INTERVIEW - SUSANNAH DOYLE BY JOHN DALY

"I did have some reservations coming to work amongst a crew that had largely known each other for five years...But really, Ballykissangel does have such an easy atmosphere about it, people made my settling-in period very easy."

It was the kind of morning that the Irish Tourist Board might have dreamed of as I sat with Susannah Doyle high on a County Wicklow hilltop. With autumn sun burning off the overnight dew that lay about the sloping valley beneath us, we gazed across the patchwork quilt of Irish farmland clutching the warmth of coffee cups as the organised chaos of another day in Ballykissangel unfolded all around. With only a week remaining before the five-month shoot of the sixth series finally wrapped, an air of frantic activity mixed with a peculiar sense of exhaustion and relief that pervades most film sets at the end of a long haul.

Dressed in mud-splattered riding boots, well-worn breeches and an ankle-length raincoat, Susannah had finished her scenes for the day - and my watch reads only 11am. "Today was an early one, a 6am start" she said in a soft voice as her head inclined a silent greeting to a some fellow regulars just arriving. "Quite nice really, I get the rest of the day to myself. Might take a drive down the coast, try to find somewhere nobody's heard of Ballykissangel" she said with a smile. Tough job, that.

Begun in 1995 around an idea the original creator Kieran Prendiville called "the magical Irish quirkiness I remembered from my childhood", Ballykissangel has come a long way from what might have been conceived as a one-off into the BBC's most successful Irish-set drama series.

With a creative ethos that mixes a Brigadoon-like isolation to what producer David Shanks describes as "an Irish, not Oirish, whimsicality", Ballykissangel has since moved well beyond the appreciation of British audiences into a global embrace of territories like New Zealand, Australia and Canada. And while the film set does indeed carry a palpable feeling of family given the fact that many of the original cast and crew remain, it can't be easy, perhaps, for newcomers. "I did have some reservations coming to work amongst a crew that had largely known each other for five years, one always has that hesitation coming to any new job as an actor" Susannah explained. "But really, Ballykissangel does have such an easy atmosphere about it, people made my settling-in period very easy."

It did help somewhat that she discovered connections to another newcomer this year, Robert Taylor. "I have a brother in Melbourne whom I visit quite regularly" she said smiling "And when Robert and I met on the set for the first time, we discovered that we'd actually met briefly through some mutual friends in Melbourne some years back. Talk about your small world." Despite the distance, trips Down Under qualify as sanctuary for Susannah: Australia is probably too far to qualify as a bolt-hole for me, but I do love the place and it makes an ideal break from work - I mean, you can't get much further from London than there."

As the daughter of the late Tony Doyle, who reigned supreme as wheeler-dealer Brian Quigley throughout the entire five years of the series, Susannah Doyle entered a familiar yet deeply emotional territory on her arrival in Ballykissangel. Treading in the fictional footsteps of her father and working with a crew still coping with the tragic and premature passing of a such a well-loved man clearly carried it's difficulties for a daughter finding her own way into the future. In that rich tradition of the acting life, however, Susannah was aware that the show must go on. "Acting was inculcated into my childhood and growing up years, it became the thing I had decided I wanted to do even from the earliest age. In that sense, it was inbred in me. I was the only one amongst my brothers and sisters who actually went into acting as a career. For me, there was never any doubt that it was what I wanted to do" she said of the journey that must have carried more than its fair share of personal trauma. "I am very proud to be involved with Ballykissangel and the fact that it is already associated with my father makes me all the more so."

Pride in her own Irish heritage allied to the chance of spending six months of her working year in the bucolic environs of Co Wicklow were both important factors influencing Susannah's decision to take the role in Ballykissangel. It became partly a journey back to her roots combined with a desire to act in a series that's travelled so well in a global sense. "Ireland and Irish people have an easy, natural appeal practically everywhere in the world and Ballykissangel, I think, reflects this charm very well. The specificity of where the series is filmed mixed with the cultural aspects of place makes for intriguing scenarios both for the actors and the audience. Also, the fact that Kieran Prendiville is once again writing the series influenced me greatly in becoming part of Ballykissangel. The strength of the characters has always been the core of the series, and, clearly, the return of the original creator can only help to build on that aspect even further."

 
     
 

   

 



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