Bryan Murray & Una Crawford
O’Brien Donal O’Donoghue chats to the Fair City stars and off-screen couple about the moments that changed their lives
They sit beside each other, completely comfortable in each other’s company. Una Crawford-O’Brien and Bryan Murray, or Renee and Bob from Fair City in another light; partners on-screen and off. Today, a day away from the drama of Carrigstown, they are happy to chew the fat and reel in their lives, through good times and bad. How they met, the slow burn of their relationship, their shared love of acting, their shared wariness of social media and the present laughter that keeps them together. At times, Bryan places his hand on Una’s knee, other times they take the mick out of each other. They talk of love, pain and the whole damn thing. Of how losing her baby daughter, Sorcha, to cot death, changed everything for Una and how even if all the world’s a stage, all that matters is now.
In 2015, the RTÉ Guide visited Una and Bryan at their home in Dublin. Back then, they had been together some eight years but Una Crawford-O’Brien wasn’t taking her happiness for granted. “I would hope that this relationship between Bryan and I will continue but it mightn’t,” she said with the pragmatism of someone who had seen life’s dark and light. Four years on and they are still thriving. “I’m living in the present,” she says. “I’m not looking to the future because it scares me. So I’m having a great time right now and that comes with experience and age. When my daughter died a number of years ago, that was an eye-opener. I thought I had all these years ahead with her. It made me realise that when you get the good times, grab them with both hands and make the most of it.”
And so it is. Today, Bryan Murray is wearing desert boots and colourful socks; Una is sporting stylish floral-style earrings that she bought in Barcelona. Together they have the vitality of a couple who are young at heart. “I will be celebrating a significant birthday this Saturday,” says Bryan (he will be 70). “I don’t feel 70 and we don’t live like that, do we?” To celebrate the occasion, Una has organised a garden party for family and friends at their home in Dublin and the following day, Bryan will go to the Bob Dylan/Neil Young concert in Kilkenny. “Next time round I’ll be a musician,” he says. Does he still play guitar? He nods. Beside him, Una shakes her head and smiles. He’s a ’60s man at heart and for his birthday present Una has bought them both a trip to India (“I always wanted to go ever since I first heard a sitar courtesy of the Beatles in ’65 or ’66).
Both were separated when they first met in August 2005. “I wasn’t looking for love and was quite happy to be on my own,” says Una, who had been married to Brian O’Brien, with whom she has two children, Tim and Fionn. “I had a job that I loved, I had two sons that I adored and I had great friends. The relationship was slow to start with and then I thought ‘He’s alright!’ And he made me laugh and still does. In fact he’s the only person who made me laugh so much that I fell off a chair.” Bryan had been married twice before he met Una and has five adult children. “Like relationships, it’s all about investing in things you love,” he says, referencing his unlikely path into acting, a workingclass kid with no history in the business. “If you want something, if you’re still alive inside, it’s all about going ahead and doing it. Meeting Una was not something that I thought would happen. But I did and it was great.”
Both Dubliners, they share working-class backgrounds and a life-long love of acting. Murray grew up in Islandbridge, the eldest of three; Una, one of four girls in suburban Clondalkin. “Remember those TVs with the rabbit ears?” he says. “I was about 12 or so and this drama called Tolka Row came on and I thought ‘ That’s what I want to do!’” Una, too, remembers watching the box with her grandmother, mesmerised by the test card and what was to come. In those outer limits of childhood their love of acting was born. Bryan dived in, acting from his early teens and going on to notch up some memorable screen
There are years when I can’t cope una
characters, including Fitz in Strumpet City, the roguish Florrie Knox in The Irish RM, the well-named Shifty in Bread and the villainous Trevor Jordache of Brookside, who ended his days buried under a patio.
“I took the long road,” says Una of her acting career. “From the time I saw Maureen Potter on the Gaiety stage, when I was four, that was what I wanted to do. But my mother said that I should get a good, pensionable job so I did. I taught speech and drama and worked in an office. After Sorcha died I thought I’d never act again because I thought ‘how dare I? Getting up to entertain people on the stage?’ I lost confidence in myself completely when Sorcha died but acting is what saved me as well. I will never forget the day I was driving into RTÉ to work over 20 years ago, driving past people in offices and thinking, ‘Yes, I’m doing what I love!’ And acting has saved me over the years when times have been bad, coming to work and doing what I love best. It’s an aphrodisiac in some ways.”
