Interview: Sinéad Keenan, Unforgotten’s New Star
Over the course of Season 5, Unforgotten‘s new DCI, Jessica James, may have to earn her squad’s genuine affections, but Sinéad Keenan, the actor playing her, will have audiences at “hello.” In a conversation with MASTERPIECE, Keenan shares her experiences of going from Unforgotten fan to cast member, playing Irish, plus six degrees of Sanjeev Bhaskar, stinky cheese, and more!
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You first encountered Unforgotten as a viewer, just like us! What did you like about the show, as a viewer, before you came to it as a cast member?
I watched Season 4 go out live—it was the first season I saw. I think I’m right in saying that Season 4 aired around March 2021, and in the UK we were still in some sort of a lockdown, so I watched it then. I’ve always been a huge Nicola Walker fan. She’s great. And what really intrigued me about the show—and then I since went back and saw one, two, and three—was just how clever [writer and creator] Chris Lang is in his writing, and being able to take four completely different characters and completely befuddle me, as a viewer, as to how and why these people would ever have met, let alone been implicated in a murder. And it always keeps you guessing—you think you’ve got it, you think you’ve got your guy, and then you’re like, oh no, that’s wrong. Completely blindsided by some other piece of information!
So I think it’s just really clever writing, but also just very natural—it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of a fast-paced cop show. There’s a beauty in the mundanity of the detective work almost in the just bit by bit by bit you get there. Nothing is resolved quickly, no piece of information comes easily. It’s always earned. That’s what I love about it.
I understand that your first reaction was to being offered the part was not what we’d expect!
Yeah, because as I was saying to you, I’d watched Season 4 as it went out, and I remember thinking, “God, I wonder, are they going to do that again? If they do do it again, God help whoever’s going to do it.” Because I’d seen all Twitter at the time—there was uproar at Cassie’s death, and rightly so, because that’s life. When someone’s ripped away from you like that, it’s not right.
So when my agent rang and said, look, the producers want to hand the script to a handful of people and they’d like you to read it, I was very flattered that they would even consider me, but I was like, “No, I’m grand. I’ll pass. I’ll sit this one out. Whoever does it or gets it would be—excuse my French—pissing against the wind. So no thanks.” And then she did her job as an agent and made me read it, and it’s so good. Such a good storyteller. You’re just intrigued. You just want to know more. And is there another script? And can I get Episode 3 by any chance? And lo and behold, here we are.
What was it like working on set with Sanjeev Bhaskar [Sunny Khan]?
It was always fun, always light. It was never a day where you felt, “Oh, this was a work day, I put a proper shift in there. But he’s a great. He’s a lovely man, very funny, very personable and great at anecdotes. He’s a great storyteller, so in between takes and light setups and whatever, you just sit back, go, right, what do we talk about now? And you know that thing, six degrees of Kevin Bacon? There should be six degrees of Sanjeev Bhaskar. He literally knows everyone. He’s met everyone—Beatles, royalty, and he’s got an anecdote for them all. So yeah, every day was a joy when he was on set.
There’s a great moment in Episode 3 that is so telling, when she tells the team to call her “Guv” instead of “Ma’am.” Can you talk about that moment, what she wants and what it achieves?
I think that was Jess’s cack-handed way of trying to giving the team an out, in terms of being deferential to her. There’s a structure there, with “Ma’am” and “the Guv.” So I think she was trying to make them feel relaxed. But because at the same time, there’s a lot going on for her, with her first few days or weeks, any attempt to either offer a sort of olive branch to Sunny or crack a joke or make someone feel comfortable, it didn’t land. She just missed lines. Everything was completely discombobulated. So I do think that was her way of saying, guys, it’s okay. Just call me Guv. But it comes out acerbically, passive aggressively. It’s another one that didn’t land for her.
Well, props to her for even trying in the first place. I wouldn’t have gone to work that first day. I would’ve called in sick and gotten in bed, pulled the covers up over my head.
I know, can you imagine somebody doing that? I was like, wow, that’s quite a thing for a husband to do… I mean, how does that conversation even begin in the morning routine, getting the kids ready and blah, blah? How did that conversation start on the day of her biggest promotion? But apparently that part of the story is inspired by it having happened to somebody that Chris Lang knew. Like, what? Who does that? But yes, I too probably would’ve called in sick. Because that’s a bomb being thrown.
In Episode 3, we hear Jess’ sister on the phone, and then we eventually meet her. And she’s played by your real life sister who’s also an actor, Gráinne. Have you ever played sisters before?
We have never played sisters before. We did a BBC show that was based on a true story, but our character never met. This is the first time that we played sisters and yeah, it was great. There were discussions at the start. About 90% of the time, I don’t use my own accent—it’s either English or Northern Irish, but it’s rarely my Dublin accent. And I had assumed, when I was reading or was about to go meet the producers, that would be the case. But then Chris actually wanted Jess to be Irish, and I was like, okay—I found that odd, but it was actually quite nice. And then when I realized there was a sister, I was like, “Well, I have a sister who is an actor.” So she auditioned and that was that. But it’s odd because we look nothing alike. I mean, if you put us in a lineup and ask someone, can you pick out the two sisters, there is no chance in hell anyone would pick us out. Even people on Twitter were going, “She is not your real sister. There’s no way.” But we sound very similar.
Did you make up an idea, for yourself, about why this Irish mother and these siblings were in London?
That’s really interesting, yeah, I kind of did. Because that was my whole thing when Chris said she was to be Irish. I did find it to be like, “Why are they all there?” But then having said that, myself, my brother, and my sister for years all lived in London. But our parents were back in Dublin. So in my head, I had a bit of a scenario as to why, but it could be completely wrong.
We recently talked with Sanjeev Bhaskar about the costume department filling Sunny’s backpack with fun and mysterious items. If you were to sneak something into Sunny’s backpack to surprise Sanjeev, what would you put in?
That’s a good question. It would have to be cheese, I think. Sunny and I share a love of cheese. So yeah, it would have to be some stinky, stinky, really horrible cheese.
