DANCING FOR THE WIN

BACKSTAGE at Dancing With The Stars is a happy place to be. Sunday’s show has just finished and the sound of excited high fives reverberate around the Ardmore Film Factory. Family members are hugged and Instagram stories are being filmed as dancers and partners celebrate the end of a very long week. A familiar face peers around the green room door. She is probably the most famous face in the contest, hiding her glitzy costume and headdress underneath a swaddling robe. Cocooned in a turquoise polkadot woolly dressing gown, Eilish O Carroll sits on a small sofa and reflects on what was her first competitive dance routine.

‘I feel fantastic to be honest’, she says. ‘I am on top of the world. It was everything I thought it would be and more. I have to admit I was very nervous before I danced.

‘The first week I really sabotaged the joy of it all because I was doing two group dances and I wasn’t very sure of myself — I just feared that I was letting a lot of people down. I let that fear and doubt consume me and when I went out there on week one, I just didn’t enjoy it. This was such a negative thing to do and not a good place to be.

‘So this week I had a good talking to myself and I refused to let the nerves get to me again. I am delighted with how it went and to be honest I am very proud of myself. Of course, I could have done it better and another few days and I might have nailed it. But I loved it.’

EILISH was born in Dublin in the early 1950s and was the second youngest in a family of ten, followed by her younger brother Brendan O’Carroll. Her father was a cabinet maker and her mother was the first female Labour TD to be elected in Ireland in 1954.

Eilish developed a passion for performing at a very early age in order to get noticed by her parents and siblings. In her early teens she sang and played in a band called The Pentagon, performing mainly in pubs and club.

But in 1997 her life changed forever when she started working with her younger brother, who had created Agnes Brown. In 1999 she took to the stage in the very first of Mrs Brown’s Boys plays as Winnie McGoogan, and life has not been the same since. But Eilish is quick to point out that DWTS is a very different beast to the Mrs Brown’s Boys live shows.

‘Mrs Brown’s Boys is a comedy. And when things go wrong people laugh. And they laugh even harder if it wasn’t meant to go wrong,’ she says.

‘Whereas here, if things go wrong, it is a disaster and there is no way back. And you always have that worry that you are going to fall down the steps or miss your step or draw a blank.

‘I am here as myself, not a character. And you are performing a new and different skill badly. The whole point of this show is that you see people grow and improve and invest in them getting better as the weeks progress. And being part of that is thrilling.’

When we speak it is less than an hour since Eilish took to the floor for her first solo dance with partner Ryan McShane. She is blown away at level of concentration needed to get through a 90-second dance routine.

‘The biggest surprise for me was how the show affected me personally,’ she says.

‘When I walked in there last week and it completely disarmed me. Because I think there is an assumption that I am Winnie McGoogan and used to performing in front of thousands of people.

‘I might be able to do live TV, and my experience helped in so much that it stopped me from letting the audience distract me.

‘I didn’t ignore them, you have to embrace them but I went out there and I was focused. When I took to the floor it was just Ryan and I out there on our own, dancing. Their applause and appreciation is like the laughter. You ignore it. Because if I acknowledge the laughter, I have come out of character and you can’t do that with a dance.

‘What really disarmed me, I suppose, or surprised me, was the fact that I was crippled with anxiety. I wasn’t expecting those nerves and that visceral reaction.’

As an actor Eilish’s film work includes Mrs Brown D’Movie, Snap, Sparrow’s Trap and a short film called Noreen. She also penned and performed her own one-woman show called ‘Live Love Laugh’ which has received rave reviews at home and abroad. That show has allowed her to step out of the Mrs Brown’s Boys box, something she hopes DWTS will help with as well.

‘This is a great opportunity to move away from Winnie McGoogan the character,’ Eilish tells me. ‘That’s why I wrote my own show.

‘Everyone thought that because you are playing a character in a very successful sitcom, your phone never stops and you are being offered all kinds of work.

‘That is not the case at all. They put you in a little pigeon hole and that is that.’

Eilish wanted to do other things in her time away from Mrs Brown’s but had to create her own work and opportunities as, she admits, no one came calling. DWTS gives her the chance to ditch Winnie’s headscarves for some glamour.

‘And still be the centre of attention,’ she says. ‘Because that is why people are in this business — whether we like to admit it or not, we have very fragile egos and they need positive stroking all the time.

‘It is far more glamorous than I ever get to be with Winnie. It is lovely to get all dressed up and have someone do your hair and make-up.’

AS a mother of two sons, Stuart and Lee, Eilish spent the better part of her life trying to fit in. Two failed marriages later, she came out as a lesbian while in her forties and hasn’t looked back. She lives with her long-term partner Marian whom she says has been her rock since she started training for the show.

‘My partner loves DWTS and she is so supportive,’ she says. ‘She has really helped me to get to this point in time. I couldn’t do it without her.

‘Even the small things like doing all the shopping and the cooking because I am in rehearsals all the time. She has allowed me the space and support to do this show.

‘And it can’t be easy but she is such a wonderfully kind and supportive person. I know that she is on this journey with me as well which is lovely.’

Eilish and Marian live in Dublin now, having moved back from West Cork.

‘I just love being back in Dublin,’ she smiles. ‘It was like I never left. And that has made this process easier as well because I get to go home every night.’

It’s clear to see Eilish is very much the heart and soul of this year’s cast. Although she admits being the senior member at 66, is not an easy cross to bear.

‘I am the oldest in the competition but I try really hard not to let it get to me’, she says. ‘I wouldn’t be normal if it didn’t go through my thinking process. Of course I wouldn’t. I am