DANIELLE GALLIGAN

Jacket by Roisin Pierce. Trousers and boots by Christian Dior. Gloves by Paula Rowan. Belt stylist’s own

To converse with the actress Danielle Galligan can only be described as a treat and I'm delighted to share her thoughts and words with 5'ELEVEN'.  From deep-diving into the intricacies of acting to some tantalising teasers from the upcoming and eagerly anticipated House of Guinness, airing on Netflix on September 25th, as well as her relationship to costume and fashion, Danielle's warmth, eloquence and humour were immediately on display.  As her career rises, swiftly moving from role to role, and gathering strength as it goes, her feet remain firmly planted on the ground.  Ireland – and her mum – must be very proud. 

Words by Carla McCannon

Directed and styled by Katie-Ruby Robinson. Photographed by Darren Moriarty. Hair by Jake Ryan. Make-up by Ruth Brophy using Shiseido. Photographer assisted by Kelan Molloy. Stylist assisted by Clara Jeans Potts. Danielle Galligan appears courtesy of Public Eye Communications.

Dress and Boots by Loewe

So lovely to meet you. I read that you studied acting at the Lir Academy in Dublin, but can you tell me a bit more about your journey into acting?

For sure. I think I was about 16 when I got interested. Up until then, my mam tried to get me to do stage school on the weekends so she could work, and I would cry and cling to the woman's leg and not go in. Eventually the teacher said to her, “Look, you've paid for the course, so she can come in and just sit in the corner.” And that's what I would do. So, it definitely wasn't something I was interested in from a young age. In Ireland, we have a transition year, just after what you guys call GCSEs and before your A Levels, you take a year out and you still do subjects, but you do lots of more creative things. We put on a show - and I went to an all-girls’ school - and we did Oklahoma, and I played Curly McLain. I had a stubble beard, and everyone was very confused because my performance was so transformative. I don't think I've really hit that level of peak performance again, I think I peaked too early, if anything. [laughter] But, yeah, that was when I started to go, “Hey, this is kind of fun!”  My drama teacher then said, “You should do some drama outside of school.” So, I did it for a few years, and then when I went into our A Levels, our Leaving Cert, I quit because I wanted to just focus on studying. And so it was kind of born out of that, but it wasn't ever something that I was outwardly saying I wanted to do with my life. I kind of felt at 18, leaving school, that I didn't know what I wanted to do. I felt it was too young to ask me to choose my life's path. So, I thought, oh, I'll just try and do acting and then I'll know. I think really, I did want to do it, but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, because I thought that they'd laugh at me. And I think when you say you want something you open yourself up to failing. So, I think I was like, “Oh, I don't know, I'll just try this.” Thankfully, I'm from a family that never made me feel like I couldn't, so I was very supported the whole way through, which is great.

That's amazing. From your mum first dropping you into it and then supporting you after.

Yeah, exactly. She's like, oh, I created this monster. [laughter]

Have you had a favourite role to date? And what is the one that has taught you most? (They don't have to be the same one!)

That's a lovely question. I think it's tough: every time I do a job I think, “Oh, this is my favourite role.” Every job has taught me something different, be it about myself or about the career. I used to work with a theatre company called Chaos Factory, back in the day. That taught me the most about theatre and performance and audiences, about story and story structure, narrative, and experimentation and kind of pushing the boundaries of how to express a message to an audience. I look back at my time with those girls so, so fondly and that really sparked something in me - an essence of creativity and experimentation that I now look for in every process. I want collaboration and I want to feel that we're using lots of different forms of art to inform the acting, like paintings and music. So, I think that experience really taught me a lot about process. There are a lot of fringe theatre shows that I did with Keira Elizabeth Smith that taught me a lot about audiences and a lot about, again, the stage and to respect your audience and trust your audience. We did a lot of comedies, and I think getting that instant feedback on whether something was landing or not was terrifying, but also the best training ground ever. I probably learned a lot very early from those times. And then in terms of my favourite, I honestly don't have a favourite role because I just love them all so dearly and I see them all as these people at - this is going to sound crazy, but, as if - all my characters are at a party. I just chat to them all and I revisit them all. Every time I do a new job, there's a new guest at the house party. And I like to imagine them all like that. Like we'd all get on... But in terms of my favourite experience, I think Lakelands, for the cast and the crew, but also the creative process, and it being in Ireland, as well. We did a lot of it in Longford and some of it in Calvin, so I felt very close to my granddad up there. He was a GAA player and he played for Calvin and getting to film some of it up there felt very close to home, and special. And because it was a very small production, it felt like we were in this special, creative, magic bubble and there were lots of these interesting symmetries and serendipitous kind of witchy coincidences that were happening. It just felt really beautiful, and it was a time when I kind of really locked in that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life, and I will do this until I'm 80 or 90 or whatever.

