I WORRY EVERY DAY IF I’M A GOOD MOM
NADIA FORDE ON HER DIFFICULT CHILDHOOD, HER DECISION TO MOVE AWAY FROM MODELLING AND USING HER FAMILY’S FASCINATING STORY FOR A NEW COMEDY SCRIPT
Nadia Forde is an eternal optimist, a hopeless romantic and decidedly determined. The model, singer and actress has now added screenwriter to her repertoire as she has penned a series, The Lido, a drama-cum-comedy that is rooted in the reality of her Italian heritage.
A native of the middle-class suburb of Clontarf, Nadia had far from a privileged upbringing. Her father left the family when she was just a child and her mother, who had many struggles, found herself unable to cope with two young children. Nadia and her brother were shunted around to various members of her family, a fractured and destructive childhood that has left an indelible mark. But far from harbouring any bitterness, Nadia has turned her trauma into tenacity.
Now a mother herself – to four-year-old daughter Wyatt with her husband, Welsh rugby player Dominic Day – the 33-year-old has taken a retrospective delve into her past and found a reinvigorated sense of purpose. The nature of her fractured home life, the abandonment of her father and the precariousness of her mother meant that, from a very formative age, she had had to be self-reliant.
It was this enforced independence that saw a 15-year-old Nadia seek work in the modelling industry. This was during the Celtic tiger days when, rain or shine – or even snow – you’d find a group of models on Grafton Street and its surrounding areas donning skimpy clothes, brandishing humongous signs, frolicking with giant animals or jumping into ponds, to gain maximum exposure for a brand.
The ‘bikini-on-the-green’ brigade are infamous in Irish lore – and Nadia was front and centre of the cortege. ‘I was in my teens and this job was changing my life,’ she recalls. ‘It gave me financial independence. I was getting booked for acting roles on things like The Republic Of Telly and panto. I was very naive. But it was a very, very different time.’
Despite her retrospective misgivings, Nadia shoulders the weight of her own responsibility. ‘I was a willing participant in my work,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to make a better life for myself. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I think the part I wasn’t considering – maybe I just took years of growing up and becoming a mom to a girl myself – is to realise just how it was viewed. I never questioned anything. I just turned up and put on what I was told to put on. I never really thought about how it would be perceived. It was a job.’
Now, having gained greater insight, she is both reflective and forward-thinking about how past decisions can have unintended future consequences. ‘I just think it’s interesting that women are – in lots of ways – conditioned to be objectified and then it’s used against them,’ she says. ‘It’s an interesting place to look at and explore. As women we are told, “be beautiful, stay young”, all these types of tropes, and then in the same vein this is what’s used against women.
‘Having a daughter myself has made me change but there’s far worse things that could be on the internet than a bloody image of me holding up a cardboard sign.’
Having gained a profile and fan base, Nadia