RATS’ RETURN
Is GOT star going back to his Roose?
‘Never say never is all I’m saying’
‘We’re showing people drunk and smoking’
Michael McElhatton hints he may return to playing the lovable ex-con role which set him on the path to fame 25 years ago
HE’S starred in some of the biggest shows on TV, but Michael McElhatton has hinted he may return to the beloved character that started it all off 25 years ago – Raymond ‘Rats’ Doyle.
The Dublin actor is about to return to Irish screens in the second series of comedy-drama The Dry as ‘pseudo-intellectual’ Finbar – a world away from Rats, who first appeared in cult RTÉ series Paths To Freedom in 2000 and then its film adaptation Spin The Bottle in 2003.
And despite starring in shows such as Game of Thrones and working alongside the likes of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Jessica Chastain since the last time Rats had a proper outing (he had a short reprisal for RTÉ Does Comic Relief in 2020), McElhatton said he is ‘always thinking about’ bringing the lovable ex-con back.
‘I’m always thinking about it – maybe delving in,’ he said. ‘Maybe looking at it in a different format or something like that.
‘Never say never is all I’m saying.’
The actor said he ‘adores’ his breakthrough character, created with Ian Fitzgibbon, even admitting that he ‘frequently’ does the character by himself at home. ‘It’s quite comforting,’ he said.
McElhatton said it was ‘extraordinary’ that Paths To Freedom contained a story strand around the plight of refugees, and that Rats was so progressive in his compassion.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Somebody sent me that clip again recently and I’d completely forgotten that we talked about refugees,’ he said.
‘And Rats was absolutely saying “People should be allowed live here.” So he’s very open to all of that.
‘I don’t think Rats would be right wing in that way. I think he would probably say what most people are saying – build more houses and don’t run away from this problem because it’s not going away.’
An updated iteration of the character would be ‘Rats when he’s 60’, McElhatton confirmed – his own current age.
The versatile actor is unquestionably most famous around the world as the powerful lord Roose Bolton in Game of Thrones, which ran for eight series between 2011 and 2019.
‘At one stage you could go anywhere on the planet and everybody knew who you were,’ he said of his time on the smash fantasy series.
‘It was quite extraordinary – for all the members – how enormous it was no matter where you went.’ But he said the huge ensemble cast remained fragmented during filming – which included Northern Ireland as a location – leaving little room for friendship building.
‘You worked with your core cast in your particular world,’ he recalled.
‘So, in fact, most of us never really met that much at all. You worked with the people you worked with and then you went home. Sometimes there were crossovers when there were larger scenes, battle scenes and stuff like that, which I wasn’t involved in.
‘I’m still friends with a lot of the people that are in it, but not as much as you’d think, actually.’
McElhatton said it was ‘a joy’ working with ‘old friend’ and fellow Game of Thrones star Ciarán Hinds on The Dry (which also stars Roisin Gallagher, Siobhán Cullen and Sam Keeley).
McElhatton plays the new love interest of Pom Boyd’s Bernie Sheridan, a ‘pseudo intellectual’ who turns out to be ‘a little bit of a charlatan’.
‘Initially, he does ruffle a lot of feathers and he immediately comes in and just makes the house his own,’ McElhatton shares of the new dynamic in the show, about a 35-year-old woman (Gallagher) trying to stay sober. He rejects suggestions that the series, glowingly received in the UK with Irish critics a little cooler, ‘glamourises’ casual drug use.
‘People do take coke in the second season, but look, it’s happens. People do it. I don’t think it’s glamorising it. It’s just showing alcoholism. We’re showing people drunk, we’re seeing people smoking... I think it’s just saying this is what these kids in Dublin do today, as many of them do, and all around the country.’
McElhatton, from Terenure on the south side of the capital, will also feature in an upcoming biopic of snooker legend Jimmy White.
Welsh actor Aneurin Barnard will play the six-time world finalist, with Ray Winstone also on board, though McElhatton said he could not disclose who he will play just yet.
‘It’s a very, very interesting script about an extraordinary character. It’s a kind of trippy, drug version of 24 hours in his life when he did crack cocaine. But it’s a very interesting script and cast.’
■ The second series of The Dry begins at 9.35pm on Wednesday, May 15 on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player