Do they believe in a greater power or purpose? “Sometimes it’s hard to see it but other times you go ‘yes, I really think that happened for a reason’,” says Una. And yet the death of Sorcha must have made her question everything? “It was terrible and it still is. There are years when I can’t cope. This year I could be great and next year I could be terrible. You just learn to live with it. So I try, and most of the times I succeed, in living for the day. It’s all about what might have been. Sorcha came between the two boys. I always wanted a daughter and here I had one. Then suddenly she wasn’t there anymore. And I still think today what it would be like to have a daughter. But you have to go on. Tim was just four and a half when Sorcha died and I couldn’t give up on him.”
Later she would become involved (and still is) with the charity First Light, which supports suddenly bereaved parents and families. And recently the couple walked hand-in-hand under the RTÉ banner at the Pride Parade in Dublin. So what’s love all about? Bryan cites the Beatles’ “love is all you need” even as Una burrows down into the nitty-gritty. “I love my sons, I love Bryan, I love my sisters, but it’s all a different kind of love. It’s not a warm gushing feeling, it’s a wholesome feeling. On occasion it can be painful, something that hurts, yet I couldn’t imagine a life without love.” They share a love of music, albeit different strokes: Bryan likes Sixties rock, Una likes musicals and Barbra Streisand and their song is the one they duetted on for Charity You’re A Star, ‘Somethin’ Stupid’. “We sing it together like a pair of eejits in the kitchen when it comes on the radio,” says Una and laughs.
Una has played Renee since her arrival in Carrigstown in 1998. “When I came into Fair City Renee was married to Christy who was a bit of a go-boy,” she says. “We moved in with his mother, Eunice (Joan O’Hara) and I suppose Renee was more working-class than she is now. When she met Bob she moved up in the world and she has notions.” “And you wouldn’t cross her,” adds Bryan. And then there is Bob. “He has a chequered past,” says Murray. “He was a bit of a conman at one stage and a bit desperate. What we must not forget about old Bob is that he has been homeless and was severely beaten up and was literally down and out. That has given him a steely back and also some kind of compassion that he might not have had before. It’s nice to see that reflected in the storyline now and again.”
Apart from Fair City the couple have appeared together in a number of films and stage plays. So what are the pros and cons of that arrangement? “Well, you can’t go home and give out about the person you’ve been working with all day,” says Una. Her laughter is joined by Bryan who picks up on the practical side of this set-up. “One of the perks of living with a fellow cast member, having a relationship on TV and in real life, is that you can actually rehearse your lines when you are washing the dishes.” They did as much earlier this year when they appeared in the Deirdre Kinahan two-hander, Halcyon Days, a show that goes back on the road in late September. “It’s a play about getting old and living in a nursing home,” says Bryan. “And yet it’s also a play that is full of joy.” Both fondly recall their late Fair City colleague, Tom Jordan. “Tom directed me in a play called Lovely People and we had such fun doing it,” says Una. “He was a true actor and a decent man.” And long before Fair City, Bryan Murray shared a TV screen with the actor. “I did my first ever scene with Tom some 40 years ago when shooting Strumpet City,” he says. “Tom was an actor to his innards and a great Equity man, someone who made sure all the other actors were looked after. I’m sure he’s happy wherever he is now.” Do they believe in a life beyond this? “For me life is too holy for it to be nothing,” says Murray. “For example we have two foxes at the end of our garden and they remind me that life is too fantastic and holy for it to be something that is fleeting.” Towards the end of the interview, there is a knock on the door and a call asking if anyone would like a glass of water. “How about three large glasses of white wine?” says Murray with a wide grin. Later that week Bryan’s children will travel to Dublin from the UK where they live, for the countdown to the big birthday. “We’re only starting out,” he says even as Una adds that they are already planning next year’s holiday. “When I first met Bryan he said that he’d love to spend a year in Greece,” she says. So they are going back to their favourite place. Then, chat over, they collect their clothes (his, unsurprisingly, is a collection of paisley shirts) and head for home. Well, Una is out the door: Bryan is still talking music and Dylan and maybe wondering if in the next life he’ll be a virtuoso guitar-player.
For me, life is too holy for it to be nothing Bryan