THEATRE BULLIES MADE MY LIFE HELL
Iconic actress Mary McEvoy reveals the mental torment and abuse she and other stage stars experienced while working in Ireland’s theatres
‘I knew how nasty life could be outside Glenroe’ ‘These people got their way by belittling actors’
MARY McEvoy has found a work/life balance that suits her. Ironically it’s not a million miles removed from the day-to-day life of Biddy Byrne, the no-nonsense wife of Miley, who she played on the iconic Irish soap Glenroe.
On her farm in Westmeath, she resides with her two donkeys and 32 sheep. This rural existence affords her the ability to avoid the ‘nonsense’ that’s often attached to her acting profession. A practising Buddhist, it’s hard to imagine her getting aggravated or upset, yet Mary reveals that a scourge of clandestine bullying, endemic within the world of theatre acting, changed her life forever when the soap ended in 2000.
While she believes the #MeToo movement — kickstarted when several women, led by actress Rose McGowan, came forward to allege they were sexually harassed and assaulted by Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein — has helped women globally, she says that the problem of bullying may still exist behind closed doors.
‘I didn’t have any sexual harassment because I was always a character actress,’ she says. ‘I was never really a leading lady, it was the beauties that got it.
‘But bullying was rife. It was just a way of being, more in theatre than television. But I saw the bullying, I witnessed it — I saw other people being bullied and I was bullied myself. I know people who were leading ladies who might have had unwanted attention but they just thought it was funny at the time.
‘Obviously if you’re talking the Rose McGowan sort of stuff, that’s sexual assault, which is an entirely different thing. But never in my life did I hear of anything like that.’
Mary says that the bullying within the acting world was seen as acceptable for years. She suffered so badly from it that she turned down work and opted for more commercial, light-hearted roles in a bid to avoid the mental torment.
‘It was specific people who I’m certainly not going to name,’ she says. ‘These were people who just got their way by belittling actors. It was done to me and I saw it done to others. It was horrible to watch.
‘I made a decision a long time ago that I would work on the commercial side of the business because, quite frankly, the people were a lot nicer. That’s the truth because of the bullying I got. I decided, no, I’m never going back into that again.
‘My life changed because of bullying. I made decisions about my career that I might not have made had that bullying not happened.
‘I never wanted to be part of that cool and arty group who felt they were better than people who worked for money. I didn’t feel comfortable in that world because your humanity wasn’t taken into account at all.’
Mary is not someone who throws these words out lightly. She immediately pauses, takes a breath and admits she is nervous about the revelations she has just uttered. She also wants to make one thing clear: ‘It never happened on Glenroe. I think that’s why I stayed in it so long because I knew how nasty life could be outside of it.
‘I have seen actors called things, I have seen actors humiliated and I have never seen an actor in my life that hasn’t worked their a** off. They are the hardest working, most vulnerable people and I have seen them humiliated. It’s horrible but I hope and don’t think it happens now.’
Mary is every inch the optimist. When she speaks, every word comes from the heart and she desperately hopes that things will improve for both sexes.
‘Take what happened on Celebrity Big Brother,’ she says of the reality TV show incident in which soap star Roxanne Pallett accused her fellow soap actor Ryan Thomas of punching her. The incident had been caught on camera, however, and showed that Ryan was simply play-fighting and Roxanne had blown things totally out of proportion.
‘That was so dangerous and such an appalling thing to happen and if that had happened in the loo, he had no proof and his career was over, he was ruined completely,’ she says. ‘There are always two sides and women have to realise that there are consequences.
‘I don’t want to be leched after or to do the same but there is a little bit of music in life and people are terrified to say anything. I like a door being held open for me but I would do the same for a man as well. It’s just manners and it makes life sweeter.
