Rock Star As she gets ready to return to our screens in the new season of Red Rock, award-winning actress Denise McCormack sits down with Jess O’Sullivan
As she returns to our screens in the new season of Red Rock, Denise McCormack tells Jess O Sullivan why she envies her male colleagues and why she’s proud to play a complicated woman on television
As a TV actor, you know you’ve made it when a random stranger shouts your character’s name at you on holiday. In Denise McCormack’s case, it was a British tourist shouting “Oi, Bridget Kiely!” at her across a Spanish supermarket. Bridget is a central character in Red Rock, Virgin Media’s successful soap-drama hybrid. Almost pathologically sel sh and ambitious, Bridget is the type of character who viewers love to hate, but more importantly, love to watch. is is the reason why British tourists in Spanish supermarkets recognise her and part of the reason why the show was picked up by the BBC and Amazon Prime in the US and New Zealand. Denise regards this kind of recognition as a huge compliment for the show, which she feels is helping to break down the o en twee version of Ireland that is typically presented to viewers around the world. “I think Red Rock is realistic in its depiction of modern Irish life and it was quite sophisticated in how it did that. at makes me very proud that it’s done so well in England and America, because it challenges the Irish stereotype. It’s something that is being shown abroad that we can be proud of. It is so uniquely Irish, but it isn’t that we have shillelaghs and are all Irish dancing.”
Red Rock has undergone some changes since it rst aired in 2015. Since then, it has found a sweet spot at the drama end of the TV spectrum, returning to Virgin Media One on February 4. Originally billed as a soap, in September 2016, the series got a major overhaul with a new theme tune and a once-weekly hour-long episode. Most importantly, its new post-watershed 9pm slot meant the writers could concoct even grittier storylines, which as an actor Denise relished.
ere is another signi cant reason that Denise is proud to play the singleminded matriarch of the Kiely family: Red Rock is one of the few Irish TV shows with strong female leads driving the action. Cathy Belton, who plays Bridget’s arch-nemesis, the equally unrelenting Patricia Hennessy, also ies the ag for the sisterhood in the show. e initial scenario was two feuding families, with a strong matriarch at the head of each. is was before Big Little Lies and other female-led TV dramas became mainstream. “I think Red Rock was ahead of that trend in terms of equal representation on our screens. With the Hennessys, there was no patriarchal gure, and with the Kielys, Vincent [Bridget’s husband, as played by Paul Roe] is around, but Bridget is the instigator of a lot of what goes on. I was very proud to do that. Hopefully, we’re coming out of a time when women aren’t represented at a certain age, or at a certain stage in life. I don’t think we’re out of that totally, but it was great to see from the start that these two women were the cornerstone of this drama.”
Denise feels that now is a great time for women in the industry, especially older women who are sometimes sidelined into insipid supporting roles by Hollywood. She uses Patricia Arquette’s recent Golden Globe win as an example. “Escape at Dannemore was so good. Patricia Arquette really deserved that award. Her character was amazing and she was brilliant. Not only is she of a certain age, but she’s presenting a woman on screen who’s not particularly beautiful in the usual sense of what’s considered beautiful. She is carrying weight, she has glasses, her hair isn’t done, she doesn’t wear makeup, she’s not botoxed up to the eyeballs and why should she be? at is not how half of our society looks.”
is is where Denise feels slightly jealous of her male counterparts in the acting world, both on screen and o , and why she thinks promoting your work is more stressful for a woman. “Men get away with having bulging bellies and big bums, and everyone turns a blind eye. As an actor you embody a character and that’s your job and that’s what you’re comfortable doing. But when it’s you, I just nd it really awkward. You kind of have to be a hairstylist, a make-up artist, a model, you have to style your own clothes... and we’re none of those things, so it’s di cult. Men don’t have any of those problems. ey just turn up and don’t give a toss, and get a photo taken and nobody cares. Nobody will say: ‘Oh look at them, their clothes didn’t stand out, their tummy was a bit big, or their arms were a bit big.’ It’s very stressful for women. It would be lovely just to turn up and not have the migraines to go with it.”
Denise lives in a house full of men, rearing her two sons, Harvey (6) and Sidney (4) with her ancé Barry. She feels body image is a di cult terrain for young people, especially young girls. “I don’t have daughters, and I don’t know how I would navigate that. I’ve heard from friends who have daughters, and actually friends of mine who have sons, that the kids are coming in talking about their weight. Like six and seven-year-olds saying: ‘I’m chubby’ and ‘I’m overweight’. It’s really dangerous, so I hope other industries, like the lm industry is doing, follow suit in normalising di erent body types.”
Creating a variety of female roles is very important to Denise and the Red Rock writers. Bridget could have been a one-dimensional “bad woman” but viewers have come to see that she is anything but straightforward. “ ere aren’t enough complicated women on TV,” laments Denise. “I was very conscious of Bridget not being labelled anything in particular. ere isn’t a huge sexual appeal around the character. Sure, it could have gone that way but it wasn’t necessary. We were all conscious of creating a character that was believable and dynamic and strong. Her ambitions are a negative drive, but that’s part of life.” Denise makes playing a complicated woman look easy, even if di cult to watch at times, especially when she is manipulating her family. e typical Irish mammy she isn’t. “She had le her family and gone o for ten years. en she sails back in when her son Darren dies. My take on it was that the grass isn’t always greener. Now she’s back in the town she grew up in. She’s disgruntled and she wants more. She wants a better lifestyle and she will do absolutely anything to get it because she feels she deserves it. She’s quite narcissistic as well.”
As a mother herself, is playing someone who doesn’t appear to have a maternal bone in her body di cult at times? Especially as Bridget so o en leads her children to a life of crime, a path they might not have taken had she stayed away. “It is really interesting to play her. When you have kids, the thoughts of anyone being cruel to a child whether that’s physical or mental, or any sort of abuse, is just beyond your understanding. So when you have to step into those parts and think about that it is very, very di cult. I always imagine that her son Keith could have taken a di erent path if she hadn’t encouraged him. He’s pliable because he absolutely loves his mother and wants to impress her, so it’s an interesting dynamic.”
Denise says the key to playing someone like Bridget is not to judge her, even if everyone else is doing just that. “You have to nd something in your character that’s quite like you actually. You nd a lot of stu that is beyond your comprehension, that you have to then try and understand, and then you have to nd elements of yourself that are similar, something in them that’s quite like you and fuse both. But also it helps that I’ve gotten a little bit better at leaving stu at work. Bridget can stay in Red Rock.”