At times I wondered if I‘d ever work again.. so I’m happy to land up in Troubles
Former Shieldinch matriarch’s career break began to feel permanent but she’s back on stage in Belfast play at theatre where she worked as an usher
AS ONE door closes, another one opens – as Deirdre Davis knows all too well.
The actress left River City in 2016, after 14 years as Shieldinch matriarch Eileen Donachie.
She was the sole survivor of the BBC Scotland soap’s launch episode but had decided she wanted to go back out into the world and see what opportunities were there.
The show, however, has never been far from her heart or her front door.
Deirdre, 54, received a replica of one of the stained glass windows on the show’s iconic Tall Ship pub, where she started off as landlady, and it hangs on the front door of her home in Pitlochry.
She said: “It was a huge part of my life, 14 years.
“When I left, I had always hinted over the years that as a leaving present I would love one of the stained glass windows from The Tall Ship.
“I thought I had been quite subtle about it but near the end I was less and less subtle and at my leaving do they had made this replica with the Tall Ship.
“I have it on my front door so I see it every time I come home or go out. I always say it’s my favourite thing.
“After my children and my pets, it’s the next thing I would save in a fire. I love it.”
The actress still manages to catch the show every now and again but won’t be able to over the next few weeks, as she will be on stage when she makes her return to the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.
She’s starring in Rona Munro’s Bold Girls as she continues her return to work after a much longer break than she first expected.
But that gave her more time to devote to daughters Mirabel, 14, and Khardine, 32, who has just had her third child.
Deirdre, who is married to fellow actor Greg Powrie, said: “I left River City not because I had stopped loving it but I just felt I had done it for long enough.
“I didn’t want to be one of those bitter old women who was still in it after 30 years and getting narky at all the young things coming in.
“I hope I would never have got there but I left when things were really good and my own life took over.
“My daughter was just about to have her third baby, Zac, and that was a big deal. Being free meant I was
I realised there’s nothing else I would want to do other than acting DEIRDRE DAVIS
actually at his birth. If I had been working, I wouldn’t have been able to be there.
“My mum got very ill and she was in hospital for a while.
“I was also involved in a charity called Tear Fund and I went out to Malawi, looking at the food crisis but primarily child marriage so that was another thing that had been in the pipeline and would not have happened if I was still doing River City.
“As far as work goes, I had no plans and for the first six or seven months, I wasn’t bothering.
“Well, I was financially but I was also thinking, ‘Do I still want to be an actor, or do I want to do something else?’ I realised there’s nothing else I really want to do other than acting.
“I did an episode of Doctors and not much else. There were a couple of times where I was thinking, ‘Will I ever work again?’
“But it goes in cycles and life moves on. I was up for ads and bits and pieces but really it’s just been the summer of last year things started to pick up.
“I did a play at Pitlochry, I did a tiny wee bit in a film, a couple of voice overs and now I’m at the Citizens. It seems to be coming together now.”
Bold Girls, written by the National Theatre of Scotland’s James Plays author Munro in 1991, is set in Belfast at the same time and is about the lives of four women whose friendship unravels over one night out.
Set against the backdrop of The Troubles, Deirdre believes it reaches beyond its historical context.
She said: “It’s set in the Falls Road in Belfast and it’s basically their lives, what seem to be very small, confined, claustrophobic lives, all on a different journey.
“It references the Troubles all the time but actually what goes on for these women goes on in any patriarchal society, where women are forced to stay at home and keep the home fires burning. They talk about their sons, husbands, partners, they mythologise them and make them out to be heroes but, of course, they all have feet of clay.
“They have to tell themselves and each other lies in order to keep this world together.”
Bold Girls takes Deirdre full circle in many ways. When the play was being written and first performed, she was at drama school, dreaming of being an actress and working as an usher at the Citz.
Ten years later, she was starring on its stage opposite Greg when she was a late addition to the cast of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
She said: “When I was at drama school way back in the mists of time, about 1990-91, I was an usher for two years and I worked in the bar.
“I loved working at the Citz. Then around 2000-01, my husband was doing a Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Citz, playing Oberon. I had come to see it, loved the production and two nights in I got a call asking if could I play Titania because the girl playing her had taken ill.
“I had to go on that night with the script and after three performances the director, Giles Havergal, grabbed it off me and said ‘Darling, you are carrying that about like a handbag’ and made me go on without it.
“My first entrance was walking through the ushers and I used to be standing there when the actresses made their entrance – and there I was doing it. That was a real moment. It was lovely, something you never forget.”
Deirdre is looking forward to seeing what comes next – and she hasn’t ruled out a return to River City.
She said: “I look back with fond memories and I would never say I wouldn’t go back and if they phoned. I would give it serious consideration.”