‘We cried when we held his hurl’
Rebellion stars’ emotion at seeing Collins artefact
THE three leads in RTÉ’s big budget 1916 drama Rebellion were so moved by their research into their roles that they all cried while holding Michael Collins’s hurl.
Charlie Murphy, Sarah Greene and Ruth Bradley are set to light up the screen in tonight’s opening episode – but Murphy tells this week’s TV Week that they visited the National Museum to get into character for the key roles.
But in getting to grips with the period, all three performers were overcome with emotion.
‘The girls and I got a private tour of the Collins Barracks and Brenda, the curator there, gave us the white gloves and brought us around the place. We were pulling out all these old dusty drawers with these really remarkable artefacts.
‘We got to hold Michael Collins’s hurl.
‘It seems very random and personal but we all cried when we held his hurl. And I couldn’t understand what was going on – that we were all suddenly in tears just from this one thing. We were trying to figure out why this one object triggered this emotional response, and I think it was because it was so small, yet it represented something so Irish from someone so important for Ireland.
‘You also get the sense that these people were so young and they lived [normal] lives as well. They weren’t 24-7 kamikaze men and women going all out for war. They were young and ambitious and idealistic... and that is inspirational. Not just because they were young people in their twenties, but also it’s sad to think about what state the country is in now, and what they fought for.
‘I saw this week a picture of people queuing for food aid in Dublin, and I had to stop and ask what has happened to the country now? ‘What has happened?’ Charlie asks. ‘It is quite emotional recreating things from the past.’
– The full interview can be read in this week’s TV Week.