, like taped with like all kinds of like tape and glue and everything. It's my head knowing that like, it's probably gonna come off. And it didn't. So that was the highlight of my career, I think.
That's all we've got time for tonight, folks. Give another round of applause for Aiden Gillen.