BADLY BEHAVED BOY
Rory Keenan’s new role sees him play a pop star whose issues have lost him his best life – with inspiration from unlikely sources
IT’S a fairly familiar tale for those thrust into superstardom at a young age — the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle of the music business has called time on many a pop star’s career.
And although we have had our fair share of boybands coming from this neck of the woods, Ireland’s pop proteges have been luckier to avoid the spectacular downfalls of some of their peers.
Even so, when Katherine Ryan was searching for someone to play a boyband star who had fallen spectacularly from grace, Dubliner Rory Keenan definitely had the edge because of his lilt.
The Duchess is Ryan’s new series, centred around a woman who finds herself a single mum after she becomes pregnant following a short-lived relationship with Shep Knight, a pop star who spirals into a life of substance abuse before coming out the other side to live on a barge in the centre of London.
And though Keenan cherry-picked his character’s traits from various places, he admits Keith Duffy’s confidence was something he drew on for the part.
‘Keith was one of the people I drew on — you know the way he has that urban swagger,’ Rory admits.
‘So there is a bit of him in there. Katherine describes Shep as the last guy who gets up off the stool. He’s clearly the fella who fancies himself as the one who leads the key change. He probably thinks quite a lot of himself.’
By the time we meet him, Shep is miles away from the bright lights and the screaming fans. Instead he’s a scruffy conspiracy theorist living on barge and is the bane of Katherine’s life as he is also the father of her child.
‘It’s quite clear he’s a lunatic,’ Rory says of Shep. ‘I love his lunacy, his madness and the chaos that surrounds him. It’s always fun to play those characters.
‘I like the idea as well that he’s not a current boyband member, he’s a former boyband member and what that means in terms of someone living their adult life having been a member of a boyband. He was great fun to play.’
The Duchess was written and executive produced by comedian Katherine Ryan, who plays the lead role and, as it happens, is a single mum.
But one of the remarkable things about the dark comedy is that a lot of the people in it are very hard to like.
‘I think that’s really good because oftentimes with comedy, people will say you need to make someone likeable and all the characters need to be likeable,’ Rory says.
‘The reality is that not everyone in life is likeable but that doesn’t make their story any less compelling.
‘I think that what is really smart about the show is that Catherine through her writing drops in little vulnerabilities as she goes along and you kind of have to question your thoughts on that character and your perceptions on that person as the show goes along.’
Like his character, Keenan has been living in London for some time, working extensively in theatre and television.
He grew up in Dublin and his two older sisters, Sinead and Grainne, are both successful actors too.
It wasn’t a question of him ever choosing to be an actor, it was just something he did, he says.
‘I figured it was better than working,’ Rory jokes. ‘I started doing acting when I was ten years old or maybe even earlier than that. I started doing shows in the Olympia when I was a kid and I did shows in the Abbey when I was at school then carried on through college. I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to become an actor, I think that was what I used to do after school, really. So I just carried on, things went relatively well and I decided I might as well stick to what I was doing.’
He doesn’t really talk about acting a lot to his sisters, he says.
‘It is nice to have people doing the same thing but we don’t necessarily talk about the business a lot. My parents didn’t have anything to do with that world but it is nice to have that understanding. Often if you are in a relationship and one person is an actor but the other isn’t, there is a bit of a disconnect between what you do and your personal life as some people might not get it. So it is useful to surround yourself with people who are in a similar boat.’ Keenan is notoriously private about his personal life but he is married to fellow actor Gemma Arterton who, of course, starred opposite Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace. The pair met working on a play and got married in a private ceremony last year. During lockdown they also managed to shoot a film, Safer At Home, for BBC, in which Arterton played a woman being abused by her partner played by Keenan in a piece that critics said was ‘superbly acted. ‘Myself and my wife actually
managed to shoot a film for BBC in the flat during lockdown which was bizarre,’ Rory says. ‘We have been creative and busy and also just trying to get the ducks in a row for when things start happening. So it has been alright.
‘Safer At Home was part of a series called Unprecedented about little slices of life in lockdown and it was all played out through Zoom. It was interesting to do. It kept us off the family Zoom quizzes for a week at least,’ he jokes.
With all the tension surrounding lockdown, many would find it difficult to work together as well as sharing a personal life too but Rory says the process was easy for himself and Gemma. ‘We met doing a show in the West End a few years ago,’ he explains. ‘We did a production of St Joan and we hope to do another job together at some point when things resemble reality. We met in a professional way so we knew each other’s process from the beginning. We had a good time. It was a success, I think.’ It’s a testament to Keenan’s many talents that he has been regularly in work since finishing Trinity, be it on the stage of the theatre or in front of the TV cameras. It’s probably his easygoing nature that helps when it comes to the pitfalls of the acting world. ‘I guess you have to roll with the punches,’ Keenan says. ‘I have always been fairly lucky in that I generally keep in regular work which has been great. There are times, of course, where you wish you were doing more or you had got that thing you didn’t get. But it comes with the territory and it was ever thus. That’s the way it is always going to be.
‘As long as you stay open to possibilities and try and do work that is as diverse as possible, I think that is really important. Luckily enough I haven’t had massive swathes of unemployment yet anyway.’
He first graced our screens as Michael in The Clinic with Amy Huberman and returned a couple of years ago to play opposite her in RTE’s legal drama Striking Out. ‘It was a joy to shoot in and around Dublin,’ he says of his short-lived role as love cheat Eric. ‘I have been living in London for quite a while and I hadn’t been home working in a long time so it was such a nice way to be able to come back to Dublin and shoot around the city.’ Unfortunately the show was axed after two series. ‘It’s a shame because it was starting to get into a rhythm in terms of character and writing but that’s the way these things work. The decision in the end was to leave it at two seasons but hopefully I will get to go back and do something else. Maybe not with those suits,’ he jokes.
Right now, though, the acting world is in flux as so many people are out of work as theatres remain closed or working on a limited capacity.
‘I feel sorry for those who are exclusively working in theatre because obviously that’s not happening at the moment,’ Keenan says. ‘People are trying their best to get creative content out over Zoom or other platforms. But I really feel for those who have made their living exclusively off theatre — they’re in a dire situation.
‘I know it’s just going to take time to get back to normal but hopefully during that time people and funding bodies will realise that you have to support the arts financially otherwise when things are safer, places won’t open again because of the crisis.
‘Actors are really resilient and creative people and they will make work either way but unfortunately not at the scale they had been doing this time last year.’
Keenan is also about to direct his first short film in the hope of adding another string to his bow.
‘We are in pre-production,’ he says. ‘That is keeping me off the streets and that will carry on through for the rest of the year.
‘It’s the first film I’ve directed. Hopefully we will shoot in October, get it edited towards the end of the year and get it out at the start of next year, all going well.
‘Everything is up in the air of course because of what’s going on but we will make it work.’
He had, he says, always wanted to have a go at things behind the camera too.
‘I wanted to wait until I was in a confident enough position to do it,’ he says. ‘I’ve always tried to observe directors and script supervisors and camera people on set. I wanted to get a deeper understanding of what goes on before I jumped in and hopefully after I make this film, I can push on and make some other stuff too.’
So if the choice came down to acting or working behind the scenes, which would Rory prefer?
‘I think I will always act,’ he says immediately. ‘I probably like to have my cake and eat it. Maybe I am just being greedy but I think it is important to keep your fingers in a few pies — even for times like this.
‘Actors depend on getting work from other people but writers and directors can kind of start the process themselves and make stuff happen. I think it’s useful to be able to do that in the meantime when I’m not performing.’
THE Duchess is on Netflix now