The Art of being FR PETER
From Derry Girls to Faithless and First Dates, Campion’s much in demand
ART Campion can remember the first time he watched someone acting. He was only a small child but the impact it had on him was seismic. ‘It was like electricity,’ he says, recalling that it was a weightlifting sketch in a local hall. ‘Even though I couldn’t make sense of what it was and the penny never dropped consciously then, it landed early on in my life and I think I became conscious of it then in my teens and when I became conscious of it I couldn’t think of anything else, really.’
Campion had a really happy childhood growing up in Birr, Co Offaly where it was music rather than acting that ran in the family.
‘There was no acting but we had quite a musical connection,’ he says. ‘Both my grandparents were musicians and singers.’
In his teenage years acting became a passion and Art headed for London’s Guildhall to study.
‘It’s a pretty wild old process going in at the age of 19 for training — three years of facing yourself. It’s kind of unnatural in a way but I think it gets you closer to what you are able to do.’
What Campion is able to do at the minute is play the Feckless bereaved brother Cormac in Baz Ashmawy’s comedy drama Faithless.
Cormac has lost his sister to a terrible accident — the wife of Ashmawy’s Sam — but it could be argued that the character lost the plot a while ago. Cormac is a good man for opening his mouth and putting his foot in it but the viewer still has affection for him as he tries to do his best by his brother-in-law.
‘It’s kind of beautiful,’ says Campion of Faithless. ‘It ticks all the boxes and it’s really funny and it’s got a lot of heart and love. I just think it’s really nice to be a part of. People will take a lot from the story of it without being told anything.’
He and Ashmawy had a lot of conversations off camera about where Cormac is coming from and Campion says he understands the subtleties and not so subtle moments on the screen.
‘I have a really good buddy who is Muslim and he said to me while we were shooting that I should put in the
scene where people ask him “Where are you from from?” and I told him we filmed it the day before. So what is in Faithless is very much a universal story across Ireland.’ Campion has recently changed his stage name from Peter to Art, stating that it’s his rapper name. He’s an enigmatic kind of a person, just how you might expect an actor to be, and he thinks that Faithless will open up conversations that are currently lacking in Ireland.
‘It’s really exciting to be in this. It’s one of the first times someone has made something about this sort of situation and we are all really going to take a lot from the universe that it is,’ he says. ‘There is a lot of room for living in the grey area of life.
It’s not one thing or the other and we have to be able to open up the conversations and have discussions about things as opposed to being pulled to one side or the other.
‘It isn’t about sides, it’s about creating the environment where we can all have a chat and come from a position of love where everyone is trying their best.
‘Everything is the relationship you have with yourself, life is the relationship you have with yourself so that’s where you have to start. If someone behaves badly they are obviously having a bad time.’
Campion is known for his role as Fr Peter, the hot priest with the lovely hair in Derry Girls. He said he landed the role after working with Lisa Magee on the lesser-known London Irish which is now enjoying a revival thanks to the success of the comedy that followed.
‘I worked with Lisa before on a show called London Irish and I think she knew the craic,’ he says of landing the part.
‘I think London Irish is trending now and people have been watching it as people want to see more of Lisa’s stuff so they have gone back it.
‘I thought that was a great show — really good. There are so many variables of these things you just don’t know but that show was funny.’
WHEN he took the role of Fr Peter, Campion wasn’t expecting Derry Girls to take off the way it did but in the same breath he wasn’t surprised that it did, given how brilliant the script was.
‘I suppose there is a little bit of surprise when you hear how global it has gone,’ he says. ‘But all the themes are universal so it makes sense.’
He gets recognised the odd time but not too much as to be intrusive when he is out and about in Dublin where he lives.
‘You just go with the flow of it really and it only happens every now and again,’ he says. ‘Some people remember faces more than others so people sometimes spot you and make a beeline for you while you can see others looking and trying to figure out where they saw you before.’
But it will be his voice that is the most familiar to Irish viewers, given that he has been the narrator for First Dates Ireland since it began.
‘It’s a great show I love it and we are in our ninth season,’ he says. ‘It’s one of my favourite things to do every year as it is a really nice process. But. I can’t deal with the ‘Nos’ — I find them difficult to watch.’
Outside of acting he has two little first of his own aged five and seven so watching Faithless as a father can be tough.
‘They are top of my list,’ he says. ‘Life is busy but they are the most important thing.’
■ Faithless is on Virgin Media One on Mondays at 9pm and the Virgin Media Player.