KIM KARDASHIAN’S PSYCHIC TOLD ME AN OPPORTUNITY WAS COMING!
Drafted in at the last minute, Alannah Beirne hasn’t had much time to prepare for Dancing With The Stars but the daughter of a former Rose of Tralee has enough TV and modelling experience to feel she’s ready. Besides, it’s her destiny!
T he story of how Britain’s Next Top Model finalist Alannah Beirne was chosen for RTÉ’s Dancing With The Stars has enough drama of its own to merit a spin-off series.
The 24-year-old from Naas was drafted in at the eleventh hour when fellow model Aoife Walsh bowed out ‘heartbroken’ after fracturing her toe by stubbing it on her bedpost.
Alannah had auditioned for the popular series and been turned down, immediately removing all references to DWTS from the vision board she hangs at the foot of her bed in her London flat.
‘I was so bummed because I really, really wanted it,’ she says, when we meet at Ruby’s Pizza and Grill in Point Square, around the corner from the dance studios on Sheriff Street where she rehearses. When her agent rang her with the good news it is surprising that Alannah could even answer the phone.
‘When I say this now it might sound la-di-da but I’m brand ambassador for a nails and brows salon in Mayfair in London and I was getting my nails done with them when I got the call,’ she says in a scene reminiscent of Saoirse Ronan discovering her Oscar nomination while in Dublin’s Tropical Popical salon. ‘I already had my bags packed ready to go home and I had booked my flight. It was my agent Rosemary and she said, “Now Alannah, I don’t know where you are but whatever you do, don’t scream.” I was like, “Okay, what’s going on?” “Unfortunately one of the girls broke her toe in Dancing With The Stars and now you’re taking her place.” I thought, “Oh my God” and I sat there shocked. I couldn’t really speak or say anything.
‘I was looking at your one in front of me doing my nails and she was kind of looking at me weird, like, what is going on? I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it.”’
But Alannah had been expecting some sort of exciting news, having recently consulted Kim Kardashian’s psychic in department store Selfridges and been assured of upcoming success. Which is the least she might have expected having crossed her palm to the tune of £300.
‘She was like, “You’re going through a tough stage and you don’t really know which direction you’re going in.” I think for me it’s kind of, do I do reality TV, modelling, or do I just get a normal job – which way do I go? She was like, “But there’s a door opening very shortly, there’s a big opportunity coming.” She said I’m the sun and she was like, “You are creative. You need to perform. You’re a number three” – so I think that means making people happy and being in the entertainment department career-wise. But, yeah, she said a door is opening and then I got Dancing With The Stars.’
The door that opened for Alannah had closed on poor Aoife just days into her rehearsals. ‘I met her once before, she’s a lovely girl. From Tipp,’ she
adds, as Alannah’s own mother is Brenda Hyland Beirne from Cahir, who was crowned the Rose of Tralee in 1983.
In a remarkable display of diplomacy and restraint on both sides, Alannah says she was ‘devastated’ for Aoife ‘because I know how much she wanted it as well and I messaged her and I said, “I’m really sorry to hear, I’m going to do my first dance in honour of you”.
‘She was lovely and she said she’d be cheering me on each week.’
Alannah began rehearsing on the Wednesday before Christmas and within three days she too had sustained an injury. It hadn’t seemed too bad when she and her family boarded the ferry to Wales to spend Christmas with her brother Tadhg, a professional rugby player with the Scarlets who defeated the Ospreys on St Stephen’s Day.
‘When I got to Wales my foot had blown up. It was swollen for the few days. I don’t know what I did to it. I think I may have landed on it some way. But it was sore on the left hand side of my left foot. I think it just swelled up because I’m not used to the dancing and I’m doing all these foot movements that I’m not really used to.
‘My brother obviously always gets strains and injuries so he had this giant ice packet and he just threw that on my foot. It’s fine now.’
Alannah’s previous dancing experience amounts to a year spent doing ballroom ‘as a kid in school’. She didn’t compete.
‘My dance partner was my best friend but I was always the man because I’m taller. So it’s funny because it’s coming back a bit but I keep stepping on my partner’s toes. I’m like “Oh, sorry!” He’s like, “Stop, I’m going to have no toes!”’
The night before our interview, Alannah also discovered her hitherto unknown dancing lineage via her granny Anne Hyland.
‘She’s actually gas. She’d just taken her sleeping tablet as well but she was saying my granddad was a massive ballroom dancer and phenomenally great at dancing. She said all the ladies were lining up to dance with him. He was very well known all around Tipperary, all around the country. He won loads of prizes, awards and trophies. She was pulling out all the plaques they won together dancing. She said, “When I first met him I knew who he was. Everyone knew who Richie Hyland was. All the women loved him but I sat on his knee and said, you’re mine now!”’
Whether she has inherited her granddad’s dancing skills remains to be seen but Alannah has certainly got her granny’s determination.
She gets it from the other side too because her father Gerry, a guard, has always made his four children write down their life goals and visualise their dreams. ‘Dad’s very much like, “If you believe, you can achieve.”’
