Love Hate Is The Drug

Roe McDermott talks to writer Stuart Carolan, and stars Robert Sheehan, Killian Scott, Peter Coonan and Susan Loughnane, about the inspiration behind the gripping plotlines, why it makes such compelling viewing and the show' sometimes terrifying similarities to real life...

On the darkened back room of a Dublin pub, a young woman lies crumpled on the floor, barely conscious. Mere feet away, her rapist also lies on the ground, but he can no longer harm her. As a young member of a criminal gang repeatedly kicks and stamps on the man’s head, his expression is one of uncontrolled rage.

Finally relenting, the young man and his companions gaze down on the rapist, watching as he gurgles on his own blood. Suddenly, one of the group lifts a beer keg and smashes it down on the injured man’s head, crushing his skull.

“Darren! What did you do that for?”
“Well, he wasn’t walking out of here, was he?” comes the nonchalant reply. “I was just putting him out of
his misery.”
It was the most explosive, graphic and gut-wrenching opening gambit in a home-produced series that Irish television has ever dared to air. And the reaction has been extraordinary. The second series of the ambitious and by now highly acclaimed Dublin-based gangland drama Love/Hate was feted as the most watched TV show in Ireland in 2011. Already it looks likely to be trumped, in terms of audience figures, by the follow-up, with over 630,000 viewers tuning in to see the autumn 2012
season premiere.
The audacious crime chronicle revolves around a violent posse, including the gormless but craven boss Nidge (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor); wide-eyed-boy turned cold-hearted-killer Darren (Robert Sheehan); reluctant criminal but enthusiastic adulterer Tommy (Killian Scott) and menacing and darkly funny ex-con Fran (Peter Cooney).
Since the show first aired in 2010, audiences have watched the increasingly paranoid gang participate in robberies, drug dealing, maiming, murder – and wanton partying. But writer Stuart Carolan says the inspiration for the series originally came from his innate sympathy for young Dublin criminals, for whom society has no respect, and who are offered no second chances.
“The initial idea started with two images from my mother,” he recalls. “She worked as a nurse in Blanchardstown Hospital in the A&E, and young fellas who’d been shot or stabbed often ended up there. Once she talked about a young guy about 12 or 13, who’d come in after crashing a car joyriding. When he was bandaged up he was released – the guards didn’t bother arresting him ‘cos he was underage, so they took one of his runners instead just to piss him off.
“It was the middle of winter about four in the morning and there was frost on the ground and my mother told me she stood watching him as he walked into the night. She felt sorry for him. She said there was often very little sympathy for them. Others working in the hospital or the guards might call them scumbags, but she always felt that whatever they’d done, they were some mother’s son. She worked nights and I remember her once talking about this young fella who was shot dead and she washed him down, washed the blood off him and laid him out for his family to see him.”
Carolan explains that, from the outset, he wanted Love/Hate “to be rooted in this raw sense of grief.” In the first ever episode, Darren’s brother is killed in a drive-by shooting. It’s a catalyst that propels these already wayward characters, and Darren in particular, into deeper and more grievous action. Under different circumstances, some or all of these young men could easily have led normal, fulfilling lives. The tragedy is that happenstance sucks them into a cauldron from which, in the long run, it’s almost impossible to extricate yourself.
“At the same time,” Carolan acknowledges, “many gangland figures torture and kill people and seem utterly without remorse. But all the characters can’t be psychos!”

