BAFTA winner Siobhan McSweeney (‘Derry Girls’) on saying goodbye to Sister Michael
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Siobhán McSweeney spoke candidly on the BAFTA TV Awards red carpet about how much she’d like to win a BAFTA. Later that night, the “Derry Girls” actress won a BAFTA (hurray!) — for Best Comedy Actress for the fourth and final season of the hit Northern Irish comedy.
In the Netflix show, she plays nun Sister Michael, who acts as a foible for the main group of Erin (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), Orla (Louisa Harland), Clare (Nicola Coughlan), Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell), and James (Dylan Llewellyn), who try to make it through school during the Troubles in 1990s Northern Ireland. As Sister Michael, she rules the school the girls (and James) attend with an iron fist. Being a nun isn’t some higher calling to her, it’s a job — with free accommodation. As Sister Michael, McSweeney is dry, deadpan, and constantly provides the show with some of its best laughs and most iconic lines.
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McSweeney swept backstage after her thoroughly-deserved win to speak to us journalists sweltering in the winners’ press conference room. Gold Derby snuck a word in and commended her open attitude toward awards, whereas other performers play it coy on their hopes of winning prizes.
“They’re too cool for school,” she laughed. “That’s a really good question. Because when you don’t win them, they don’t matter, do they? It’s like a good review or a bad review. If you get a good review, then you’re a genius, if you get a bad review then they obviously didn’t understand what it was about.”
She continued: “The thing about BAFTA is that you’re judged by your peers and it has such an international prestige to it. It has integrity. A lot of awards don’t, do they? They’re sort of who can fly people over to the nicest place and all that, whereas BAFTA seem to have kept their integrity the whole way through. Also, it’s just something that has been associated in my head with quality and to do work that would be considered by other people as being of quality is a huge thing and that’s what you should always strive for I think.”
However, while McSweeney was openly joyful about winning the award, she told the winners’ press conference room that Sister Michael probably wouldn’t be as thrilled or amazed about such a thing.
“She’s obviously fictional, but I know that she wouldn’t give a damn about it whatsoever and she’d be so dismissive of it and she’d be eye-rolling in the corner,” McSweeney said.
“As a woman and as an actor when you’re feeling that you always have to sort of be smiling and at your best and be amiable all the time, there’s something so liberating to play a woman who does not give a damn, who assumes that when she walks into a room, she has the eyes of everybody in the room on her, who presumes that she is the bee’s knees and that is a wonderful thing. I’d highly recommend anybody to play Sister Michael for just one day,” she continued
McSweeney praised “Derry Girls” creator Lisa McGee for her “genius” writing of the show and revealed that McGee is so good at “observing” those around her. This meant that there were times when McSweeney didn’t “have to dig too hard” to reach certain aspects of Sister Michael. McSweeney attributed this to her and McGee’s long-standing friendship — they previously worked together on McGee’s previous show, “London Irish” — and McSweeney said that the two of them had been “getting drunk together for decades.” However, while McSweeney would work with McGee again, don’t expect them to get back together for a future “Derry Girls” show or a movie.
“I think that the thing that also makes shows great is knowing when to end them and not ruin what was good about it by dragging it on for years and years and seasons and seasons. I feel like we’ve left all the characters in a really good place, in a place of hope and a place of peace. Why not leave them there for the time being?” McSweeney said.
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