Saoirse-Monica Jackson has resigned herself to being typecast as a schoolgirl.
Saoirse-Monica Jackson has resigned herself to being typecast as a schoolgirl
The 31-year-old actress shot to fame playing neurotic teen pupil Erin Quinn in Channel 4 hit ‘Derry Girls’, and even though it has led to her being offered similar parts she says she’s grateful for it as she couldn’t land parts playing characters in their thirties before being given her breakout role.
She told Cosmopolitan UK’s digital edition: “I couldn’t get seen for parts my own age.
“So much is happening for me in real time, but in my work, I’m in the school playground.”
Saoirse added actress Dame Joanna Lumley, 78, gave her top advice as they filmed a travel show in Derry that reassured her about her career.
She went on: “Joanna said, ‘You have to get to a point of acceptance where to some people, you will always be a perpetual schoolgirl. And it will be okay, my darling, because it’ll give you a ticket to the world’.”
Saoirse is now starring in Netflix plague comedy-drama ‘The Decameron’, added about her fame: “I can walk into a bar in New York and people sit me down to chat. I’ve had conversations on the phone with people’s mums when they stop me in the street.
“It’s the best craic. It is a f****** privilege.”
Despite ‘Derry Girls’ being a springboard to bigger things for stars including Saoirse and Nicola Coughlan, 37, who went on to star in ‘Bridgerton’, its creator Lisa McGee has said the TV business is still filled with a “incredibly depressing” disparity between male and females employed in the industry.
The 43-year-old writer spoke out after the publication of a report which analyses the gender disparity of those working behind the scenes at broadcasters.
She told The Irish Times about the findings: “The schemes and programmes created to address this very issue seem to, at best, merely paper over the cracks or, if I were to be cynical, were not created with the intention of creating real change.
“There’s a real sense of exhaustion out there among my fellow writers.
“People are asking why men are still writing female stories when that certainly doesn’t go both ways – male writers dominate most genres.”
Lisa – who won an Emmy this year for her work on Channel 4’s ‘Derry Girls’ – added women in television would be “disappointed by the fall” their representation within the business – but not “shocked”.
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