Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I was Derry glad to get the role... I’d just been sacked
Saoirse lost sales gig before break
DERRY Girls star Saoirse-monica Jackson has revealed how she landed the career-changing role just after getting fired from her job as a doorto-door salesperson.
The 26-year-old is currently surviving lockdown in her London house share where she talked about life before she found stardom.
And she revealed that prior to landing the part of Erin Quinn in Derry
Girls, it was very different.
Saoirse said: “Before I got the Derry Girls call,
I was living with my ex-boyfriend in
Manchester.
“I was lying to him, telling him that I had a sales job in town.
“Every day he would drop me at this office block and then I would go around the corner, get into this car and drive to the outskirts of Manchester and sell the meal kit service door to door.
“I was absolutely awful and it was only commission-based.
“And anyone that was interested in inviting you in was old and I really believe didn’t know how to use the internet well enough.
“But I would tell them not to do it and basically leave and so I was strolling around Manchester for a year eating biscuits and talking to old people before I got the call.
“I had just gotten fired from that job when the email came in about Derry
Girls. And I genuinely thought they were making a documentary about Derry. It wasn’t really the path I wanted to go down but it was a job.
“Then I read it and I realised it was this amazing project and I knew I wanted to be a part of that.”
Saoirse makes the revelations in Kevin Paints, a new RTE Player original series where comedian-turned-portrait artist Kevin Mcgahern adds a splash of colour to a celebrity interview.
He chats to the Derry Girls star, comedians Pat Shortt and Joanne Mcnally and fellow artist Don Conroy about life, the universe and adapting to change, all while attempting to paint their portrait.
The first episode starring Saoirse goes live this morning on the player and will be broadcast on Thursday night on RTE Two.
Over the course of the interview the actor gives a tour of her quirky, if slightly untidy London flat and chats about fame in the US and how winning the celebrity Bake Off proved to her mum she’s not “utterly useless”. Saoirse said: “She values winning Bake Off much more [than any awards]. “When the show went out, she rang me, obviously it was pre-recorded, and she said to me, ‘I have never been as proud of you in my life because I always thought you were utterly useless’.” Watch the full episode now on the RTE Player or on RTE Two on Thursday at 9.20pm.