Talking to Peter Murphy, in an exclusive interview in the Hot Press Annual (out now) Irish actor Aidan Gillen has some controversial things to say about Ireland’s drug industry, and the way our media deals with these issues.
Speaking about the high number of gangland murders, he offers a view that many recreational drug users will disagree.
"Anyone buying drugs," he argues, "is, like it or not, part of the equation, has something to do with the person lying dead."
And he adds: "For a country the size of Ireland the murder rate is extremely high. There's a relatively large number of crime figures that we're all familiar with. They're given nicknames by the press which are supposed to be demeaning but they're not really, it seems more like the opposite sometimes.”
While the depiction of Irish crime in RTE's Love-Hate was widely criticised in the media Gillen remains upbeat about the series.
“It didn't trade in the usual tracksuits-versus-Gardaí scenarios and presented a more middle-class world populated by people who you might have gone to school with,” he observes.
On the moral conundrum inherent in crime drama, that in order to attract an audience, the film must at least acknowledge a sort of outlaw glamour, Gillen agrees, “Yeah, you do have to show the 'glamorous' side of that life, but not just to attract an audience, it's to tell the story, which in this case was a crime drama with virtually no scenes involving police and barely a mention of them.”
Gillen also talks about his role of Carcetti in The Wire, and how its location in Baltimore has some similarities to Dublin, in that the city's got a real underdog mentality.
Read the full interview with Aiden Gillen in the Hot Press Annual, out today.