Dress by Loewe. Jacket and Earrings by Simone Rocha. Shoes

by Christian Dior. Socks stylist’s own

You have House of Guinness coming out really soon . What can you share about that?

It's a kind of epic and very intricate story of the Guinness family at the end of the 19th century in Dublin. The series opens on the passing of Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, who had built the Guinness name and brewery into an international empire at that stage. And the story then goes on to deal with how his four children are kind of blessed but also burdened with privilege and the power of continuing the Guinness Dynasty and continuing to expand the empire and building on what their father had begun from humble origins. I find all that so interesting, but what I really love about it is that it's told on this backdrop of Dublin at a really spicy time: there was a lot of political unrest and a lot of progress, but also a lot of protest, in terms of Ireland's relationship to England. And then also on a grander scale, rural Ireland. And Ireland as a whole was only 20 years recovered from the famine. So, you kind of have this amazing juxtaposition of this ridiculous, outrageous Guinness wealth and opulence against barren and recovering Ireland as the backdrop. And I guess that makes it very dangerous for the Guinness characters, because when there's unrest like that, the higher you rise, the sharper the knives. Also, it's kind of a bit salacious and delicious, because they're at the top. And the further you are at the top, the bigger the shadow you cast. And there are people in the shadows that want to come out and tear you down. So all that part of history in that time, I think is really exciting.

Shirt by Christian Dior. Skirt by Sione Rocha. Gloves by Paula Rowan. Belt & Earrings by Jenny Vander

Definitely. And who do you play in that whole set-up?

I play Lady Olivia Charlotte Hedges White, to give her full name before marriage. She is an Irish aristocrat, the daughter of the third Earl of Bantry. When we meet her, she's asset rich, but cash poor. So, when she's presented with the opportunity of a marriage contract with the eldest Guinness brother, she jumps on it, because she's very ambitious and very pragmatic and I think sees it as a way to further her own station in life, but also to give herself some safety and security, and for her family as well. She's kind of a wild card choice on the list: they never really thought they'd get as far down the list as Lady Olivia, but they do. And what I love about her and something that's very alien to me; is she has this unshakeable innate sense of her own worth. She knows what she brings to the table and she's not afraid to be compensated for that, which I love. And also, I think she just has this amazing joie de vivre, this hedonism that's really delicious. And she sees her partnership with Arthur as very much a marriage blanc. It's a lavender marriage, a marriage of convenience and a financial contract. It definitely serves to give her the quality of life that she thinks that she deserves, and she starts to enjoy that quality of life, which is also fun to play. But I think what was interesting about her arc for me was that she underestimated both her need for, and her capacity for, love. In the midst of all of that, I think she saw it as a very professional choice to make, but she grows to love Arthur and finds a real kindred spirit and a friend in him. She wants to equally push him, but also protect him, and there's a struggle there. Then she falls very deeply in love with someone very unsuitable, which becomes a bit of a problem. I don't think she foresaw that for herself. So, like Icarus, she flies too close to the sun. But in that time in history for women, she represented for me, female agency. She cobbles together her own kind of semblance of female agency in a time when that probably wasn't even a phrase. She's just great, to play.

Coat, trousers and earrings by Simone Rocha. Bustier by Aoife Lifestyle. Shoes by Louis Vuitton

Yes, how fun! And she's based on a real-life person?

