{"id":102679,"date":"2025-10-04T12:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T12:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/102679\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T12:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T12:10:11","slug":"cork-born-actor-on-leaving-for-london-and-the-walsh-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/102679\/","title":{"rendered":"Cork-born actor on leaving for London, and The Walsh Sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"

M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad Tyers has a Paul Mescal story. \u201cOn the first day, Ridley asked him \u2018are you nervous?\u2019 Paul said, \u2018yeah\u2019, and Ridley said, \u2018your nerves are no good to me here. You need to just do the job\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The My Lady Jane star pauses just long enough to allow the Gladiator II director\u2019s take-no-prisoners reprimand sink in before continuing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s bang on. If you\u2019re nervous and insecure \u2014 and we all are, without a doubt \u2014 you\u2019ve got to try your best to put those feelings aside and do the job. I definitely had to do that with Vivienne.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vivienne is Vivienne Birch, the \u201cunapologetic\u201d and \u201ccompletely mad\u201d newspaper editor Tyers plays in the soon-to-drop second season of black-comedy crime drama Obituary.<\/p>\n

Possibly best known to date for her BAFTA-nominated performance as Jen in the Disney+ series Extraordinary, 26-year-old Tyers is currently winning legions more fans for her turn as Helen Walsh in The Walsh Sisters, a six-part drama loosely based on two of Marian Keyes\u2019s novels featuring the eponymous siblings.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings like Obituary and The Walsh Sisters, they were such no-brainers,\u201d says Tyers on not having to think twice about agreeing to the undeniably meaty roles of Birch (\u201cas soon as I read the character description, I was like, \u2018oh my God, yes, I want to do this\u2019\u201d) and Walsh.<\/p>\n

Being fully invested in a character and a storyline is important to the Corkonian, and before greenlighting her participation in a project she weighs up whether she\u2019s saying yes to work just \u201cfor the sake of it\u201d or because she\u2019s \u201cgenuinely passionate\u201d about a part.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To date, the latter has always been the case, something the actor acknowledges \u201cis a lucky thing to be able to say\u201d in a profession that typically has long stretches of unemployment baked in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say Tyers hasn\u2019t experienced fallow periods. There was an 18-month stint when she didn\u2019t work, which she found \u201creally tough\u201d. She \u201chates not being busy\u201d and is \u201calways anxious in between jobs to do something else\u201d, even if it\u2019s walking a neighbour\u2019s dog or minding someone\u2019s kids.<\/p>\n

\"MaireadMairead Tyers as Jen in Extraordinary.<\/p>\n

She says she\u2019s \u201csensible\u201d when it comes to money, though, and when earning opportunities arise \u2014 Extraordinary paid well, she says \u2014 drama school has drilled it into her to \u201ctry and be smart about it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Voiceover work has, she says, been \u201ca godsend\u201d in those daunting periods where she has no clue when she\u2019s next going to get to sink her teeth into something.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt keeps you ticking over massively; some jobs can be very well paid, which is such security in times when you don\u2019t know what\u2019s ahead. It\u2019s been fantastic thing to come with the last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyers was \u201c18, about to turn 19\u201d when she moved from her Co Cork village of Ballinhassig to study at London\u2019s prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) whose starry alumni includes Cynthia Erivo, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Fiona Shaw and a multitude more.<\/p>\n

While the distinguished drama school was where she felt \u201cmost at home\u201d when auditioning for a place \u2014 she also applied to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and Trinty College\u2019s Lir Academy \u2014 settling in took a while, and for her first year, she admits feeling out of her depth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took the whole span of the three years for me to feel like I belonged there,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I guess I\u2019m incorrect saying it felt like home. I think it was maybe more the promise of what it would be when auditioning, and of course, it has such a prestige. I was thinking of all the actors who had gone there and that I wanted to work like them. It took a while to feel like I fitted in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fit in she did, though, with her found family of fellow acting students helping to facilitate a sense of belonging and forming a support group she still relies on today, further boosted by the London-based Irish coterie of actors \u201ca good crew of us\u201d whose lives regularly intermingle in the UK\u2019s capital city.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows each other in the industry anyway, not to mind when someone\u2019s Irish\u2026 And in London specifically, there\u2019s a good gang of us and we go to all the Irish things. We go to Fontaines, we go to Kneecap, we go to Ye Vagabonds. We bump into each other at these things because we\u2019re all weak for the Irish bands and wanting to support them over here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Siobh\u00e1nSiobh\u00e1n Cullen and M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad Tyers, Obituary, RT\u00c9 One and RT\u00c9 Player<\/p>\n

