Robert Sheehan
There’s a bit of devilment in Robert Sheehan which he plays to the hilt as a tormented superhero in The Umbrella Academy. He talks to Donal O’Donoghue about the perils of fame, what he has learned from failure and why he wants to be a dad
Donal O’Donoghue meets the Irish star of The Umbrella Academy
“So there was this time when I was 13 or 14 and you know the way young lads do these silly things of saying ‘Right, there’s going to be a massive fight on the Green this evening so you have to pick a side.’ Anyway loads of us converged on the Green for a bit of messing, nothing serious. Then the cops rolled up and dad (a local Garda) jumps out of the car with a big angry head on him. He sees me and roars out: ‘ROBERT!’ And I was like Aaaarghhh! and I just ran off. That was the only time I had a run in with dad in uniform in public.” Robert Sheehan loves a bit of messing: a natural born show-off, with the talent to back it up. On screen he is a mercurial, impish presence, light and shade, whether as Nathan in Misfits (for which he was Bafta-nominated) or Darren in Love/Hate or his latest incarnation, Klaus, the tormented superhero who sees dead people in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. In person, he can be exuberant, with the stylists for the Netflix shoot having their hands full getting him to keep his clothes on. Yet Sheehan is less wild than I imagined. Perhaps that has to do with his recent visit to Bali where he studied meditation, or maybe he’s just getting older (he turned 31 last month).
When we meet he’s in a white T-shirt, tight jeans and a studded denim jacket. He looks as much rock star as actor, lean and tanned, with magnetic green eyes and charm to burn. “Have we met before?” he asks, as he languidly stretches across a couch. No, but a few years back I did meet Dennis Quaid, his co-star in the HBO series, Fortitude. The grizzled actor was beguiled by the young man from Portlaoise. “He’s such a sweet kid and he can play this balance where you don’t know whether he’s God or the Devil,” said Quaid. “He saw stuff in that script that I would never have seen.”
Sheehan is genuinely chuffed by this, but it’s true that he has the alchemical ability to see the devil – or the deity – in the detail. “The screenplay is just a guide,” he says, and so it is with Klaus, a tortured soul who drowns himself in drugs and alcohol to numb the pain. Klaus, aka Number 4, is one of seven siblings, adopted at birth by an eccentric billionaire who forges their special abilities in his draconian academy and whips them into a crime-fighting team. The show is based on the graphic novel series, The Umbrella Academy, which Sheehan, not a comic-book fan, had never read. Yet he has an astute description of the series, likening it to a messed up X Men meets The Royal Tennebaums.
Failure is at the heart of a narrative that teases out the relationships of this dysfunctional super family. For Sheehan, living with failure is a crucial rite of passage. “I really think that you can’t learn from anything else like failure. I suppose I learned humility from failure, but you also have to learn selfcompassion; you can’t beat yourself up because of your failures.” Sheehan grew up in Portlaoise, the third child of Joe and Maria. He once described his sister Shauna, who has a Master’s in international finance, as “the brains of the operation” while his brother Brendan, a bodybuilder, was twice voted Mister Ireland. “I’m just the leftover bits,” he says with a laugh before getting serious. “I suppose I’m the creative part of the family.” At age ten, he landed the lead in the school play, Oliver with a Twist; two years later he scored a bit part in Song for a Raggy Boy and following school and a brief third level side-trip (film and TV studies at GMIT), he stepped up the ladder: The Clinic, The Tudors, indie movie Cherrybomb, a part in the Red Riding trilogy, which nailed him Misfits.
Now though, Sheehan seems to have new priorities coming into focus. “There’s no way I’m not starting a family,” he told Hot Press last year, an interview that also riffed on sex and drugs and working with Woody Allen if the opportunity arose. “Well yes, if the swimmers comply,” he says now of fatherhood. “I’d love to be a dad. I was holding Tom and Laura Hopper’s baby yesterday and it was so nice. I really want one, my ovaries are glowing. You know I was talking to my mate Duncan, well I’ll drop the name, why not, Duncan Jones, who directed me in Mute, and he’s 47 or so and has just had his second child and he said ‘Robert, if you can get started on the kids earlier do. I’m knackered.’” It’s hard to imagine Robert Sheehan being knackered. Even in repose he exudes a restless energy. “I think that I’m getting more restless as I get older,” he says. “That’s why meditation is good for me because it reminds me that I don’t have to be constantly doing that. It’s not necessarily running away from anything. Luckily, I don’t have many demons that I quarrel with. Meditation teaches me how to be OK with myself, to be OK with no noise or distractions.”
He never had any formal stage training. “My mother imbued me with a sense of youthful bulletproof-ness,” he says. “Part of the cocksuredness was thinking I don’t need to go to drama school. I really didn’t learn about drama school until Misfits because most of them had gone to school and it was then I realised that in school you really get to hone your craft.”
Don’t actors need to be cocksure? “Well yes, to deal with the rejection,” he says. “I once auditioned about 900 times for this TV thing. I didn’t get the part and I was thinking I left my best on the table and they didn’t want me. It was my dad who gave me that kick up the arse. He said ‘What are you talking about? It’s not your failing, they just wanted something else.’ So you have to keep that bulletproof-ness in order to survive, to keep your mental health in order.”
Of course, there’s also the fun bits of fame, like the local newspaper poll to find the greatest Laois person of all time. Sheehan was pitted against celebrity cook Darina Allen. “Yeah I heard that a couple of days ago,” he giggles. “But I beat Darina. I’m now into the quarter-final.”
Following the interview, Sheehan pops by the Netflix desk to say hello to some friends. He’s effortlessly charming, hugs and smiles all round. But like many actors, he also wears the mask, however lightly, if only for selfpreservation. Asked about his next project, he speculates on The Umbrella Academy going into a second season. “Cautiously optimistic,” he offers, an actor who has learned not to count his chickens. But it would be a blast to see Klaus back on screen, both barrels, demon and deity. As for the greatest Laois person of all time? I reckon Mister Sheehan is a shoo-in.
Luckily I don’t have many demons that I quarrel with
I’d love to be a dad