As the Love/Hate storylines have developed, the show has not only embraced a darker, more sinister tone, but also widened its scope. Moving away from the almost Shakespearean familial dramas of the debut series, by now the criminals are not only fighting one another, but also dealing with formidable enemies like the IRA. While writing the third instalment, Carolan was struck by reports that the self-styled Real IRA were “taxing” drug dealers, leading to escalating violence in the most disadvantaged working class areas of Dublin where
crime flourishes.
Carolan says that real events can also influence his writing less explicitly, but in a way that affects the tone and the treatment of thematic ideas and issues. The writer was deeply affected by the 2008 murder of the Romanian teenager Marioara Rostas, whose body was dumped in a shallow grave in the Wicklow mountains. The kidnap, rape and murder of the young woman was truly chilling, and left him determined to address the horrific nature of sexual violence against women.
“I’ve heard many terrible stories and most of them don’t even get reported,” he states. “I thought a lot about Marioara Rostas when I was writing this series and the horror this poor girl endured. There’s no similar storyline in Love/Hate – but it was one of the reasons I wanted to look at the area of savage sexual assaults on women in gangland. The rape scene that we showed was shocking and graphic but it came nowhere close to showing the real horror that Marioara suffered.”
While this influence most obviously affected the storyline of rape victim Siobhán – played with a stunning combination of strength and vulnerability by Charlie Murphy – fellow leading lady Susan Loughnane has also found her character embroiled in a world of sexual coercion and abuse. Upon reading that the fictional Debbie was to become a prostitute in order to support her spiralling drug habit, the actress researched her role by working with a charity devoted to helping women in similar circumstances. In response, Loughnane herself is determined to bring the horrific realities of the lowest tier of the sex trade to the fore.
“I want to make a political statement with the show,” the actress asserts. “I really hope that the prostitution storyline brings that subject the awareness and attention it needs. In preparation for the storyline I worked with Ruhama, which is an organisation that supports women who’ve been affected by prostitution. And so Debbie’s storyline feels very personal and important to me, because the stories that I used in
my head to get into character are the real stories of
real people.
“I get really upset by it and it’s such a serious issue, and there are laws we could change in this country. It’s bonkers that the law targets the prostitute and not the punter. Is that not a fucking joke? There will be more about Debbie’s situation in this series, and I hope that people really pay attention to this issue – even for the sake of Ruhama. Hopefully they’ll get something back out of it after all they did for me.”
The cast admit that working with such heavy subject matter can prove emotionally draining, as they constantly encourage and challenge each other to bring the rawest of emotions to the screen. From Darren attending the funeral of his brother in series one, to Fran discovering the body of his wife Linda after she slashed her wrists in series two, to Tommy violently stamping on the head of his girlfriend’s rapist in series three, the actors have delivered moments of shattering emotional intensity.
Lead actor Robert Sheehan admits that the atmosphere on the Love/Hate set is dictated by the nature of the scenes that are being shot at a given time.
“It can get very reverent on set sometimes,” he reveals. “Because Love/Hate has asked a lot of its actors. The scene that jumps to my mind immediately is from the last series when Aidan Gillen’s character John Boy drags Susan Loughnane’s character Debbie out of the house by the hair, and she pisses herself before he holds her over the balcony screaming at her. Stuff like that, it’s heavy. And we’ve all had really rough scenes. So I think the humdrum and the madness of TV and filmmaking needs to slow down, and become a little bit more reverent to the fact that these people – the actors – are putting themselves so far out there.”
The scene Sheehan describes was indeed one of almost unbearable tension. Aidan Gillen’s powerhouse performance as the explosively violent gang boss John Boy evoked a horribly palpable sense of terror. But this process wasn’t limited to the screen. Co-star Loughnane admits that Gillen could often go so deeply into his character that he was genuinely intimidating.
“Aidan can be very intense,” she acknowledges, “and kind of commanded the set, because he has a very powerful presence. And then when he’s on-screen he’s captivating. But his character was terrifying and he really got into it. Before the scene where he basically beat the shit out of me, he was pacing up and down the set and getting really worked up and angry and fired up. I was kind of cowering in a corner waiting for the action to be called, thinking: ‘Oh my God, he’s coming for me!’ I was petrified; he was really working himself up – so I didn’t really have to act at all! In reality, Aidan’s so considerate and was always very good about making sure I was comfortable. But that scene was an intense one to shoot.”
Despite the challenging nature of their work, all of the actors are hugely enthusiastic about the experience of doing the series. Their down-time on set is always filled with a lot of laughs and a genuine ethos of support for each other.
“Overall the buzz on Love/Hate is great,” Robert Sheehan resumes. “The reason we all go back so enthusiastically year after year is largely to do with our brilliant writer, and the director, David Caffrey. But it’s also the general fun we have, really and truly. It’s rare, a job where I’ve had that much craic.”
Although he does have some issues with co-stars Killian Scott and Peter Coonan.
“They’re both a pair of degenerate gamblers!” he laughs. “Left-wing communists, the both of them, they’re always bloody leafleting...”