THE LIST<\/p>\n

While she doesn\u2019t have a career plan per se, there is an aspirational course-direction plotted in her mind and on her phone, where she has curated a list of people with whom she\u2019d like to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of those people is Siobh\u00e1n Cullen, her co-star in Obituary who plays the lead role of murderous hack Elvira Clancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing that attracted me to the job, to be honest, was Siobh\u00e1n. She\u2019s a stellar actor. Getting to work with her was a complete dream \u2014 and one ticked off of the list of people I wanted to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bigging up the talents of others is Tyers all over \u2014 she also gives kudos to co-directors Gary Shore and Rachel Curran: \u201cthey encourage and nurture you to make those bold choices\u201d \u2014 but when it comes to herself, she\u2019s more self-effacing, despite last year\u2019s notable industry nod by way of a BAFTA nomination.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She acknowledges the boost awards can give a career \u201cbut it\u2019s categorically not why we do it, because I think if you\u2019re going to be chasing that forever, you\u2019ll just never be happy or satisfied.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What she does tend to chase, however, is perfection, a tendency she acknowledges as \u201ca battle\u201d.<\/p>\n

When we speak, a run of Chekov\u2019s Three Sisters is looming, and with it the hothouse pressures of rehearsals and character development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a \u2018feel the fear and do it anyway\u2019 scenario for Tyers in which \u201cyou literally have to fail every single day. And while that terrifies me,\u201d she says, \u201cI think it\u2019s an experience I need to have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her mention of failing isn\u2019t accidental. Tyers first encountered Beckett\u2019s famous quote on failure (\u2018Ever tried, ever failed. No matter. Try again, fail again, fail better\u2019) in youth theatre and it has served as something of a north star for her since.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m constantly thinking of that Samuel Beckett quote,\u201d she says, explaining that it pushes her to delve deeper, be the best she can be. She likes directors to challenge her when she\u2019s trying to nail a rehearsal performance: \u201c\u2026 just because we found that thing that feels right, doesn\u2019t mean that that\u2019s it. Let\u2019s try and find something else now\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"FromFrom left, Helen (Mairead Tyers), Claire (Danielle Galligan), Maggie (Stefanie Preissner), Rachel (Caroline Menton) and Anna (Louisa Harland) in The Walsh Sisters<\/p>\n

Finding something else was key when it came to Helen Walsh. Keyes first wrote about the Walshes in 1995\u2019s Watermelon, so an update \u2014 Tyers is reluctant to call it a modernisation as she feels Keyes\u2019s characters are \u201cstill so modern\u201d \u2014 made sense for the TV Walshes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Along with Keyes and co-writer Stefanie Preissner (who also plays Maggie Walsh), Tyers helped create Helen 2.0; the same, but different. \u201cWe\u2019ve changed her\u2026 she\u2019s not the Helen that I imagined when I read the books in preparation. I love the Helen we\u2019ve created.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tyers also loves the idea that the series is introducing a new generation to Keyes\u2019s writing and will likely prompt them to delve into the novelist\u2019s extensive back catalogue (of which eight are about the Walshes). \u201cI feel excited by that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The actor has her own writing goals, but there\u2019s a sense that her perfectionism is holding her back. Asked where she\u2019d like to be in five years\u2019 time, her answer is threefold: along with \u201cgetting the chance to carry on working\u201d (a certainty), \u201cworking a diverse range of jobs\u201d (also a sure thing), she would \u201clove to have written a script by then\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m slowly becoming more confident in my ideas. Not confident enough to put pen to paper, but the Notes app is bulging with the amount of ideas that I have.\u201d Why don\u2019t you just do it then?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an element of the perfectionism; I hate the idea of creating anything bad.\u201d I tell her about a would-be writer who was given permission by a colleague to write a \u2018bad book\u2019 which, when written, turned out to be rather good..<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re right,\u201d is her enthusiastic reply. \u201cIt\u2019s a part of me I need to sort out, because perfectionism doesn\u2019t belong in art. The whole idea of wanting to create something that\u2019s always great is never going to allow you to reach the full potential of your artistic ability or your full creative ability. In five years, I hope that I\u2019ll have copped on and done it.\u201d<\/p>\n