Éanna Hardwicke on Saipan: "This film is going to totally reignite the ‘Who’s fault was it?’ debate"

As Ireland gets ready to do World Cup qualifying battle again in March against Czechia – hopefully our fingernails will have grown back by then so we can bite them again – the Saipan movie arrives to remind us of the greatest Irish World Cup drama of them all, which unfolded twenty-three years ago on the Northern Mariana Islands.

Following on from his award-winning turn as Jimmy Saville and the further adventures of Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan doesn’t so much play as inhabit the former Ireland gaffer, Mick McCarthy, while Éanna Hardwicke, himself a Cork boy, does a similarly impressive job of portraying Keano as his rage over the team’s World Cup 2002 preparations – or lack thereof – goes through the gears.

Meeting up in Hot Press Central, I ask Hardwicke whether he’s a bit of a baller himself.

“Anyone who played football with me as a teenager will find it hilarious that I’m portraying any professional footballer, let alone one as supremely talented as Roy Keane,” Éanna laughs. “Fair to say I was more passionate than talented but I love the game and played till about fourteen. Roy would have been very famous for his aggression on the pitch but I didn’t have that competitive edge, which is supposed to kick in when you get to puberty. I loved having a kick around but didn’t have that innate need to win.

“I was right-mid and then right-back,” the 29-year-old continues, “which was the least harmful place you could stick me. I can still clearly picture the handful of goals I scored – and it was only a handful!”

They might have been chalk and cheese as footballers, but Messrs. Hardwicke and Keane have much in common.

“My family are from St. Luke’s but contrary to what it says on Wikipedia, I grew up my entire life in Glanmire, which is on the other side of Mayfield where Roy’s from and the beginning of the suburbs,” Éanna explains. “There was a rivalry between my childhood club, Riverstown, and Rockmount where Roy started out. It wasn’t a postcode war though. My brother and sister at various points lived in Mayfield and I went to pre-school there. It’s a proud, tight-knit, working class community which feels like the soul of Cork.”

There would have been insurrection in the People’s Republic if the role of Roy had been given to an outsider.

“I was lucky in that I was the safe, local casting option,” Éanna deadpans. “I grew up a few miles from Mayfield; I’m about the same age now as Roy was when Saipan happened; physically we’re not dissimilar and they didn’t need to hire a dialect coach. I ticked a lot of boxes!”

Éanna Hardwicke in Saipan. Photo: Aidan Monaghan

What brief was he given by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn, the Belfast directors who’ve previously brought us the likes of Good Vibrations, Ordinary Love, Obsession and Cherrybomb?

“We were very clear from the off that we weren’t doing a biopic,” Hardwicke states. “This is not the Mick or the Roy story; it’s about a very particular event. It was also clear that it was going to be myself and Steve’s versions of them, not impersonations. You begin with the real person, read and watch what you can, take it all in and then the needle stops somewhere between you and them. I’m not sure how interesting it’d be if it wasn’t all filtered through you.

“What I love about the A Complete Unknown film is it felt recognisably like Bob Dylan, but through the very particular prism that Timothée Chalamet offered it. When you’re telling a story like this, that’s the best you can aim for.”

Was he a regular growing up at Turner’s Cross?

“To my shame, I’ve only been to Turner’s Cross a couple of times for Cork City and Ireland Under-21 matches,” Éanna confesses. “I was – and am – an Aston Villa fan so that was my first experience s of the terraces. I still get up to games twice a year if I can.”

Emotionally Invested

What was it was like working alongside one of the greatest character actors of the past thirty years?

“Unreal,” Hardwicke says, sounding genuinely awestruck. “Steve’s writing and acting were a huge influence on me growing up. I loved him in The Trip; his portrayal of Jimmy Saville was chilling; and anytime I need a laugh I watch Martin Brennan and friends singing The Wolfe Tones on This Time With Alan Partridge. The way it brilliantly segues from ‘Sweet Sixteen’ to ‘Armoured cars and tanks and guns’…

“I actually met Steve during my first day at Trinity College in 2015. He was giving a talk in the Hist as part of Freshers’ Week, and afterwards I did what I normally never do, which is go up to him and say, ‘I love your work.’ When I recounted this to Steve last year, he was like, ‘Oh god, please tell me I was nice to you!’ – which he was. He was lovely and gave me great advice.

“Steve was the first person who came into my mind when I read the Saipan script. I soon found out from Lisa and Glenn that he was the first person they thought of as well, so he was almost preordained to play Mick. He brings great comic timing, skill and pathos to the role. It was a thrill to work with him because he’s so instinctive and such a brilliant improvisor.”

Steve Coogan and Éanna Hardwicke in Saipan. Photo: Aidan Monaghan

Éanna admits to some first-day nerves on the Saipan set.

“You want to work with great actors but the vulnerable part of you thinks, ‘What if we’re doing this two-hander scene together and I’m just terrible and revealed as a fraud in front of them?’” he explains. “Maybe that’ll happen one day, but what I find working with someone as good as Steve is that you raise your level. You’re learning from him in subtle ways every day. It could’ve been a technical thing to do with the camera or the way he gets the beat of a scene. You’re watching this and trying to match it, so it was a really satisfying relationship.”

Éanna’s own performance is a nuanced one, which captures Roy’s vulnerabilities – yes, he has some – and the claustrophobic isolation he must have felt as he became increasingly estranged from the rest of the squad.

“That part of the story was very much in Paul Fraser’s script,” Éanna proffers. “Forget the public personas here and just think of two men and a whole team very, very far away from home on an island in the middle of the Pacific, preparing for one of the biggest events on the global stage. An entire nation is emotionally invested in you. In Roy’s case, you’re not only the captain but also the leader of a whole generation of Irish football. You’ve helped reinvent the modern game and become an icon to millions. That’s a really intense crucible, which puts incredible pressure on the people in it. To show the vulnerability of those men in the face of that was, I thought, right and proper. It’s not a conventional ‘Who’s going to lift the cup?’ sports film. We know the ending and quite a bit about what leads up to it, so we had to dig deep and offer some fresh perspectives.”

Breath-Taking Contempt

Before we get letters from irate Corkonians and Pacific islanders, we must point out that the film’s outdoor scenes were either shot in Belfast, a stand-in for the Real Capital, and Tenerife which apparently looks a lot like Northern Mariana Island. Saipan has some great set-pieces like when Roy and Mick lock themselves in an airplane toilet, not to join the Mile High Club but to have a conversation away from the prying ears of the press corps who are on the same commercial flight.

“There are so many unusual elements in Paul’s script,” Hardwicke points out. “In a way it’s a shipwreck story on a far-off island; it’s a massive national crisis; and then it’s also a very, very private story that happens behind closed doors and in little confabs in meeting rooms. Paul managed to haul that all together and give it so much heart, soul and – as you say – vulnerability.

“The scene on the plane typifies that. He picks a really interesting location, which he knows is going to raise the stakes and ratchet up the tension. And then you’ve Glenn and Lisa – who were the perfect directors for this story because they’ve such an amazing cinematic vision.”

Saipan. