Life imitates art for shatteringly funny Kelly
Has anyone here seen Kelly? Possibly not. Because Kelly Shatter — gorgeous daughter of former Minister for Justice Alan and his wife Carol — was busy writing the second series of her hilar web series Long Dark Twenties.
This latest episode of the hugely popular (over 100,000 views) comedy hit, Kelly told me, “speaks to the fact that more options in dating, or in life, isn’t necessarily better. Sometimes, more can just be overwhelming. My character, Lily, is exhausted by the conveyor-belt dating routine. So she tries to get it over in one night, one date, many men”.
I popped the question to Kelly. Is Lily in any way autobiographical?
“Yes!” she laughed. “We are very similar. If I didn’t practice meditation, I’d be Lily. I certainly considered going on a multi-date when I was online dating. I used to find that my one free night a week — I teach in the evenings — would be taken up with sitting in front of a stranger who I had nothing in common with. It really started feeling like a chore,” Kelly said, adding that she is off to writers’ residency, Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co Monaghan next week to work on a pilot about “the phenomenal strength of women. I was meant to have a draft in by the time my residency happened, but I haven’t actually started it yet”. For the record, when Kelly was 15, she was given a writing assignment at school. She interviewed her grandmother Betty about being an evacuee during World War II.
That’s when Kelly realised “that I wanted to be a writer”. Eleven years later, Kelly wrote the play When The Curtains Are Drawn “about a girl who became so obsessed with her ex-boyfriend that she started sleeping rough in the lane by his house”. Unlike Long Dark Twenties, When The Curtains Are Drawn was not, you’ll be delighted to hear, remotely autobiographical.