Lola Petticrew and Anthony Boyle have known each other for almost 20 years, ever since they were a couple of children from West Belfast who wanted to break into spectacle. The first paragraph they did together was a local production of “Romeo and Juliet”, the only mention of Petticrew’s stomach. “We were on a chessboard. Four people came to see it; two of them left,” said Petticrew, who uses the pronouns, with a laugh during a new joint zoom interview with Boyle. “I had goth makeup on; Anto looked like ziggy stardust. It was like – show.”
Their many subsequent television and stage work “gradually became better”, as Boyle put it. (And they each have done well on their own: Petticrew cost with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Indieen 2023 “Tuesday” and Boyle appeared in “Masters of the Air” and “Manhunt.”) But no one had the impact of “Say Nothing”, FX’s limited series about the problems in the Northern Ire Iriga as the Northern Ire Iva Northern Ire Irigation As a Having. A BAFT nomination.
Based on New Yorker author Patrick Radden Keefe’s trade book 2018 with the same name, “Say Nothing” is a gripping look at the IRA’s struggle to remove the British and form a united Ireland in the early 1970s. The friends play real IRA members: Petticrew is Dolour’s Price, who spent seven years in prison for organizing the bombing of the old Bailey Court in London with his sister Marian (Hazel Doupe), and Boyle is Brendan Hughes, Belfast Brigade officer who is known as the Runade Key operations.
Has it concerned you that a project on problems was made by an American company, one owned by Disney no less?
Anthony Boyle Yes, completely, man. (In American accent) Disney is doing problems. I was like, Oh, for f -‘s sake, man. This is going to be a straight. And then I read the first two episodes, and it was just so well written and so well investigated that I couldn’t believe that the author (Showrunner Josh Zetumer) was not from Belfast, even less (came from) America. And then I talked to Josh and Patrick and realized that they came from the right place. It was such a dirty, complex war that you can’t just answer it to a cookie: This is who the bad guy is; This is the good guy. We have to ask questions and we actually do not know what the answers are. That’s what Patrick did with the book really well. And Josh continued it.
Lola Petticrew What I really responded to was the fact that at the end of the book and at the end of the show there were many big questions that landed with me as someone who still lives in Belfast whose life has been formed by trauma between generations. And when you see the problems, especially produced in the media, it is usually through a very male lens, usually also an older male lens. What I thought was really good about this was to take it from the view of these young women, price sisters.
Was it scary to play people who have become almost mythical figures in the history of the problem? Anthony, you have talked about going at a mural of Brendan Hughes on the way to the school as a child.
Boyle Lola and I still live in Belfast and have family in Belfast, so yes, it was a risky thing to do. I have played real people (including John Wilkes Booth in “Manhunt”), but there have usually been Americans or English people from American or British history. And there is a kind of separation there, while this really was no research. I just showed myself and did it. Then you wind and go, “Oh, wait. F—. People will look at this. I hope people in Belfast like this.”
It sounds like they did.
Boyle Yes. Lola and I did a show for our friends and family at a small cinema in Belfast. And it was class, man, with people who just cheer and look and cry. It was a real hit there, and people saw so much of themselves and their experience of it. Both sides, Catholic and Protestant, took something of it, and it is rare to do with a work of art.
Pettikant I have a little more a nervous disposition than Anthony. I definitely spent a lot of photography with massive panic attacks, went home and stayed up, thinking about my community, the responsibility, how people would see it. I knew about dolours that grew up. I think there is an element of misogyny in her heritage, in the way we know much more about the male figures than we do, such as price sisters. Many people from West Belfast can name the ten men who died in (prison) the hunger strike in 1981, but without price sisters, these men would never have been able to become martyrs.
Dolours and Marian went on hunger strike while in the Brixton prison and was forced by the medical staff. These scenes, in section 5, are brutal and must have been physically demanding.
Pettikant Physically it was super intensive. Mentally, it was super intensive. It was a really oppressive environment. We were in a actual prison and it was just Hazel and I. But we had a fantastic intimacy team, a fantastic stunt team and an incredible crew that became like cheerleaders for us. I was particularly proud of that section. Dolors shouts at the beginning of the episode, “My sister 19 years old!” And you are really beaten by how young these great players were and what they went through – call it what it is: torture – at that age, what they were subject to.
Anthony, your Brendan Hughes always buzzes as a spark plug. We never see him at rest. Did it feel like a very physical role? It comes out as a very visceral part of who he was.
Boyle I mean, when you see these interviews with him, he talks about in the morning, you shoot some people, then you rob a bank, then you would do this and you would do it – just a constant life on the go. And I just thought he has a lot of adrenaline that flows through his veins all the time. A director told me once, I had made a scene, and the director went, “Damn, you all full of piss and vinegar.” And that’s a bit of it. I felt very instinctive about it. Many of his scenes are very high-octane-homer do action things. So it felt right to play him like that. Even in the quieter moments he still has the glimpse in his eye and the heart goes twice as fast as everyone else’s.
You have been friends for so long, and there is a wonderful ease between you two on the screen, especially in some of the easier moments, as when Brendan says admiring about Dolors, “the balls on the little girl.”
Boyle (Laugh) I did just that in the day because I looked at Lola, and I would go, “F – ‘balls on the little girl.” They make a scene, and I just start (playfully) call them a “bitch” or something. It felt real, like how we talk to each other, and the authors and directors allowed that elasticity. It’s always good to work with Lola. They are the perfect stage partner.
Pettikant Can you bring this in the interview? Because I don’t think you will ever say something so nice to me again, so I’ll take it. (Laugh)
Boyle But put “your week bitch” at the end as well. (Laugh)
Do you have a favorite scene that you did together?
Pettikant I don’t know if it’s my favorite, but I loved this scene where Dark Robs Banken, to watch Anto come in with that energy – I think it might be the first thing we shot together, and I just remember that I felt such a massive feeling of pride. Then you improvised and you got the word “Specky” in the show, which is a very special Belfast line for someone wearing glasses. And I remember being on the floor, crouched down and trying not to laugh. Of course, you managed to get it in. It’s perfect. But I remember you came in, all piss and vinegarand i just –
Boyle It is the title of the article, “Piss and vinegar.”
Pettikant … and I just remember that I was thinking, It is my friend and he is so talented and I can do this with him. And it’s sick.
It’s an entrance. And you have that stocking over your face.
Boyle Yes, it was a lot of fun to do it. I’ve always wanted to rob a bank. And then, yes, it was fun, man. Josh, the author, just let us be free form with things, and one of the guys who gave me the money in the bag had glasses. And I was like, “Give me the money, you f- Specky bastard.” Josh was like, (in American accent) “What? What is it? What is Specky? Is it …? Because he speaks so much? Is he a speaking Bastard? “I was like,” No. Glasses, man. “(IN American accent) “Spectacle? Genius! It’s in the picture.” He f- ‘insert. (Laugh)
Thanks to this interview, I have learned a little Belfast jargon. I’m a small spotted bitch. I don’t know if I’m so small anymore.
Pettikant Could the title be “You Wee Specky Bitch” after the first was it “Piss and vinegar”?
No, that’s my byline: by the little spotted bitch.
Boyle (Laughing) That’s so good. “The little spotted bitch.” It has cracked me, man.
Pettikant (Laughing) Fantastic.
A version of this story first ran in the limited series/TV movies in Thewrap’s Awards Magazine. Read more from the race begins issue here.
