Roisin Gallagher on The Dry and lucky breaks: 'You’re only as good as your last scene'
Roisin Gallagher as Shiv in The Dry
As Shiv Sheridan in the second and latest series of , Roisin Gallagher captures the look of a woman living a life vicariously through herself. It’s a look that screams “what is going on here, and what am I supposed to do about it?”
The highly rated comedy-drama is back on our screens, following south Dubliner Shiv as she moves from initially recovering alcoholic to more fully re-engaging with life around her — or, at least as much as she can given the sheer weirdness of her surroundings.
All of Shiv’s family are back living under one dysfunctional roof in the original family home, in addition to Shiv’s mother’s now live-in lover. In brief, there’s a lot going on.
Appearing down a Zoom line from her Belfast home, it’s clear that Gallagher has fallen under the spell of her character in the show — more so, possibly, because in her own words, playing this role has been “a lucky break”.
“I think for Shiv that is her real awareness of the reality of the situation she is in,” Roisin says of those lingering shots of a character to whom life seems to be happening despite herself.
“It’s becoming more and more glaringly obvious the more sober she gets. She does not have all, if any, of the answers. I think that’s what makes great comedy and it makes it interesting because we don’t know what choices she is going to make and how she will deal with the chaos she is surrounded by.
“Shiv always was the chaos and now she sees the chaos and she’s not it — and how do you move forward with that?
“In season one it was about understanding the mentality and behaviours and characteristics of a person who has just embarked on a 12-step programme.
“I had to understand all that, I had to learn that like approaching a new subject, and I found it so completely fascinating, I absolutely lapped it up. I just thought it was such an interesting subject: addiction within families, trauma cycles, how we use addiction and addictive substances to just avoid reality and how our parents can influence that and the place we grew up,” she continues.
“In series two then, it all moved into a different space, so she seems to be doing ok, so how do you live then?”
She laughs when asked about whether she had any personal experiences she could channel when it came to Shiv’s wild years.
“I was like, I don’t know what it would be like to be in your 20s, in London, drunk, with no shoes,” she says with more than a touch of sarcasm. “Yeah, absolutely.
“With every single character it’s mostly imagination and creation and there’s also a little of yourself you bring into it. I had a few personal experiences that I could draw upon — not even being drunk necessarily but of coming home and having not made it. The first time I connected with Shiv was when I read ‘I’m 35 and I’m not where I thought I was supposed to be — I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t have a career, I don’t have a house’. That was the first time I really went oh my goodness, this is relevant.”
This feels like an important point — Gallagher, now 37, is flying, having recently appeared in Sky Atlantic drama , but she has spoken in the past of a sense of elation, or relief, when she secured the role of Shiv in .
It helped boost her career, and she appears to have hit a sweet spot in her life — living in Belfast with her husband and two boys, work on hand and projects (which she can’t talk about) in the pipeline, but she is certainly not taking any of it for granted.
“I never would rest on my laurels. I understand the business enough to know that you’re only as good as your last scene and nothing is going to carry you through to the next gig in terms of oh, you’re done that great thing, right that’s lovely and then what’s next? It’s an
impermanent joy and it does move but it is joyful and I am really proud.
“So many talented, incredible actors and
artists don’t get that break. The work I’ve done has paid off but I am also very aware that I got a lucky break with and that has opened other doors. It has given me the assurance but that’s a work in progress as well. I never ever feel 100% sure and I think it must be meant to be that way.”
In navigating Shiv’s awkward path to something like normality, Gallagher seems to have found a new family of her own even as the screen version shunts off the rails.
“It is a really beautiful thing to be involved in. I’d never done a series one of anything, let alone it going on to a series two,” she says.
“It’s a real ensemble cast, the family of the Sheridans spend a lot of time together off set and we really clicked. I didn’t know anyone at all when I started.. we became very close, very quickly.”
This “invisible connection” means that “we are all invested in each other’s character development as well”.
It also means that while some of the scenarios in might seem a bit outsized, there can be more than a grain of truth in them too.
Take the notion of all three siblings back living in the family home with an estranged set of parents and a mother’s new partner.
“Can you imagine all of your siblings moving back into the family home together now, at this stage of life?” she says.
“I think that is what the real comedy and humour is, and also the stark, stark reality is that a lot of people are because of the housing crisis and financial difficulties and the whole shebang.”
The south Dublin element also allows for some probing of the issue of class, with Shiv keen to counter any notion that she is posh in the eyes of her would-be boyfriend.
“I don’t think that Shiv would like to think that she has been in any way privileged, but she absolutely has. And then to be faced in her thirties with a sibling situation that maybe hasn’t come up before for any of the family due to their circumstances, it is a big wake-up call, there is a lot of adult decisions that she has to make. And as much as she can complain about sticking around at home, she is still sticking out her hand for 50 quid in the first episode to her mum.”
Roisin thinks Irish writing is enjoying an extended moment, driven by the craft and skill of not just Harris but Sharon Horgan, Aisling Bea, and others.
“I think there is an astonishing level of talent in female Irish writers and there has thankfully been a great platform for that in the last while,” she says.
“I wonder is it because there was no platform previously, and that’s why it feels like there is an insurgence right now? I think it probably is.”
Her own writing is on hold at present, simply from being so busy with acting, though she says a time will come when she turns her observations into something concrete. But for now, she feels grateful to Shiv for having altered her own trajectory.
“It’s a big world out there and I would love to just continue doing really good parts,” she says. “The parts I have had since Shiv have really been incredible and challenging and really pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could do, and I really want to keep doing that and see where it is going to go.
“There has to be a tenacity and a real desire to keep the work going. That is when I feel most vital in myself and I don’t know why that is, it just is.”
- Series Two of returns to RTÉ on May 15
