Dervla Kirwan shot to fame in Ballykissangel but feared she would lose her starring role in 55 Degrees North when she got pregnant. She tells Daphne Lockyer how TV bosses had other ideas and wrote her new baby into the story
Sunday Express *5 June 2005
Derla Kirwan admits, at the start of our interview, that she is "not going to shout everything from the rooftops anymore. I've learned to protect myself."
Oh dear. It's not the most promising beginning when you were hoping the Irish-born actress will declare her undying love for the handsome actor Rupert Penry-Jones, the father of her one-year-old daughter Florence, and the man she became engaged to last summer.
"Oh God!" she laughs, good-naturedly as you lob increasingly nosey questions in her direction. "This interview is turning into a tennis match." But, eventually she concedes. "Yes, becoming a mother has absolutely changed my life. It's a Pandora's box that's been opened and I think it's made me a better person. You have a child and suddenly you're in touch with this raw centre of emotion. You feel exposed and vulnerable in ways that you've never felt before.
"But am I happy that I did it? I couldn't be happier. For me having a baby was like leaping on a train as it's leaving the station. I might so easily never have done it. I'm so grateful I did."
Grateful... and rather gorgeous. Dervla, you have to say, suits motherhood and this despite the tales of sleepless nights, exhaustion and whole parts of her brain that have been mislaid, possibly permanently.
She seems softer around the edges than she ever was when we knew her from shows like Ballykissangel, A Time to Dance and Hearts and Bones. And though, according to the 33-year-old actress, she "blew up like a spacehopper" during her pregnancy she is now enviable svelte thanks to daily training sessions for the Great North Run that she and other members of the cast of 55 Degrees North will be taking part in later this year. "It's great because we're all so competitive," she says. "they come in and say, 'How many miles did you run last night?' It certainly keeps you on your toes and has helped me, like nothing else, to lose all the baby weight."
We meet on location in Newcastle for the second series of 55 Degrees North, the gritty primetime police drama which is currently showing on BBC1. Dervla plays lawyer Claire Maxwell, a woman who has just had a baby herself and is attempting to cope with the adjustments (spot the similarities here).
The pregnancy, indeed was written into the series when Dervla announced that she was expecting. "The producers were fantastic about it," she says. "I realised at the time that I was compromising the show and the kind of story that they wanted to make. So I offered to leave and was content to walk away. But they never made me feel it was a problem and, in the event, the storyline seems to have given the series a whole new heart and soul. It worked out brilliantly."
Dervla was lucky enough not just to combine her pregnancy with the role but also, after the birth, to bring Florence on the set where she often doubled for Claire's new arrival.
"Sometimes the timing of a part is just good," Dervla says. "You get a role that's absolutely in step with your life at the time. Let's just say this was one of those roles and I certainly didn't need to do much research."
Still, Dervla's situation differs from that of her character who is unsupported by a partner. While Claire has no one to help her, Dervla herself has Rupert, who she first met three years ago while they were working together in the play Dangerous Corner in Leeds.
Rupert, who once dated Kylie Minogue, has been a thoroughly hands-on father, even attending antenatal classes with his partner.
"At one point towards the end of the pregnancy we went to an antenatal day class together and they started showing us models of a baby's head rotating in a pelvis. I said, 'OK Rupert. We have to go now!' I mean, I'm sure that ignorance is in no way the best policy, but right there and then, it was for me."
She is honest, too, about the level of fear that attended the birth experience. "Thank God for epidurals," she says. "When the doctors came in with two horse-size syringes I was very relieved and I get very annoyed with women who say, 'Oh, I had my baby naturally. It was wonderful. We had whale music.'
"I, on the other hand, demanded drugs. I mean, come on, there's very little dignity here. You have an obstetrician rummaging around inside you like a handbag. Spare me the romanticism."
Romantically, however, when Florence was just four months old, Rupert proposed to Dervla on the beach in Anglesey that adjoins the cottage that has been in his family for hundreds of years. According to the actor it is the place he loves most in the world. "It's where most of the landmark events in my life have taken place," he has said. "It's where I smoked my first cigarette, lost my virginity and it's where Florence was conceived."
No wonder then that Dervla describes his proposal as "a very beautiful thing." And if you push her a little she will tell you that she and Rupert are extremely happy together. "well obviously we are," she smiles.
Some might say that Dervla has been due some happiness for quite a while. after all, at one time she was also engaged to the actor Stephen Tompkinson, her co-star in Ballykissangel. When the relationship fell apart the actress was devastated both by the break up and by the media-feeding frenzy that accompanied it.
Her extreme openness about the relationship in the happy days backfired during the unhappy times.
"But I realise now that my past life had a whole machine behind it that I wasn't in control of, and at that time, I didn't have a clue about it. As a result, I made my mistakes publicly. But now I've learned my lessons and I just want to get on with my life in private.
"My strongest instinct as a mother right now is to protect and what I understand is that that feeling never leaves you. I understand the fear and the anxiety and the cold sweats that are part and parcel of motherhood and I also understand my own mum so much better now.
"I'm sure in my time I've put her through so much pain and anxiety. Everyone always says, 'Well, there's no point in worrying.' But as my mum always said, 'I know, but I can't help it.'
Having a baby has definitely brought me closer to her because I see that a mother is the one person in the world who is absolutely always there for you. You spend your whole life looking for that in every other relationship and if you're very lucky, then hopefully, in the end you find it."
"Still," I volunteer jokingly, "you've got to kiss a lot of frogs to meet your prince." An idea that makes her laugh out loud. "You said that, no me," she laughs again.
Dervla's a woman's woman who loves the wickedness of female conversation. Though not overtly a feminist, she's definitely in favor of the sisterhood. "Well, I grew up in a family of girls," she says, referring to the fact that she's the third of three sisters. "Mind you in a house full of women all stealing your knickers is enough to put you off for life."
She remains close to them all, although she and Rupert now live in London, some distance from Dublin, where she was born and raised. She misses Ireland at times but loves her London life. "When I get to be at home," she sighs.
The last few months have been spent filming in Newcastle for the second series of 55 Degrees North, although she's back in London for rehearsals at the National Theatre for Brian Friel's play, Aristocrats (to be staged in early July) - a very different kind of project to 55 Degrees North.
"As an actress I believe in terrifying myself as much as possible. I also believe in taking roles that will stretch me and challenge me because I'm not in it for the quick buck. What I want most of all is the longevity of actresses like Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren and Judy Dench. I still want to be doing this when I'm 70."
She is an actress then, of serious intent and she's a little sniffy, for example, about the current zeitgeist TV show, Desperate Housewives, "I mean," she says, "what's so desperate about being 40 and still having the backside of a 14 year old. don't give me that!"
At 33, of course, she is not doing too badly. "Well, I'm trying to hold it all together," she says. "But in the end I'm only human. If you cut me, I bleed and If you offer me chocolate I'm going to eat it."