part from the pacey, tension-fuelled writing and the superb performances, there’s another reason why the latest series of Love/Hate has often felt unconscionably dark – and all the more riveting for it. Just four episodes in, the plot has already shared several eerie parallels with real-life murders – to an extent that is genuinely extraordinary, given that it was filmed well in advance of these brutal events.
The harrowing first episode, which showed the gang burying the body of IRA man Git on Fran’s land, went to air the very weekend that the body of Portlaoise woman Aoife Phelan was unearthed on the property of her suspected murderer. Another uncanny similarity emerged when Darren shot a man and his girlfriend in their home as a baby cried upstairs – a scene which bore a striking resemblance to the murder of gangland criminal Gerard Eglington, who was shot in his home, in front of his two children. Carolan is aware that these kind of parallels can make for distressing viewing.
“It’s often coincidence,” the writer avers. “So many people have been murdered and their bodies buried in the Dublin Mountains for example – the types of scenes we have in Love/Hate aren’t isolated incidences. But I’m slightly uncomfortable when a real-life event coincides too closely time-wise with a fictional event. In episode one of the second series, Fran attacks Luke and Luke is dragged into the back of a van and driven away. Around the same time a young man, Ciaran Noonan, was dragged into the back of a car and disappeared. His body was found that week as we went to air. I felt pretty bad about that.”
For 28-year-old actor Peter Coonan, the fact that art on occasion morbidly imitates Dublin life merely emphasises the authenticity of the violence being portrayed on-screen.
“When I was shooting the film Between The Canals, there was a scene set in a pub in Summerhill where someone was meant to get shot,” he recalls. “Then a week before we were meant to film, someone actually got shot in the pub. And in Mark O’Connor’s film King Of The Travellers last year we had a scene set in Smithfield Horse Fair where someone got slash-hooked – and during the summer last year that exact thing happened in the middle of Smithfield. So
these kinds of parallels are unavoidable, because if you’re trying to represent real life in drama and trying to get to the bone of what’s really going on in society, you’re always going to come into situations that don’t just reflect incidents, but actually are
what happened.
“It proves how real-to-life the programme is,” he adds. “It’s important to show these things. It is happening in our country – we don’t live in a closed society anymore. It’s a very violent city. You are making a fictional story and you hope it’s entertaining and doesn’t hurt people, but it’s also a social commentary.”
Though the underworld drama has grown more fiendish and explicit with each series, Carolan is happy to report that rumours of RTÉ executives’ squeamishness have been greatly exaggerated.
His scripts, he insists, have never been censored
or restrained.
“We’ve had nothing but massive support from RTÉ from day one,” he reveals. “Jane Gogan [the commissioning editor for RTÉ] in particular has backed us all the way. All the discussions about the violence and so on, those conversations happen at an early stage.”
Some recent media coverage snarkily mocked RTÉ’s decision to have helplines available to viewers who may have been affected by issues raised in the show. Bernice Harrisson from the Irish Times remarked that no such measures were taken after episodes of The Sopranos or Breaking Bad or any number of dramas featuring violent, potentially nightmare-
inducing scenes.
Carolan sees it as a testament to RTÉ that “nothing goes out in an unthinking way.” Indeed RTÉ and the producers co-ordinated with the Rape Crisis Centre to ensure helplines would be available and advertised, in case any of their viewers found the rape scene in the opening episode of the current series upsetting.
“You have to remember,” proffers Carolan, “that a show like this would not go out on BBC One or ITV or a mainstream channel. The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, those shows go out on cable in the US – not on network TV. It’s very brave for RTÉ to have backed us the way they have. It could easily have backfired. Instead we’ve been given huge encouragement and support. But because we’re going out on a national channel, of course we feel a responsibility to the viewers in that regard.”
Killian Scott agrees that RTÉ have been “brilliant” in how they’ve dealt with the show’s difficult subject matter. The 27-year-old has seen how closely Love/Hate resembles real life, making it all the more important that nothing is treated as if it is throwaway.
“I was out recently and someone came up to me and told me that their lives had been very personally and deeply affected by gangland violence,” he recounts, “and they were saying, ‘What you guys are making is real, it’s my life’. They were getting very emotional about it, and I really, really felt for them. And of course you do have a responsibility when it comes to people who directly relate with something you’re creating. You have to be delicate with that. The worst criticism you could make of anything like Love/Hate is that it’s cheap and done just for shock value. That’s trash – and something I’d never want to be involved with. But I’m so proud to be part of Love/Hate.”

