I drank like a fish, so I was ‘Can’t Cope Won’t Cope’ at one point!
Norma Sheahan plays the harassed mother of a 20-something party girl on the small screen, but she put her own drinking days behind her long ago
ACTRESS Norma Sheahan, 41, has no bother playing the midered Mammy of vodka-chugging, sexually misadventurous Aisling in RTÉ drama series Can’t Cope Won’t Cope, which returns to our screens on Monday.
‘It’s about 20-somethings who hang out together and drink too much and are just turning up to work with hangovers all the time. Personally it was easy to play as I’ve no tolerance for that. I can’t even relate to people who do that. I don’t even drink any more. I’d have one Prosecco and I’d be anybody’s,’ she jokes, when we meet near her home in Dublin’s Sallynoggin.
Lest you get the impression that Norma is a fuddy-duddy, the mother of three girls is quirky, hilarious company. When asked if being teetotal in Ireland is difficult, she retorts: ‘But sure everyone thinks I’m drunk the whole time. They see me going out with the car keys and they’re saying, “Oh, don’t!” And I’m going, “Why? I don’t drink.”’
She hasn’t always been teetotal either.
‘Oh no, I drank like a fish. So in fairness I was Can’t Cope Won’t Cope at one point, I’m sure. Although I had given it up, to be fair, when I went to RADA,’ she says, of the prestigious London drama school where her classmates included Sally Hawkins, Danny Mays and Eve Best.
‘I just decided I’m investing in myself, I want to take it more seriously. So when they’d all be leaving the Abbey or the Gate or wherever and going for the booze I just couldn’t. I was so boring at that stage. I got my drinking out of my system when I did Commerce in UCD. The mother made me do something serious,’ she explains, of her brief foray into a business other than show.
Norma made an award-winning theatre debut in Enda Walsh’s Bedbound in 2000 and three years later her TV career began as the receptionist on RTÉ series The Clinic. That’s where she met her good friends Amy Huberman – who lent her a dress when Norma attended the 2009 Oscars – and Chris O’Dowd, who handpicked her for the role of Linda in Moone Boy.
Readers will also recognise Norma from RTÉ sitcom Bridget and Eamon, where she plays main character Noreen along with myriad others over the years.
‘We’re filming that again in July,’ she confirms. ‘The gratitude I have for people like Jennifer and Bernard when they give you a call to be on their show. The effort that these people go to to make a show, to get it across the line – it is literally harder than having triplets.’
And fans of RTÉ’s Dancing With the Stars will recognise Norma as a panellist from the spin-off Can’t Stop Dancing. She also filmed a comedy sketch where she pretended to be on work experience on the DWTS set.
‘I love dancing,’ she explains. ‘I’d love to be a dancer on it, absolutely. I’d love to be thrown around in the air by some big, muscly man.’
Norma is married to Australian Scott Benwell who works in IT and they have 10-year-old twins Jessica and Isabelle and Jodi, 8. The couple met when he was in London visiting one of her classmates in RADA and they didn’t tell their families they were married until a year after their registry office do.
‘We didn’t want a big wedding, we didn’t want a big fuss. We got two strangers in as witnesses... Then we told our families a year afterwards. He was in Melbourne with his family for Christmas, I was in Cork with mine. And we sat them down with photocopied certs. They all opened them together over the phone – they thought they were vouchers because it was Christmas Eve. They were like, “Oh my God, it’s a marriage cert! You’re married two weeks!” And we said, “No, we’re married a year and two weeks”. That was the wedding done.’
This year marks their 18th anniversary but Norma has ‘no idea’ what the secret is to marital longevity.
‘I think it’s just finding someone who can put up with you. I remember when we were ten years married calling it the ten-year tolerance – we had tolerated each other for that length. Now we’re seventeen years married – what is the key?’ she wonders aloud. ‘Trying not to see a lot of each other.
‘Marriage is hard, like. It’s all about babies, babies, babies. And then the babies are a little bit older and you’re like, “Oh, you’re still there”.
‘And as the kids get more capable of doing stuff it’s about rediscovering your relationship. I look around at relationships and I actually don’t understand marriage. Do you know what marriage is handy for? When you’re fighting that you can’t just get up and walk out the door. You have to put a bit of thought into walking out the door. So I think it’s handy to be married because then you won’t just go “Feck this” on a whim.
‘I’m glad we got married because when the babies were young or when times were tough it’s too easy to just walk. That’s why being married is handy because this too will pass.
‘And I think staying together is easier than the road of separation from what I hear. Now if it’s not working for the kids or everyone involved then absolutely, separate,’ she clarifies.
Norma turned 40 last year though she usually plays women who are much older.
‘I had a massive party and because I play 55-year-olds on TV and film I had a party called I’m only ******* 40. That was my invite.
‘People thought I was lying, they thought it was a joke. One person said, “I heard you had a party recently, the big 5-0!” I said, “No, the big 4-0” She said, “Aw yeah, the big 4-0!”’ mimics Norma, disbelieving. ‘She met me through Deirdre [O’Kane] so she presumed me and Deirdre were the same age.’
Deirdre is another friend of Norma’s from The Clinic, Moone Boy and Dancing With The Stars. Doesn’t Norma mind that people think she is a decade older than she is?
