‘I lost a huge part of my life when my Dad died’
In her most emotional interview ever, Ruth Negga talks about loss, her love of her Limerick family... and longing to move home
I lost a huge part of my life when Dad died Limerick is my heartbeat
ON THE GRIEF OF LOSING HER FATHER I find it difficult to talk about... if I’m still dealing with it, I don’t think it’s anything I need to share
ON CASTLEGREGORY, CO. KERRY It’s an ever-present, steady thing ...everything changes, but not the Magharees, and not Spillane’s pub
ON IRELAND HAVING A GAY TAOISEACH It’s brilliant, but just because you are gay and half-Indian doesn’t mean you’re not a neoconservative
ON HER RELATIVES IN LIMERICK We really care about one another. My entire family made sure that my mother and I weren’t left alone
RUTH Negga is deeply homesick, for her hometown of Limerick and for Ireland in general. It’s been eight months since she was last back for a visit and her longing for her family and friends is acute. She says she listens to RTÉ constantly and is eager to talk about current affairs in Ireland when we meet in Beverly Hills.
Dressed in a black and green Dolce & Gabbana dress, she looks both elegant and puckish at the same time. Her boyfriend of the past six years, Dominic Cooper — who is also her co-star in the TV show Preacher — is in the hotel too and they greet each other very tenderly as they make their way to talk to journalists.
Ruth has just had some bad news about a family member in Limerick and appears uncharacteristically emotional and vulnerable this morning.
‘I have a very good family and I’ve had bad news about one of them today, which is why my eyes are a bit red,’ she says. ‘I have a very kind, very lovely, big family. I haven’t been home in so long.
‘I remember thinking as a kid in Dooradoyle that we were really nice to each other, genuinely. We really care about one another. We respect one another’s viewpoints — we don’t always have the same viewpoints — but it’s always kind. I lost my dad when I was very young and I think my entire family made sure that I wasn’t left alone and that my mother wasn’t left alone. She has five sisters and four brothers — we lost my aunt last year, which was awful.’
The 35-year-old was born in Ethiopia to a local doctor. Her mother had gone to work there as a nurse and met her father but he was tragically killed in a car accident shortly before the family was to move back to Ireland. It’s a subject she still finds very hard to address.
‘I find it difficult to talk about losing my father, because I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business,’ she says. ‘I left Ethiopia when I was very young, for reasons I find very hard to talk about.
‘I don’t go back that often and I’ve lost the language — I spoke Amharic when I was a child and Tigrinya,’ she says of two of the prominent languages used in the country. ‘I lost a huge part of my life when my dad died. If I’m still dealing with it, I don’t think it’s anything I need to share with anybody else.’
In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ruth and her mother moved back to Limerick to be near their family — which helped them come to terms with the tragedy as well as giving Ruth a different outlook on life.
‘I had a very peculiar childhood,’ she admits. ‘I’m an only child and I lived with a lot of different family members, a lot of them were boys. They were always reading comic books, so I started reading them too. They would listen to Metallica, which I thought was nonsense, and now I have an affection for Metallica.’
When Ruth was a teenager, she and her mother moved to London, where she now shares a home with Dominic Cooper. Though she has been living in the English capital for most of her adult life, Ruth feels both her Irish and her Ethiopian identity very keenly.
‘When people say I’m British it really irks me. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is. I consider myself Ethiopian-Irish — that’s what I am. I feel strongly that you should be allowed to identify with whatever you want to be identified with.’
She studied acting at Trinity College and is grateful to have been given significant parts at the National Theatre in London but would still love to step on stage at the Abbey in Dublin.
‘Ireland and Limerick are my touchstones. Limerick is my heartbeat,’ she says, her voice breaking and the tears coming. ‘I want to go home. I’d love to be living in the West of Ireland. I miss it terribly. I listen to RTE constantly.’
She has brought Dominic to Ireland many times, showing him Limerick and also Castlegregory in Kerry, where her family have spent summers every year since she was three years old.
‘I could literally draw you the rocks on the shoreline of Castlegregory,’ she says. ‘It’s an everpresent, steady thing — everything else changes, but not these things. The Magharees, those don’t change, Spillane’s pub...
‘I’ve brought Dominic to Castlegregory in winter and in summer. You can’t not love it, you can’t not love Ireland. I would worry about someone if I brought them there and they didn’t like it!’
