CervicalCheck victim dies days before mediation talks with HSE and labs
Her famous father didn’t want her to act, but as she stars in a dark new Netf lix thriller, Eve Hewson says he’s now as proud as Punch...
RETIRED nurse Joan Lucey, 73, has died just days before her case connected with the CervicalCheck scandal was due to start.
Mediation with the HSE and two laboratories was due to go ahead next Tuesday. Mrs Lucey’s family had pleaded for mediation to start as soon as possible while Joan was on her deathbed.
However, she died in her home in Dingle, Co. Kerry, on Friday night.
The family intend to continue with her case in order to seek justice for their mother, but it is not clear what impact Mrs Lucey’s death will have on her case.
Her case centres on two alleged misreadings, misinterpretations or misreportings of cervical smears from 2011.
She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2019.
The case is against the HSE, Clinical Pathology Laboratories Inc., with headquarters in Austin, Texas, and MedLab Pathology Ltd with registered offices at Sandyford Business Park, Dublin. All claims are denied.
On Thursday, the parties agreed to go into mediation. However, they had turned down two mediation requests previously. CervicalCheck campaigner Stephen Teap – whose wife Irene died of cervical cancer not knowing her smear test results were incorrect – took to Twitter yesterday afternoon to share a tribute to Mrs Lucey.
‘God, I have no words,’ he said, ‘I hope your family get the truth and justice you fought for.
‘Hang your heads in shame, Micheál Martin, Stephen Donnelly, Leo Varadkar.’
Mrs Lucey’s death notice reads: ‘Joan, wife of the late Robbie. Sadly missed by her loving daughters Sinéad and Eileen, son Seán, sister Eileen, brother Seán, grandchildren Isobel, Jane and Fiadh, son-in-law Jonathan, niece, relatives and friends.’
EVE Hewson has told how her rock-icon father Bono initially didn’t want her to go down the acting route – but is now like a ‘stage mum’ who is proud of his daughter’s on-screen achievements.
And the U2 frontman has even more reason to sing her praises, as she is front an centre in a dark new Netflix miniseries called Behind Her Eyes.
She plays the lead character of Adele in the psychological thriller which explores a love triangle with a drak underbelly.
At the outset of the series you would be forgiven for thinking it’s a romantic comedy. It starts with the character Louise, a pretty, funny single mother, going to meet a gal pal at a trendy London bar. The friend doesn’t show up, and as Louise is standing to leave she performs the classic rom-com trick of spilling a drink over a tall, handsome stranger. Mortified, she insists on buying him a replacement, and over conversation attraction blossoms. Later, with both of them tipsy, he breaks off from a clinch and bolts.
Of course, in true rom-com fashion, they meet the very next day – she’s a secretary in a psychiatrist’s office and he’s the recently hired doctor, David Ferguson, who’ll be her new boss.
This is where Hewson’s character comes in, as things soon turn darker when it turns out David is married to beautiful, elegant Adele. The marriage is troubled and there are veiled references to something in their past that made them up sticks from Scotland to London. Louise, meanwhile, is lonely and struggling
‘Heroin has been a theme of my career’
to raise her son Adam, and plagued by nightmares that leave her sleepwalking to the edge of her flat balcony. When down-to-earth Louise and highly strung Adele form an unlikely friendship, the lives of all three take a sinister turn.
Hewson, who first found fame in 2014 as nurse Lucy Elkins in dark hospital drama The Knick and starred as adventurer Anna Wetherell in last year’s The Luminaries, says playing Adele was emotionally draining.
‘She was interesting because she does things we all wish we could do but would never let ourselves do in real life. She gets angry quickly, and to prepare for those scenes I’d smash a pillow with a bat to get in that mindset,’ she said.
Adele is also a drug addict. ‘Heroin is a theme of my career!’ smiles Eve, 29. ‘I’ve had a lot of experience injecting fake syringes, and on The Knick we had someone advise us where in their bodies addicts injected and why; sometimes they turned to injecting into their eyeballs. It was a desperate state to be in.’
Simona Brown, who appeared as Grace in The Night Manager, is cast as Louise while Vanity Fair’s Tom Bateman plays David, and Eve says it was the nail-biting material that made the three actors bond off-screen. ‘It was an intense shoot. Tom and I got really close, and Simona and I needed to as well as this is a story about a love triangle, but female friendship is important too. There’s a lot of love between Adele and Louise.’
She says it’s just as well she and Tom became friends as one love scene in particular was very steamy. ‘I’ve done a lot of sex scenes, and you just hope your partner is someone you get on with. We were comfortable with each other so it was all OK,’ she says.
The studio used intimacy coach Ita O’Brien, famous for choreographing the sex scenes on Normal People. ‘She was actually working on Normal People at the same time,’ says Eve. ‘I thought her work on that was beautiful.’
Born in Dublin (her full name is Memphis Eve Sunny Day Hewson – the Eve part came about because she was born at 7am on July 7 and Eve is the middle three letters of ‘seven’), she was raised with her three siblings by Bono and his activist wife Ali. Although her parents were against her becoming an actor, she made her debut in her early teens in the short film Lost And Found, then studied drama in New York.
She says her parents have finally accepted her choice of profession.
‘My dad’s like a crazy stage mum!’ she laughs. ‘Whenever we’re out he’s always introducing me as his daughter the actress and talking about my career. My mum’s supportive and encouraging too, so that’s really nice.’
Eve has spent the pandemic alternating between Dublin and her flat in London. Currently single, she says her evenings now consist of ‘a bottle of wine with my cat and Netflix’.
Behind Her Eyes is on Netflix.