{"id":224163,"date":"2025-06-29T14:13:23","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T14:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224163\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T14:13:23","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T14:13:23","slug":"say-nothing-creators-and-cast-talk-the-pressures-of-portraying-the-struggles-of-northern-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224163\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Say Nothing’ Creators and Cast Talk the Pressures of Portraying the Struggles of Northern Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs an American, writer Patrick Radden Keefe knew tackling the story of Northern Ireland during the tumultuous 1970s in his book \u201cSay Nothing<\/a>\u201d would be a challenge.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom an outsider\u2019s perspective, native readers would not be easily convinced his interpretation of The Troubles was worth reading. However, the book went on to spend six weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, quelling his fears of misrepresentation. As he celebrated the book\u2019s FX adaptation with his writer and crew, he emphasized that the doubts he once had made success all the sweeter.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a responsibility. I think that\u2019s the price of admission, the price of trespassing into someone else\u2019s world, be that an American writing about people in Belfast or a guy writing about young women. You have to get it right,\u201d Keefe said. \u201cYou have to earn the right to tell that story. That was part of the reason that, for me, it\u2019s been such a rich and rewarding experience working so closely with [series creator Joshua Zetumer] and the rest of the team to try and get those little details as authentic as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKeefe and Zetumer were joined by stars Anthony Boyle, Hazel Doupe, Josh Finan, and Maxine Peake for a question and answer panel after the premiere of the hotly anticipated \u201cSay Nothing\u201d series. The discussion was moderated by Samantha Barry, editor in chief of Glamour magazine.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSay Nothing\u201d chronicles the four-decade-long ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles ,where Unionists and Loyalists wared over whether Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom or leave to join a united Ireland.<\/p>\n

\n\tGrowing up in southern California as the son of two foreigners, Zetumer also knew what it was like to be an outsider. Also, like Keefe, he felt heavy pressure to get all the facts right, and once on shooting, he allowed his Irish cast members to take the lead if anything seemed amiss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI tried to absorb as much as I could, not only from Patrick\u2019s book, but also I watched everything I could,\u201d Zetumer said. \u201cThere\u2019s the point where you have written the scripts, and you hand them to the actors. Normally, that power dynamic is really clear. You\u2019re like, \u2018Here\u2019s a script, say the words.\u2019 In this instance, we tried to empower the cast and said, \u2018Hey, I know I\u2019m an outsider trying to do this. Please tell me if you smell bullshit.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBoyle, a Belfast native, praised the scripts and said, \u201cIt was as if the writer was from Belfast and they\u2019d lived on the Falls Road.\u201d He added that even he felt the pressure of getting the story right at times. \u201cHaving lived in the hangover\u201d of The Trouble, the people he was most nervous to show \u201cSay Nothing\u201d to were his parents.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I showed them it, I think it was two weeks ago in Belfast, I was really nervous,\u201d Boyle said. \u201cThere\u2019s a scene where Dolour\u2019s father gets pulled down the stairs and gets interned. One of my mom\u2019s earliest memories is seeing her father get pulled down the stairs by the British Army. She just let it shriek and started crying in our living room. We had to pause the show and talk to her through it. And I thought, \u2018I feel like we\u2019ve got this right.\u2019 You know what I mean? To see my mom\u2019s sort of reaction, that was a real powerful thing for me and a real powerful moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the entire conversation above. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As an American, writer Patrick Radden Keefe knew tackling the story of Northern Ireland during the tumultuous 1970s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,88471,88472,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-224163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-say-nothing","10":"tag-say-nothing-panel","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114767070294325055","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}