‘Now I have often had horrible things shouted at me from building sites, donkeys’ years ago, though it doesn’t happen now. That is horrible and it shouldn’t happen. But is a wolf whistle a major crime? Maybe some people do feel that but I feel women must not misuse the power they are getting. In the long run, if we respect and care for ourselves and others, we will behave naturally in the right way.’
It’s fitting that she is about to star with long-time collaborator Jon Kenny in John B Keane’s The Matchmaker in Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre. The play follows the efforts of Dicky Mick Dicky O’Connor to make matches for the lonely and lovelorn.
Keane, an avid observer of people and the cultures that bind and create their view of the world, uses The Matchmaker as an exploration of rural loneliness. Mary is extremely selective about which jobs she takes and when she’s not interviewing celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey and Antonio Banderas for The Today Show on RTÉ, she is enjoying the simpler pleasures of rural life. But she insists that The Matchmaker is still as important today as when Keane penned it.
‘The themes in The Matchmaker are so relevant today,’ she says. ‘It’s set in 1950s or 1960s Ireland so you think that the country was under the slosh of the Church. But these people are as earthy and as unembarrassed about their sexual needs as they come. They don’t care.
‘It’s not just companionship they want, they want the natural faculties in fair working order and that’s wonderful. John B Keane brought a whole different audience to it.
‘Every time we bring it out, there’s a slightly younger audience because, first of all, it’s very funny. Secondly, there’s a sense of an old Ireland that people are nostalgic about — the hearth and home. I love that.
‘My favourite line in the play is: “We have the hay in the shed, the spuds are dug, the turf is reeked and we have no dread of winter”.
‘I just love that, the whole thing of hunkering down beside the fire and you have your supplies. These days, because life is so disposable, people would love that kind of anchoring.
‘I get worried that people are so separate from the earth now. The older I get, the more I sink my two feet down in it.’
When Mary speaks of her farm, she talks passionately and paints an idyl-
lic picture of that good life that many people dream of but never realise.
‘I have 23 sheep and I look after them,’ she says. ‘They were very good to me so I will repay the favour. One of my donkeys died recently and those kinds of things are heartbreaking. I have a lot of woodland, native Ireland woodland which I planted, and I am thinking of setting up a woodland trust in my name because I don’t have children so it would be a nice thing to do, I just don’t know how to do it.
‘I do think that children are more work than animals. I admire anyone who has a family — I couldn’t do it. I worry enough about animals and I imagine I would be a wreck about children.
‘I’m terribly contented with my life at home. I’m 64 and I’m not going to live forever so it’s about time that one became content and happy with their lot.’
Work is something she still relishes, although she prefers it to come without any of the pretentiousness that sometimes seeps into the acting world.
‘I would still like to keep working but I find it hard to take the nonsense side of the business seriously,’ she says. ‘I take my audience very seriously and my work seriously but I don’t take it home and I’m not a tortured artist.’
It’s almost impossible to think of anything that might tick off Mary, who has openly battled and managed depression. But she does admit there’s one thing that still drives her potty: if you meet her, just don’t call her Biddy.
‘I recently interviewed Kevin Kennedy, who was Curly Watts on Coronation Street,’ she says. ‘He would have the same problem as I do but he doesn’t view it as a problem, he believes it’s a compliment to your work and lovely to know you meant that much to people that they don’t forget.
‘So I kind of realised that he’s right. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate Glenroe because I would have to say that, beyond anything, it was the happiest time of my life.
‘I think it was because if someone can’t let go of a character in their head, as a viewer, you wonder will you ever be able to move ahead in your career. Where could I go?
‘That’s why I didn’t like it. It was like someone saying “you are in this box and you are never going to get out of it”. But then again, I have worked steadily and the characters I played were nothing like Biddy.
‘People do shout Biddy at me, and it does still drive me bonkers so I won’t answer to it. But if they’re willing to call me Mary, I will talk to them all day.’
The Matchmaker will be at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, from November 5-10, tickets from €20, visit gaietytheatre.ie
Being called Biddy drives Mary bonkers