Everybody has a view on Fair City... at the doctors, pharmacists, hairdressers!
Aoibheann McCaul is treading the boards but she’ll always be Caoimhe
and do it all again.’
Not that there’s much time for travel these days: over on Fair City, Caoimhe Dillon is having a typically eventful time as a firsttime mother. ‘Caoimhe is highly intelligent, ambitious and driven, and though she has a child now, she still feels no need to change her life. She wants to work, but Damien doesn’t agree with that, and wants to be the breadwinner. But Caoimhe would prefer to be out there working, training as a doctor and being a good role model for her daughter.
‘I think it’s an important storyline,’ Aoibheann adds. ‘Yes you can be a mum and be yourself. Becoming a mother doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to change who you are. I think it’s a storyline a lot of people can relate to.’
Caoimhe has proved an audience favourite since her debut on the soap in 2010. As the Dillon family went through a series of traumatic experiences – taking in psychiatric hospitals, affairs, stalking and ructions galore – the only positive in Caoimhe’s life for a while was her relationship with Damien Halpin.
Yet their relationship has seen many ups and downs, including a traumatic stillbirth in 2015.
For Aoibheann, the storyline was not just hugely important to research and get right, but was an emotional rollercoaster to boot.
‘People say, “well, you’re just acting”, but I put an awful lot of work into that storyline,’ she recalls. ‘I’m playing with someone’s truth here, and because this is affecting real people, it’s important to give it your all. I don’t do anything flippantly. The Fair City team did incredible research around the storyline. A lot of people talk about this stuff behind closed doors, but bringing this conversation into public, and acknowledging that this happens a lot, is important.’
In the last year, Fair City’s storylines have become bigger and bolder, not least the infamous storyline involving Katy O’Brien’s year-long kidnapping ordeal.
IT’S not unusual for storylines to trend on Twitter week after week, and the Irish public, says Aoibheann, have no shortage of opinions on Carrigstown’s goings on.
‘Whether I’m at the doctor’s, the hairdresser, or the pharmacy, people come up to me and tell me “I hate this, I hate that”,’ she laughs. ‘I think when the Katy storyline happened, people really wanted to see when it would come to an end.
‘I think it’s great that people talk about it on Twitter… if you’re in your apartment you can join in the public conversation abut what’s going on,’ she adds.
‘Everyone’s always worried about the future of TV and whether the internet will affect ratings, but the viewership figures of TV always seem to be growing. I think with soap in particular, young people are keeping up with it. It’s something that people of all ages watch.’
Soap’s future may well be assured, but the same can’t often be said for soap characters. In a bid to spice things up, it’s not unusual for soap scriptwriters to wield the axe and introduce characters to a grisly end.
The smart money says that Caoimhe Dillon will be around in Carrigstown for quite some time to endure drama after drama, but in any event, Aoibheann is pragmatic about the nature of the job.
‘For me, Fair City is a gig,’ she notes. ‘It’s the same in all acting roles; they happen for a finite period. I’m hugely ambitious to do many more projects, but if they (Fair City bosses) decide to bring the axe down, it’s cool. I really appreciate all the storylines I’ve been given so far: I’ve been in fires, had a baby… I’ve done a lot.’
There’s one thing Aoibheann has yet to do, and that’s appear on reality competition Dancing With The Stars. It’s not entirely out of the realms of possibility: after all, her on-screen sister Aoibhín Garrihy (who played Neasa Dillon), was a much-loved finalist in the series’ maiden voyage last year.
When I ask if it’s something she might consider, Aoibheann is momentarily taken aback by the suggestion: ‘Oh God, no-one has ever asked me that before,’ she laughs. ‘It’s really great craic to watch, though I have no idea if I would do it. I have younger cousins who would be absolutely thrilled if I did, as they could name absolutely everyone on the show. I guess we’ll cross that bridge if it ever happens.’