The Dublin actor takes a starring role in the TV drama, Domina. Donal O’donoghue chats to him
Liam Cunningham has never forgotten his roots or stopped shouting for those without a voice. Ahead of his new drama, Domina, he spoke to Donal O’donoghue about fame, his beliefs and Game of Thrones
Once upon a time, long before Game of rones ruled the TV earth, I sat on the DART opposite a familiar face. My train companion was looking sea-wards, lost in thought or maybe just hoping that no eejit would badger him for a sel e or ask about that scene from such and such.
Now, I had met Liam Cunningham a couple of times previously: in Belfast for the premiere of Hunger, in which he played a priest opposite Michael Fassbender’s Bobby Sands as well as a brief interview on the stairs of a cinema at another red-carpet premiere. Since then, the world has shifted. Cunningham spent seven years with Game of Thrones, was wined and dined by Hollywood, but he seems unchanged by fame or fashion.
Liam Cunningham still lives in his home town. “Oh God, yes, I’m in sunny Dublin and not in my gated community in Beverly Hills,” he cracks when we meet by Zoom, peddling a line used a few times before. For umpteen years, the actor has lived in Killester with his wife Colette (married 37 years and counting), where they raised their three children and from where he has travelled the world to tell stories big and small, the latest being Domina, Sky Atlantic’s drama set in Ancient Rome. The eight-episode drama charts the rise of Livia Drusilla (Kasia Smutniak) the powerful wife of the emperor, Augustus Caesar, in what is being billed as a new feminist take on an age-old tale.
“In a patriarchal society, this woman got through a nest of vipers to become the first Empress of Rome,” says Cunningham, who was intrigued by the show’s female perspective (as well as the fact it was shot on location). The actor plays, Livius, father of Livia and senator of the Roman Republic, a man whose egalitarian beliefs dovetail with Cunningham’s. “Well of course, yes, because the Republic is representative of the people,” he says.
Then there’s the sex. “I’ll have to wait until very late at night to watch that,” says Liam. “But at that time the average life expectancy was 35 or 40, so they were getting married early and having kids. They didn’t have Glenroe to keep them occupied, so they had to keep themselves busy somehow, Donal.” There is something reassuringly down-toearth, and fun too, about Liam Cunningham. It’s not just his sweary vernacular or his passionate political beliefs (at one point he quotes Karl Marx’s line about religion being the opium of the people) or even the fact that the 59-year-old jokes about “accelerating towards decrepitude.
“Top bloke!” he says of his Game of Thrones co-star, Conleth Hill. I’m sure the same could be said of the one-time electrician, who came to acting relatively late and, maybe for that very reason, was never suckered by the glitter of celebrity or put too much stock in the weight of failure. “I don’t carry regrets,” he says, “it just drains your positivity.” Liam Cunningham was born in inner city Dublin. His father, Michael, worked in the docks, his mother, Kathleen, still going strong, ran the home (three girls, two boys). When he was eight or nine, the family moved out to Kilmore West,
I stumble my way through life and hope not to make too many mistakes along the way
literally the countryside at that time. Teenage Liam was a punk, a rebel with many causes. And he’s still fighting the good fight. “The older you get, the more you look like a cantankerous moaner. Of course, that’s not going to stop me giving out about injustice. I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror. So I try to do a little, use whatever temporary bit of celebrity I have as a voice for all those who don’t have one. I just try and shout as loudly as I can to get help for them.”
In 1984, still working for the ESB, Liam married Colette, and together they moved to Zimbabwe for three years. “It changed me enormously,” he says. “My first time on a plane was flying over to Africa, where I worked in the bush and came across many subsistence farmers and mud-hut villages. Those people are infinitely more decent and dignified than those who are just out to get as much as they can from society at whatever cost. I don’t understand why such people are celebrated. So my time in Africa laid the groundwork for my interest in people who don’t have a voice: usually the poor or those people who are militarily sh*t upon, like what we are seeing in Palestine.”
His shouting – and campaigning – was recognised last year when the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) honoured Cunningham for his humanitarian work in South Sudan, Greece and elsewhere, with a lifetime award. “It was a real honour, but you feel like a bit of a fraud because you’re only using your voice, he says. “So I accepted it on behalf of those people who do it on the ground, but it was slightly embarrassing because I live here on the northside of Dublin in a comfortable home. I’m not struggling and I don’t have to overcome great difficulties. But it was a great honour and I don’t take it lightly. If I can use that to roar about something else, I’ll use it.”
For seven seasons, Cunningham played Ser Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones, the show’s moral compass and one of the few characters to get out of that bloodbath alive. “Game of Thrones was nearly a third of my career,” he says. “Yet it couldn’t continue ad infinitum. For me, it ended at the right time, even as I was incredibly glad of being in it. I will miss the people I worked with and the great writing, but we are strolling players so it’s not up to us. So I was kind of glad that it ended because I wanted to go off and do other things. It’s not good for an actor to get too comfortable with one thing; you need a certain amount of trepidation to keep you on your toes. As my mother says: ‘Hunger is a great sauce.’”
In Domina, the living believe that they can communicate with the dead. Does he believe in such ideas? “No. I believe that your connections to your past are through you kids and the whole DNA thing: the mannerisms you pick up, the traits you have absorbed and all that sort of stuff. In that respect, I believe we have a through-line right back to the ascent of man in Africa. Whether any of that is spiritual, I don’t see any proof and I always like to see a bit of proof. Belief or faith is not enough for me. Faith and belief are a choice. Listen, there’s nothing I’d like more than to have the comfort of religion but unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of having an imaginary friend.”
So he doesn’t have conversations with his late dad? He shakes his head. “My primary feeling when my father passed away was that I had been robbed of a man I wanted to spend more time with. Now when I’m asked whether I’d like to be buried or cremated, I say ‘I won’t give a f***’ because I’ll be dead. Religion is, as Marx put it, the opium of the people. It’s there so people can think if you’ve had a hard life here it will be great in the next one. I don’t buy it. It suits the rich, it suits the church, it suits the powerful. I think we could do a lot better if we took care of the little time we have in looking after each other instead of expecting our reward when we’re in the ground.”
He is, as he puts it, a strolling player, a teller of stories. “The reason we watch Game of Thrones or Hunger or whatever, is because we are attracted to the stories of people we haven’t even met,” he says. “When I read a story, I wonder what would I do in that position? I find that stuff intriguing and always will. Like many, I just have this curiosity about humanity and human relationships. And ultimately, our legacy is the stories we tell, the stories we are. When I talk to my kids about their grandad, it’s like ‘Let me tell you what your grandad did in the ’40s or ’50s.’ It’s what we leave behind because we’ll all get forgotten down the line until it’s someone else’s turn on the pale blue dot that is our planet.”
Next month, Liam Cunningham will turn 60. He laughs when I mention it. “I don’t really have any regrets, even if I’ve made a dodgy decision about a job or whatever,” he says. “At the time I made the right decision with the information I had. So I don’t torture myself. If you’ve made a mistake, just get up and dust yourself down and try and make a more informed decision the next time. I love the people around me and I live a fairly simple life. I don’t need the trappings of fame. I’m the same as most others in that I stumble my way through life and hope not to make too many mistakes along the way.” And will he celebrate the birthday? “We’ll see. I might be working on the day, up to me neck in muck.”
I was kind of glad that Game of Thrones ended because I wanted to go off and do other things
I have to be able to look at myself in the mirror