It hasn’t always been easy for Alannah. School was a miserable struggle, she ‘wasn’t good academically’ and was eventually diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder. ‘It just means you’d be slower to process information than anybody else. So for me reading a book would take me three or four times as long as anybody else.’
She was bullied, moved schools a number of times and admits she still finds it difficult to talk about those years.
There was teenage success too when she was a finalist in the Ford Supermodel Search, aged 15, and got an agent.
‘But I was in school so Dad didn’t want me to pursue any modelling career until I had my education. Obviously at the time I was like, “But this is what I want to do! This is my dream!” And I hated Dad for a little while,’ she laughs. ‘But looking back I’m like, thanks. Because you need your education, you do, even though it was difficult for me going through school and learning and having APD.’
Alannah ‘got help in school, I had tutors and for my Leaving Cert I was in a separate room – like with dyslexia you have the choice if you want someone reading it out for you’.
Her hard work paid off when she found a degree course that suited her – visual merchandising at DIT.
‘It was time-consuming but you were always creating and designing something.
‘That’s when I started doing Powerpoint presentations and standing up in front of the class, presenting my work. I got more and more confident then with public speaking and getting out of my shy little shell.’
“I HAD BEEN FINDING IT DIFFICULT TO MAKE IT IN LONDON AS A MODEL AS I’M NOT SKINNY ENOUGH, YOU HAVE TO BE ANOREXICALLY THIN”
Last year she applied for BNTM no less than five times, played the tin whistle in her video and turned up for her interview in Manchester five hours early.
‘I obviously came across to them like I really wanted it,’ she grins, and Alannah made it all the way through to the finals on the show.
Her most memorable moment came when she cried because the judges, photographers and brands kept telling her she was too sexy.
‘That clip went viral. Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea was doing skits on me. Vogue Williams, all of them were taking the mick out of me. I was like, “You don’t understand!”’
She has invited BNTM judges Nicky Johnston and Abbey Clancy – wife of Premier League footballer Peter Crouch – to Dublin to the live shows of DWTS but the latter is heavily pregnant with her third baby. There will be no other half in the audience either because Alannah has split from marketing agency owner Paddy Davis.
‘No, I’m not with Paddy, unfortunately, any more. He’s a lovely guy. We ended things because I need to focus on my career and he needs to focus on his. He’s been doing phenomenally well and for me I’m living in London so the whole long distance thing... So now I’m single and ready to dance!’
She has also just moved from Andrea Roche’s agency to Distinct Model Management who are ‘more international. They really want to push me into Germany, America, South Africa, Australia, that’s my look group.
‘I had been finding it quite difficult to make it in London as a model because I’m not skinny enough. My type of look doesn’t suit London or Paris or Milan. Because you have to basically be anorexically thin to model in any of those.’
She was ‘very naive’ when she moved to London nine months ago and began being invited to events. ‘People would be like, “I know Bella Hadid and Gigi Hadid and I own hotels…” And you’re like, “Oh, really? Let’s exchange details, here’s my card”. Then I started to realise, sure they’re all like that. It’s all talk in London and you don’t know who to believe and who not to believe.’
She was horrified when another former BNTM contestant invited her to dinner and there were other young women she didn’t recognise at the table.
‘I was like, “What’s going on here, who are these ones?” She was like, “Oh we get a free meal and we have to sit here and just look pretty.” And I was like, “What? No, that’s so weird”. It was a restaurant that turned into a club and you get free drink and free bottles and all the rest. Then these men started coming up to us at the table. I thought, I can’t be doing with this.
‘After that I thought, I definitely don’t want to do that again. It’s humiliating. Sitting there feeling like you’re being used as a prop for [the clubs] to make money.
‘But I suppose that’s what models do in London. It’s not my thing to be doing but it happens all the time. I’d prefer to go out with my housemates down to the pub for a quiet one.’
It has been a quiet Christmas and New Year for Alannah, who is looking forward to toning up with all the dancing. ‘I’m not as skinny now as I was on BNTM. I was definitely confident with my body on BNTM and I think through the ups and downs since I’m not really as much now. But I’m sure after DWTS I will be. Then come summer, bikinis!’
Her ambition is to impress the judges, which she hopes will translate into votes. Otherwise she reckons she has support in Tipperary and from the customers in Grace’s pub, Naas, where she had a part-time job for seven years. But she is unnerved by the fact that fellow model Thalia Heffernan was voted off first last year.
‘I know Thalia, we’ve worked together a good bit. I actually saw one of her dances and thought, yhat is amazing, but then she was eliminated and I could not believe that.’
Her BNTM experience means she is well used to critique from judges - and to scoping out the competition.
‘I know there’s huge talk about Erin McGregor and Marty Morrissey but I actually think Jake Carter is one to watch. He’s in the panto, he’s dancing and singing, he’s in that industry anyway.’
As for how she feels about belatedly joining the line-up, Alannah is ‘just jumping with joy’ – perfect practice for the dance floor.
DWTS returns tomorrow at 6.30pm on RTÉ One