Interview with The Young Offenders Stars

While Claudia Winkleman is vacating the Film 2016 chair, yours truly is unlikely to fill the role. When viewing The Young Offenders first time, for instance, it wasn’t the script or the performances that this writer scrutinised, but rather the geographical accuracy of a chase scene through Cork City – although, like everything else in the movie, it passed with flying colours.

“I think we got it right,” nods Chris Walley, one half of the double act at the centre of the film, before stealing a glance at his fellow leading man Alex Murphy. “Okay, he’ll sell me out if I don’t admit it – it’s not me on the bike. And that’s something people seem to care about more than congratulating me on the film, asking if it was really me!”

There is little else in director Peter Foott’s scintillating feature debut that will let crowds down. Sharing the Best Irish Film honours with A Date For Mad Mary at the Galway Film Fleadh earlier this summer, the riotously funny tale of a pair of messers heading off to capture a bale of cocaine washed up on Cork’s west coast now looks set to be a roaring triumph at the box office – something that Alex admits wasn’t always foreseen.

“I asked Peter what the plans were, and he told me he was hoping to get it in a few cinemas, but at least we’d have a DVD release,” he says. ‘That would have been unreal for us – and then we hear that it’s going to be in 20 cinemas. And then 30. And then that it’s getting a nationwide release.”

By the time that, er, snowball had stopped rolling, the film was confirmed for the widest release of any Irish film this year. Not, mind, that it even needed to go beyond county bounds for the two young stars to get excited.

“There’s a giant billboard on Patrick Street and everything,” Alex enthuses. “It’s been pretty mad. In the early days, when nobody knew about it, you’d tell someone you had a part in a movie and they’d say, ‘Oh, cool’. But with the posters out and everything, there’s a buzz throughout the city.”

That same buzz has hit the streets of the capital too.

“Yesterday, we had a weird one,” Chris reports. “This old woman came up to us – eating a can of mushy peas – and asked us if we were the lads from The Young Offenders. She looked us up and down – and then had another spoon of peas and just walked off.”

With that, the pair burst into laughter. Sitting here, and watching them on screen, it’s hard to believe that the 21-year-old Chris and 18-year-old Alex weren’t mates before landing the roles. It’s harder still to believe that, while they had each done their share of theatre and trained at the Gaiety School and the Wolf Stage School respectively, neither had ever been in a feature film before.

“We had a good bit of rehearsal before our first day,” Alex says, “and apparently that doesn’t happen much with films. So we all knew each other quite well, and were comfortable. Though it is a bit daunting having a camera about two inches from your face.”

They might have designs on becoming miniature Pablo Escobars in the film, but there’s no taking the Cork out of the hapless, endearing protagonists.

“Everyone knows a Conor, and everyone knows a Jock,” Alex grins. “I think that’s why people can relate to it so much, thinking, ‘That’s just like Johnny’, or whatever. There’s a bit of them in everyone, and everyone’s grown up knowing these stories. If it isn’t what you were like when you were 15, then it’s at least like someone you knew at that age.”

And while it seems pertinent not to reveal any past criminal misdemeanours, Hot Press’ ears certainly prick up when Alex reveals that they’ve been banned from Dundrum Shopping Centre – because of the perceived offensive nature of the aforementioned posters, which leave little of Chris to the imagination.

“There was a huge poster on the side of the cinema there, and someone said it was a family shopping centre so it needed to go,” Chris laughs. “Now, at the time I was very offended. Justin Bieber is over there, and David Beckham, so what’s the difference between them and me? Apparently, with underwear photos it’s supposed to be more of an Action Man bulge, where you can’t, er, make things out. So that’s gone now!”

But even if he wasn’t treated like the Biebs, shooting in Cork’s English Market saw them receive hospitality fit for a queen.

“It’s always closed on Sunday, but Pat O’Connell opened up for us,” Alex reports, referring to the man who became familiar as ‘The Queen’s Fishmonger’ when Lizzy II paid Ireland a visit a few years back. “But for the chase scenes, it was a Saturday when the whole market was open, and it was chaos – slightly organised chaos.

“We were all trying to stop people from going into the lanes that were closed off, and I was in full costume. I’d tell someone they couldn’t go past, and they’d look at me in my get-up wondering what was going on.”

Of course, anyone quick to judge by appearance only will be in for a surprise when they discover the film to be as heartwarming as it is hilarious.

“Peter put those scenes very strategically in the middle, where it brings you back to why they’re doing it. You see Conor’s relationship with his mum and why he needs to get away, and Jock’s abusive upbringing with his dad. There’s motive behind what they’re doing, so you’re rooting for them.”

As the film hits screens, and its young stars continue their acting dreams – Chris at RADA, Alex at Dublin’s Lir Academy – we’re certainly rooting for them too.

Indeed, we’re quietly rooting for The Young Re-Offenders at some point in the future. Here’s hoping.