ith its eerily authentic similarities to real gangland crime, disturbingly visceral scenes of violence, and huge audience numbers, it’s safe to say that Love/Hate has proved early critics of the show utterly wrong. When the first series aired in 2010, both professional and self-appointed couch-critics complained that it was too tame and that the cast – Sheehan and Scott in particular – were far too good-looking to believably portray gangsters. One review declared that the show was “not violent enough”, the language was “too clean” and the actors’ “super-long eyelashes and Bambi eyes”
made them unconvincing criminals. Stuart Carolan was then, and remains, unrepentant. But humorously so.
“I’m not naming names here, but I don’t think all of the cast are very good-looking!” he laughs. “A lot of them are very average-looking – and some go the other way! But yeah, we did get criticism saying, ‘Oh these lads aren’t like the skangers you see down at the Four Courts’. But I don’t think it’s true that no gangsters are good-looking. Just look at the Real IRA man, Alan Ryan. The papers used to call him ‘The Model’. I think what’s really underneath that criticism is very much an ‘Us and Them’ thing. It’s a preconception of class, where people want to hold onto their ideas of what drug-dealers and criminals are, and what they look like – so they can’t be good-looking, and have to be wearing tracksuits. Because then you can physically identify evil, as it were.”
Robert Sheehan, whose perfectly coiffed, doe-eyed good looks attracted the brunt of the ‘pretty-boy’ comments, is characteristically good-natured about the critiques, saying he understands where his detractors were coming from.
“Some of the press shots did have a certain boyband-esque look, it’s undeniable,” he laughs. “There we were posing in our leather jackets looking like some kind of dodgy sex act! We just looked very boyish, and in some people’s minds incapable of the type of violence the series was going to portray.”
As the show has progressed however, the young gangsters have started to wear the hardships of their lifestyle in their gait, adding a nice physical element to their character arc. As Darren abandons his moral conscience and transforms from being a tragedy-stricken boy into a cold and conscientious hit-man, and Tommy begins to crumble under the weight of his escalating guilt, emotional battle scars have etched themselves across the characters’ expressions. By now, there’s no longer any boyish innocence to
be found.
“It kind of works because Darren and Tommy were never meant to be these hard-nuts,” muses Sheehan. “They were never meant to be these hardened criminals or rat-faced, cracked-out mental cases. They started out as young lads who got into a thing to make a bit of money. The show is about that journey, seeing them at their more innocent beginnings and watching them become more complex criminals.
“Well, simple criminals,” he jokes. “They’re
still fools.”

pecific details about series three plotlines are being kept firmly under wraps as it ramps up towards its pre-Christmas denouement. The same is true of the next series, which Carolan is already working on. While unwilling to reveal anything yet, he concedes that he wants to widen Love/Hate‘s scope. One of the major new elements will be showing the action from the guards’ point of view, and the writer has been working extensively with the Gardaí to make his portrayal of their world as accurate as possible. Fans will also be very happy to hear that Carolan feels he has enough material for at least two or three more series.
“I still want to look at the prisons in a bigger way, and maybe a little of Irish gangland in Spain if the budgets were able to be stretched,” he expands. “There are so many people taking Benzos and Zimmos, young people especially. Heroin seems to be all over the country and it’s cut to shit at the moment – so the next time a shipment comes in that’s of higher strength, there’ll be more deaths. That’s the kind of area. After the third series has aired, we’ll have done 16 episodes. So it’s not that much. We’re only getting going.”
As for the actors, they’re just keeping their fingers crossed that their characters survive the next series – with this show’s love of curve-balls and dramatic deaths, you never know.
“We always joke about the dangers of ever offending Stuart,” laughs Killian Scott. “Say one bad word about him and the next scene he writes will begin with a close-up of your character’s coffin!”
Stranger things have happened!

Love/Hate is on RTE 1 Sundays at 9.30pm. Love/Hate the compilation album featuring music from the show is out on Dec 7.