‘I couldn’t give a **** ,’ she replies. ‘I was never a Juliette so it’s not like I’m letting anything go. I was always a weirdo.
‘I’m actually getting more solid roles now because, you see, I’m actually a hot 55-year-old, do you know what I mean? I don’t have the botox and the fillers so I look human but as 55-year-olds go, I’m not bad,’ she says, in her usual deadpan delivery.
‘The film I did at Christmas, Christmas Perfection, I was 60,’ she says, of an American movie filmed here last year.
Sixty! Surely it’s annoying to be
I’m only 40 but I do play a lot of 55-year-olds. And I’m a hot 55. I don’t have all the fillers
cast in roles that are much older than she is?
‘Naw, it doesn’t annoy me. You use it to your advantage,’ she explains. ‘It dawned on me in my teenage years that I was no beaut. No, I’m lovely, gorgeous,’ she says, batting away protestations. ‘The symmetry wouldn’t be great. The nose is a bit scary. At an early age when you see your friends getting the good snog at the disco and you get the quirky friend, I thought, “Right, I’m the quirky friend”.
Tricky enough in the teenage years, there was a bit of selfloathing there. But we’re decades on now. If someone lives off their beauty it must be heartbreaking when age kicks in.’
Norma was recently cast in a ten-minute teaser for a pilot written by Domhnall and Brian Gleeson and produced by Sharon Horgan.
‘I was out with Domhnall the other night and they’re still writing away so fingers crossed.’
And she and Amy Huberman recently brought their children on an outing to Tayto Park.
‘She is a gorgeous human being. She is a genuinely lovely person. I remember someone saying to me once, “Is she not a bit treacle?” and going, “No. She can have an oul nark or an oul rant as well”. She still has the same c**p in life we all have. We all have to eat, s**t, pay taxes, whatever.
‘She’s got two babies and, yes, she might have a childcare person helping her as well but she has to manage that. Herself and Brian juggle it very well. Brian is a great Dad and a great husband. I think they’re happy. Not without flaws but they seem to be just doing so well for a couple that are busy with two young kids.’
She has Amy to thank for convincing her to attend the 2009 Oscars, when the short film New Boy she was in – directed by Stephanie Green and based on a short story by Roddy Doyle – was nominated.
‘One of my kids, Jessica, was in Temple Street hospital with pneumonia. Actually Amy Huberman and my sister and my cousin packed a bag and threw clothes into it for me. They sent me off to Dylan Bradshaw who did my hair which was lovely and threw me on a plane. I was going, “Lads, I can’t, I can’t”. Because I’d been sleeping on the floor of Temple Street for the five nights before. But it was grand. She was on really, really heavy antibiotics and she’s perfect,’ she adds, of Jessica.
‘It was one of the things Amy had thrown into the bag that I ended up wearing. Fair play to her. She’s great and she knows I’m a man when it comes to fashion - - like, I’m clueless. She’s always been good at throwing a frock or two in my direction.’
That Oscar night was more starstudded than usual.
‘They brought back this line of winners from the past ten or 20 years so you’d usually have a load of stars but then you had this added group – Anthony Hopkins, Sophia Loren, Tilda Swinton. It was amazing.
‘I’ve been to LA a lot since – I’ve a manager out there – but that was my first time. And literally within a couple of days you’re on the red carpet.
‘Beyoncé was there, like. Angelina and Brad. Daniel Craig. Elvis Costello. Anne Hathaway. It was funny though, the short film didn’t win and I wasn’t personally nominated, I was just in it. But it’s like watching the producer and director and lead actor being treated like royalty coming up to it and then when we we didn’t win they were literally like vermin thrown out the back door. Not quite that bad but you’re nada, like. If you win the short film thingy there’d be doors open to you; if you lost, get on your bike.’
The Irish Film Board has given Norma funding for a comedy feature film she has written called Doing Two Jobs Badly.
‘I just want to finish it now, get the next draft done. The reason I’m not getting the next draft done is because I am doing two jobs badly. I’m not balancing work and home. I’m literally living the film at the moment which is depressing and great at the same time.’
Like many parents, Norma sometimes feels like ‘a taxi service’, though her three girls are ‘so capable. One of them is on the student council, one of them just won the national gymnastics. They’re just really good girls’.
Caring for them when they were babies was much more challenging.
‘After the twins I wasn’t going to have any more kids and then I did. It’s a good idea to have another kid because with twins you almost can’t love them until they’re three because you can’t have one for ten seconds without the other one crying.
#It’s very hard to feel that googoo gaa-gaa connection with twins because you’re holding one of them at all times. It’s functional, it’s conveyor belt. That’s what can happen with twins. But you’ve your whole life to be bonding with them and you love them anyway.’ Norma loves her work too. ‘The writing is my therapy, it’s like my granny doing her rosary beads. Filming for me is like going on holiday. Auditioning is work; actually filming and being on set is like a child going to Disney. And voiceovers, which I do a couple of times a week, are like going to a spa. I just love it.’ ÷Can’t Cope Won’t Cope airs on RTÉ2 on Monday, 23 April at 9.30pm.
The writing is my therapy. It’s like my granny doing her rosary beads