Yes, which is amazing. So that was a fun part of the research. I love history in general and to be able to play someone who really existed is cool because I was able to find pictures of her and her handwriting and bits about her, like later in life, when she calmed down a little bit, she got really into gardening and landscaping and there's a rose named after her. She loved to paint, and it was nice to be able to bring all of that into the audition with Tom [Shankland, the director] and talk about it. I always see her as a poker player, in every situation that she's in: she's looking at her cards, looking at everyone else's. She's dealt a hand, as we all are in life, and she makes the most out of that hand up to a certain point, I guess, until things start to unravel... But she knows when to call someone's bluff or when to up the ante, up the stakes, and then equally when to fold and save face. It was really interesting, playing her strategies all the time. There's not a lot of information on her early life, so I definitely just used Steven Knight's scripts a little bit more for information on that, which I think are amazing.  In some ways, the Guinnesses were the closest thing that Ireland ever had to a monarchy. In view of the public and then behind the scenes, they have a lot of influence.

Coat by Triona Design. Pants by Loewe. Hat and boots by Christian Dior

It already sounded very interesting, but everything you said about it has made me even more excited to see it. And that actually leads me into my next question, which is how important for you is costume? Because, especially with a period piece like that, I imagine once you've put on the costume, it must have its own kind of power over you?

Yes, costume is storytelling, and I think the whole thing with audiences as well is show don't tell. You don't want to ever make your audiences feel stupid by over explaining things. Audiences are really smart, and we read so many things about a person in a split second and make an assumption about that. So, I think costume feeds into character and story and even if it's not something that the audience is consciously picking up about the character, there's something subconscious that they're seeing in the way someone dresses or holds themselves. So, I think it's really vital. You know that scene in The Devil Wears Prada when Andy says, “It's just blue.”, and Meryl Streep has that monologue? Everyone makes a conscious choice to put on what they put on. And in that way, you can't escape from expressing yourself through your clothes because you've still made the choice even by not choosing that's making a choice anyway. So, I think it's so vital and Edward and Nadine and all the team, our amazing dressmakers, they worked so, so hard to create something that is really authentic. All the characters are so well drawn and each of the women feel so different: even when you see the colours and how everyone is kind of colour-coded and how they tell the story of, “This character's a bit more punk and this character's a bit more Marie Antoinette”. It was really amazing, and it's so funny because it's one of those things you can feel when it's wrong: it's really hard to act in the wrong costume, because you not only do you not feel like yourself, but you don't feel like the character. It's an interesting thing. And then when it's right, it's almost like you don't even notice. It's just another layer of skin.

Edward and Nadine put so much thought into little things: one of the costumes I wear at the very end - because Olivia's gone on a whole arc and she''s a little bit of a shell of herself and there's bits of her that have fallen away - they have this skirt that was pink, and then this very sheer layer over the top of it. And Edward explained this is her shell and this is her pink underneath. I thought that was so beautiful. And then there was a little blue bow on one of my costumes that was representative of something that happened to my character. He said I thought this little blue bow on the sleeve here is so cute because that could have represented - I don't want to give anything away – but then you're in the scene and you're acting, and I noticed the little blue bow. So it's so important. I think it's really beautiful and I think they've created something that still feels quite current and exciting, stylish as well, which isn't as important, but it's just great to look at, you know?

Coat, trousers and earrings by Simone Rocha.

What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given, professional or personal?

I always kind of go back to what my mam used to say to me - and I don't think it's unique to my mam - but she used to always say, “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. Because I'm a big scaredy cat, so when I'd not want to go to school or not want to go to an audition, because it's vulnerable what we do, you know? Being on set and trying to do the acting and everyone just watching you and you're wondering like, ‘oh, do they think I'm terrible?’ You can get very in your head and it can be very vulnerable and scary. And she always said, “Well feel the fear and do it anyway.” Invite the fear in because I'm going to go to the audition, so to the fear: if you want to be here, come with me, because I'm going to go and do it anyway. Even sometimes going to the gym is the most intimidating thing in the world. I'll be leaving the house and I think: just feel the fear and do it anyway. So that's one that I go back to. I can't get rid of the fear. I'm an actor. I'm going to keep being afraid of everything. That doesn't mean I need to stop. I just need to keep moving, in whatever way, shape, or form.  I think that if you're not scared, you're not doing it right. If you're not feeling challenged, you're not growing.

House of Guinness Premieres on Netflix 25th Sept

Dress by Loewe