She’s not the only A-lister who has strong ties to Ireland and she had a chance meeting recently with another actor who’s keen to hold on to their Irish roots.
‘I met Dominic West last week, who is in the process of turning Glin Castle into a hotel. We used to pass Glin all the time on our way to Castlegregory every summer and I was at Dominic’s wedding to the daughter of the Knight of Glin. It was amazing. Anyway, Dominic said to me, “get married soon, get married in Glin Castle, we need you to get married there”.’
She won’t be drawn on whether she has any marriage plans at the moment, but the seeds of having a wedding party in Glin Castle appear to have taken root. With her huge Irish family, it’s sure to be a big guest list.
When she thinks back to first moving home to be closer to that family, how different is the Ireland of today to the country she came to in the 1980s?
‘I haven’t been home in so long and I haven’t lived there for ten years,’ she says. ‘But when I was growing up, I saw my first punk in Ireland, in Limerick in fact. I will never forget it. I remember his pink hair. I was thinking, “when I grow up, I want to be like him.” Hopefully I have. I think I have.
‘I first heard David Bowie in Limerick when I was eight and that influenced me hugely.
‘I’m very proud of what Ireland has done recently and what the world has done recently and I think Ireland has been an important part of that. I hope that the new administration in Ireland will continue to reflect this, but I’m not so sure.
‘I think Irish politics has been affected by the idea that we’ve had a lot of movement recently towards a vote for repeal of the 8th Amendment. I happen to be a big fan of that and I hope it happens. There’s a movement towards a bigger representation of women everywhere, including the arts. That’s a good thing and I hope it will continue.’
Ireland was a very mono-cultural, white, Catholic country when Ruth first came here, I wonder what her views are about the recent election of Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach? She doesn’t mince her words.
‘I’ve thought about this for a long time. Just because you’re gay and you’re half-Indian doesn’t mean you’re not neoconservative,’ she
says with a laugh. ‘I’m not sure. It’s brilliant and it’s incredible because I love my country and part of me is so delighted that it wasn’t even questioned, was it?
‘What was in question was, what was he going to do? I’m glad we had this discourse because I think for so long, I always felt like Irish politics is so, so boring. There’s no voices there.’
Ruth has worked nearly constantly in film and television since she first came to prominence in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto in 2005. She had roles in small screen hits Love/Hate and Misfits before winning big-screen slots in World War Z and 12 Years A Slave.
She is currently starring in the second season of Preacher, which is based on a comic book written by Northern Irish writer Garth Ennis. The show films mostly in Texas and she’s a huge fan.
‘I love this comic book because for someone who grew up in Ireland, my character Tulip is exploring the idea of faith. What are the consequences of faith? What do you believe in and why? And why should everyone else have to suffer? We all have these ideas about what we should do with our lives, but it should never be to the detriment of others.’
She has also drawn on her childhood experiences to bring more to the role.
‘Everyone always asks me, “how can you play an American? You grew up in Ireland.” When I grew up, our gaze was always towards America. My grandfather grew up watching The Virginian, that was his weekly treat. America was where it happened, that’s where everything happened.
‘I’ve always felt very global. I’m very particular and peculiar, I know that, I’ve always known that. But regardless, as Irish people we’ve always looked towards America.’
This year Ruth became a mega-star for playing the part of Mildred Loving in the movie Loving, about an interracial couple in the US in the 1960s. She garnered multiple major nominations for the role, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe. At the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep called her out by name and I am curious to know what that felt like. It triggers more tears.
‘I have been working non-stop since that night, so I really haven’t had time to think about it,’ she says. ‘When I go home, I’ll think about it.
‘First off, I grew up in a place where Meryl Streep was our hero. My entire family in Ireland was like, “oh my gosh, that’s so lovely” and it was such a lovely thing. My aunts and all the women I grew up with were so touched. They were crying. I was crying. She’s who we grew up with.
‘When she made her remarks and included me, my family were ecstatic. I was never that intimate with Meryl, then she said that and the camera was on me and it was such a pleasure.
‘It was very beautiful and a lovely thing for her to do and when I go home and get a minute to think, I will reflect on it and cherish it. ‘It was lovely for me, just lovely.’ With that, Ruth Negga is gone. And I am left hoping that someday soon she does makes it home – for good.
It was a very beautiful and lovely thing