Ag caint le Ciara
Ciara Cox, who plays Maeve in Ros na Rún and was Ella in the TG4 teen drama Saol Ella, talks about growing up as Gaeilge
Because all of the current series of Ros na Rún has already been lmed, Ciara is now just focusing on school work until the end of the school year. “Tomorrow, I have a physics exam, so I need to get ready for that,” she says when we spoke recently.
Ciara has learned in Irish right through primary school into secondary, and she has grown up in an Irish-speaking home too. “My mom is from here in Spiddal and my dad isn’t but I think he speaks really good Irish. He didn’t go to an Irish school, but his Irish is very good. They both speak Irish at home, so I’ve always kind of been brought up with it.”
Beyond home and school, Ciara also benefitted as a youngster from the Irish language shows that TG4 creates, including Aifric, which she says re ected her own life, “which is cool because it’s a storyline of teenage girls and growing up in the Gaeltacht.
“It’s also good to get to work on something similar [ Saol Ella] to something I loved as a kid.”
Although she says she’s a bit old for them now, Ciara sees the value of the many Irish language versions of animated shows that Cúla4 makes for its youngest viewers. She says “They might have seen the cartoons in English and then it’s easier for them if they already know the gist of the show, when they then see it in Irish.”
Having always gone to a Gaelscoil, Ciara says she was surprised as a youngster when she found out that some kids learned through English. “I never really thought about it,” she says, “but it’s weird because I just thought that Irish was a given. Learning in Irish is just normal to me.”
Although Ciara’s work on Ros na Rún is nished for this season, she will be appearing later this year in a short lm, Grando. Written and directed by Rachel Walsh, the lm follows a young girl attempting to emulate Marlon Brando in her school play. It will be shown during the Fastnet Film Festival, fastnet lmfestival.com