Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Magical journey led Jessie Buckley to Chernobyl
PASADENA, Calif. — The beginning seemed so promising for actress Jessie Buckley. The Irish performer trekked to London when she was just 17 and soon landed a role in a play. When the run ended, she was contacted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and was offered a free fourmonth course in Shakespeare. She snapped at the chance, even though Buckley was primarily a musical performer.
“I went and my mind was like kewwwww!,” she shakes her head. “I all of a sudden felt completely unnerved and enlivened and awake to something that I’d never even thought would be a thing for me. And that kind of challenge of words and of making words belong to people … that first course was the first time I felt really alive and challenged,” she pauses.
“Then I got drunk in a bar and became a jazz singer for two years.”
Buckley explains that turn of events in her lilting Irish accent. “From the play I was doing at the West End we got this free membership to the Ivy Club. It was at the time it was just starting up.
“There was an awesome jazz piano player called Joe Thompson there and genuinely, I got drunk one night and started singing. He was like, ‘I’d love to work with you.’ So over the course of two, three months — it was so mad — we got a residency at Annabel’s, which is this weird private club in Mayfair. And nobody listened to me (sing) because it was all Russian Mafioso and odd jobs, so I learned my repertoire over three months. And we just toured around different jazz venues in London and outside. It was completely magical,” she laughs.
Magical is the word for Buckley’s journey so far. Although she was severely depressed as a teenager, her career trajectory has been supersonic.
It reaches its zenith Monday when she co-stars in HBO’s five-part miniseries on the catastrophic nuclear disaster, Chernobyl. Buckley plays Lyudmilla, the wife of a firefighter who finds herself snared in one of the worst man-made disasters in history.
“When I was growing up in Ireland, every year families would foster Chernobyl children,” Buckley says.
“So when I got sent the script and Lyudmilla’s story and read the humanity behind it, I was terrified, scared. You have to be as honest and tell the story as honestly as possible. So I went in and read and they seemed to like me,” she shrugs.
People have always liked her. A London lawyer saw her in her first play and came backstage offering to pay her tuition at RADA, pony up her rent and cover singing and acting lessons. “And he never asked anything in return,” she says.
“He is literally an angel,” she sighs. “I wouldn’t be doing what I am today if it hadn’t been for him.”
The oldest of five, Buckley attended Catholic school and says she has a faith, “but it’s not proscriptive.” Her mother is a singer and actress; her father ran a guest house and is a poet. She may owe part of her rebellious spirit to him.
When she forsook her studies to hit the jazz trail, she says, “He was delighted that I was cavorting around the U.K. And when I went back to college at RADA, he said, ‘Burn your bras! Cause havoc!’”
While she shares that carefree spirit, she has also had some dark days. “In the middle of that (jazz tour) I was suffering from a bad depression from when I was young,” she confesses. “So I think that singing and acting was a complete escape and actually a survival kit for me to actually get out.
“And I was afraid of myself in lots of ways. I think I was trying to learn about myself by going out. You begin to know what you value and what is important to you so at that point I think I was kind of effervescently like a spinning top, just bulldozing through adventures and life and feckless and had no boundaries — but they felt real at the time and I’m a human person who sometimes gets sad. That’s very real.”
She left her studies at RADA early because she snagged the role of Miranda in
The Tempest at Shakespeare’s famous Globe Theatre. “That was just magic and I was just terrified,” she says.
“But working there is like being a rock star in Shakespeare’s land. The experience of telling a story like that to a crowd that just wants to be told stories so much is just thrilling. And it was such a fun summer. I did that, then another Shakespeare after that.”
Her first significant part on television was another Russian woman — she played the sympathetic daughter, Marya, in War & Peace. “I felt she was completely opposite to my … Irishness,” says Buckley, 29. “She was just so delicate, like a porcelain vase, and had this beacon of hope in her heart against the odds.”
In spite of her success so far, acting can be difficult, she says. “It’s a struggle sometimes, and sometimes you have massive panic attacks. You think, ‘I can’t do this. I’m not going to do this justice.’ Or, ‘I haven’t done enough research.’ If I ever felt sure I think I probably didn’t care enough. I’d be more afraid of that.” Chernobyl airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. on HBO.