The only way is up
Photographs Patrick Bolger
Aisling Bea is best known as a comedian but it’s her acting training that won her a role in the TV crime thriller The Fall and now has her co-starring with Sharon Horgan in a new comedy drama that she also wrote. Marie Kelly meets the rising star.
In her soon-to-air Channel 4 TV show, This Way Up, Aisling Bea stars opposite Catastrophe creator and close friend Sharon Horgan in a six-part drama described by Channel 4 as “a poignant comedy that shows the journey to happiness is harder for some than others”.
While the actor plays Aine, a young woman trying to put her life back together after a “teeny little nervous breakdown”, in reality the 35-year-old Kildare woman is as anchored and focused as she is funny, and she is very funny. On the morning of our photo shoot, she leaps lithely from pithy remark to pin-sharp impersonation in an off-the-cuff routine that reminds me of the 1990s TV show Whose Line is it Anyway?. Bea can joke on her feet, so to speak.
The comedian/actor’s own pursuit of happiness seems to be faring far better than Aine’s too. This Way Up marks a milestone for Bea who has wanted her own television show “always, forever”. It has taken two full years from writing the initial script to completing the final TV edits last month and the comic has found the process intense. “Although I had an amazing team, writing, starring in and being responsible for the final cut has been a lot to carry alone. I feel like I’ve been single-parenting my baby,” she laughs.
I’m known if you know what I do but I’m not famous. People care what I’m doing work-wise but not if I’m buying sticks of celery
The performer looks younger than her 35 years. She’s porcelain-pale and petite, which gives her a youthful fragility that is only expunged when she opens her mouth. There’s nothing wispy about her voice or her handshake. She is a powerhouse behind a deceptively delicate façade. Sitting, legs beneath her, on a sofa, wearing velvet tracksuit bottoms, an oversized sweater saying “Choose Love” and with her hair loosely pulled into a top knot, Bea looks nothing like the gesticulating woman I’ve seen command an audience of thousands at London’s Apollo theatre.
The performer admits she has just two gears, quiet and loud. “There’s an intensely social side to me and an intensely solitary one,” she says. “There’s no in between”. She’s also intensely engaged: in politics, sustainable fashion, feminism and the environment. Between the laughs and quips on the day of our shoot are passionate views and heartfelt opinions expressed by her on all of the above. She’s as considered as she is comical. And her Instagram feed reflects this dichotomy; slapstick peppered by serious issues.
Bea grew up in rural Co Kildare with her younger sister Sinéad, now a costume designer who worked with the comic on This Way Up after finishing Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Little Women with Saoirse Ronan. Their mother raised them alone: her father took his own life when she was just three years old and she has written movingly about him in the past few years. She speaks of both with immense pride and love. Her mother, a former flat race jockey, is “incredible” and her sister “so talented”. She admits she was always the kid who goofed around. “I recently watched an old recording of me performing in ‘The Cousins Talent Show’ at my granddad’s 80th birthday, 20-odd years ago, and I was almost embarrassed at how similar I still am to the 11-year-old me, and the material wasn’t way off either!” she quips.
There’s been nothing overnight about Bea’s success. She’s been acting since she was 17 and her first audition – for a National Lottery advert – was at 15. She admits herself she’s been plugging away for ages. “I’m incredibly fortunate right now. For the past few years I’ve had a lot of eggs in a lot of baskets, and this year all of those eggs started hatching.” This autumn also sees the release of an eight-part comedy drama for Netflix, Living With Yourself, in which she stars opposite Hollywood heavy hitter Paul Rudd who, despite his plethora of box office successes, I’ll always love most for his role as Phoebe’s boyfriend Mike in Friends. Playing Rudd’s on-screen wife will no doubt see her star rise even higher. She brushes aside the notion that she’s already famous. “I’m known if you know what I do but I’m not famous. People care what I’m doing work-wise but not if I’m buying sticks of celery.”
Writing, performing, pitching and gigging for the past 20 years means Bea finds it difficult to “just stop”, so in the spirit of a change being as good as a rest, the day after our interview she’s heading to Rome for five weeks to film what she describes as “a lighthearted romcom, which I think people will like”, called Love. Wedding. Repeat. She co-stars with Sam Claflin, Eleanor Tomlinson, Freida Pinto and Olivia Munn in this remake of the French film Plan de Table and she’s looking forward to the camaraderie that comes with filming on location. “I spent a lot of time on my own writing and then editing This Way Up.” As I write this piece, I check out her Instagram feed and sure enough there’s a group selfie of the team sightseeing together in the Ancient City, or, as Bea puts it, “looking at old things that are broken”.
Despite acting from a young age and studying at LAMDA, before her exquisite performance as nurse Kiera Sheridan in the crime thriller The Fall, Bea was better known for her stand-up and appearances on panel shows such as 8 Out of 10 Cats. “I love pretending to be someone else,” she explains, “and when I took on the The Fall I was so ready to do something new, but I’m mostly at home backstage at a stand-up gig.”
She enjoys being at the coalface of performing. “When I’m on stage doing a gig, I’m in control,” she explains. “I listen to when people laugh, I react, I craft, I change my delivery.” She reveals that backstage at stand-up is the least funny place in the world. “Stand-ups overthink everything. Other comedians on the bill will analyse your jokes and give feedback to you after the performance. We all think about our jokes a huge amount.” She continues, “If I was to give an upcoming comedian any advice it would be to book five gigs in one week. If you perform only one in a month, that show will become too important.”
The downside of being a comedian, of playing yourself, is that people feel they have ownership of you, she explains. “That’s why it’s so important not to tie your self-esteem to your job or career but to your creativity instead.” She cites her peers in the comedy world – Nish Kumar and David O’Doherty to name two – as her support and her community and says affectionately that she doesn’t know where she’d be without them. This notion of community creeps into our chat continually and is something she speaks strongly about. “Women naturally have a strong sense of community,” she says, “that’s why there was such incredible energy and momentum behind the Repeal movement last year [in 2018 Ireland voted to repeal the 8th amendment of the Constitution, which acknowledged the right to life of the unborn].” Growing up with a hardworking, single mum, a sister and several aunts no doubt fostered this.
It’s something she misses when she travels. Bea spends the beginning of the year on the west coast of America for pilot season, auditioning by day and gigging at open mic clubs by night. “There’s always a comedy club where you can wangle your way on stage.” Otherwise she considers LA an odd place. “It’s always the same season so there’s a lot of older actors still wearing Lycra who haven’t realised it’s not 1992 anymore.” She loves New York but, for now, London is her home. “I’ve fulfilled that little Irish dream of owning land,” she laughs. You can take the girl out of Ireland, but …
This Way Up will air on Channel 4 in August and Living With Yourself will be on Netflix later this year.
Originally published in CARA Magazine, July 2019