FOLLOWING DOCTOR’S ORDERS
Daithi MacSuibhne tells how Fair City is currently achieving cult status...
HE was seen as Fair City’s bad boy with a big heart, always causing havoc with drinking, and breaking hearts along the way. But when his sister Katy was kidnapped, Emmet O’Brien struggled and after a year, discovered himself at the hands of her kidnapper too.
And now Emmet has got mixed up in some murky business, attacking Pete on behalf of The Phoenix Way, Carrigstown’s new cult, on the orders of Dr Oakley who has appointed him the murky group’s head of security.
Actor Daithí MacSuibhne would be the first to admit his character has not had an easy ride of late as things in RTÉ’s hit soap Fair City are about to get darker.
‘Back in January of 2017 was the first inkling of this cult was when Emmet met Hannah and that led to a whole series of events,’ he says. ‘He broke up with Farrah and Hannah came back into his life. And all the stuff that happened with Katy.
‘He wasn’t the nicest person in the world but he was honest about it. With women he might not be a model gentleman but one thing Emmet has always been is honest. He has always been about having a good time and told whoever he was with that too. During the first six months that I was playing Emmet he was just basically drinking, fighting and chasing girls, and apologising to his mammy for the above. Things took a dramatic turn then when Katy disappeared.’
And now Emmet has been sucked into The Phoenix Way, to the extent where he has done something so awful and out of character for himself. As the group’s ‘head of security,’ appointed by Dr Oakley, Emmet has broken in to Pete’s and attacked him while wearing a balaclava and he’s also vandalised the Hungry Pig after the cult was refused the chance of a Christmas party at the venue, due to the worries of other businesses and Carrigstown community members. He’s so passionate about The Phoenix Way, he just might end up in jail for it — or worse.
Daithí says he can understand the reasons why Emmet has fallen for the cult, or ‘the group’ as they like to call themselves on screen.
‘Having gone through so much and being so broken for so long, Emmet met these people who didn’t judge him as being an absolute mess of a human being,’ Daithí says. ‘It is all very tempting and he just can’t take it in that there is something wrong in this way he’s living.’
The lure of being part of something has been a big deal for Emmet too, after being disenfranchised for so long.
‘It was very difficult to resist as Emmet is a very impulsive person and he has a very addictive personality. He throws himself fully into something and he can’t not do it to the maximum degree. He can’t just play a game of poker, he’ll be out all night playing poker. He can’t just get involved in a group, he will be the most committed member of the group — especially a group like this. ‘I don’t know if you could say Miriam and Dr Oakley are preying on him but certainly they are taking advantage of all of his weaknesses.’ Daithí admits he has always been interested in cults and in organised religions. And he researched the part by watching a lot of documentaries on scientology and various other so-called modern religions.
‘I am fascinated by scientology in particular and religions of all sorts — and cults in general,’ Daithí explains. ‘People label groups like this as cults and they are of course, but they are using techniques that have been around for centuries to get people to agree to something or believe in something either without evidence or contrary to evidence.
‘To me it is a really fascinating subject to delve into how someone can see something in front of their face but also view it as something different. Like that idea in 1984 of doublethink where you say something you know to be a lie but you also believe it is the truth. It’s that grey area in people’s psyches.’
And just like the O’Briens, Daithí says people are often surprised when
those involved in groups like The Phoenix Way are members of their own community, or even their own families. On screen the O’Briens are desperately trying to pull Emmet back to them, without much success.
‘There is this idea that people are crazy weirdos who get involved in these cults because they are totally unhinged but that is actually not the case,’ Daithí says.
‘For the most part these are normal people with normal lives, normal jobs and normal relationships who identify with this particular way of thinking, and are surrounded by lots of other people who are thinking the same thing and reinforcing that way of thinking, and they just get deeper and deeper into the layers of whatever it is they got involved in.’
Daithí’s bad boy Emmet rolled into Carrigstown two Christmases ago and since then has had a lot to deal with. But before this, of course, Daithí had a role in another hit soap, playing Eoin Farren in Ros Na Rún on TG4.
So how did the Dubliner get into acting in the first place?
‘I like to say it is because I have no other marketable skills,’ Daithí jokes. ‘From a very young age I did about ten years of musicals in the local group in Stillorgan where I grew up. I did all sorts of other things too, like playing sports — and I still play gaelic and hurling, but this was my real love for a long time.’
Daithí did drift away from acting in his teens but found his way back to the stage at university.
‘I went to UCD to study human physiology but by the end of the first year I had just broken up with my girlfriend and I realised I didn’t have many friends on my course,’ he reveals. ‘I had been trying to fix the relationship as I hadn’t been spending much social time in college.
‘So I got accidentally dragged into the Drama Society and within the first couple of days of being there I realised I should never have let that side of performing slide.’
From then on in, Daithí was performing on stage but had intended to pursue more of the sciences. But a twist of fate showed the universe had other things in mind for him. ‘I fully intended to study further science but I had to take a year out as I missed out on a place for a course I wanted to do,’ he says. ‘So I spent that time doing a postgrad in drama theory then decided to chance my arm. I was lucky enough as I started to get work and I was more often working than not which was great.’ Daithí had a part in the Abbey Theatre’s version of The Government Inspector before nabbing a small TV role on Irish language drama Scúp. Through that, he landed his Ros Na Rún role, before joining the ranks of Fair City — all the more strange as no-one in his family really speaks Irish. ‘My dad makes an effort now and again but no-one else in the family does,’ Daithí explains. ‘So really it was a happy accident that I went to Coláiste Eoin, an Irish language secondary school.’
AT that stage he admits he was similar to any other boy from national school in that he only had a little Irish, but at secondary school his love of an teanga gaelic grew. ‘I could barely speak the language at all when I first arrived through the doors,’ Daithí admits. ‘But when you are thrown into an environment like that, you are immersed in the language. You are speaking Irish every day and being part of an environment that not only promotes the language and sees it as something to cherish and treasure but also to use an actual language to communicate with people.’
‘I came out the other end fluent and Ros Na Rún was a great opportunity for me to get back in touch with it.’
There’s still cúpla focail used every day with Daithí now, as he is passionate about our native tongue and our national sports.
‘I joined a GAA team called Na Gael Óga and we do everything through Irish. We are one of the few teams outside a Gaeltacht area in the country who do this. We do everything as Gaeilge, training, playing, socialising — our What’sApp group is even in Irish.’
So why does Daithí believe Irish is important?
‘There are tonnes of reasons,’ he says, ‘the simplest of which is cultural identity. It is also a beautiful language and if I was to live in France I would want to be able to speak French. You don’t need to look much further into it than that. If you are Irish, you should want to be able to speak Irish.
‘It would be a real shame for Irish to die out. That said, it’s far from dead. Irish is thriving in Dublin and across the country, especially with younger speakers.’
That’s probably more than could be said for Emmet — will he survive The Phoenix Way? Viewers will have to tune in to Fair City on RTE One to find out what his fate is.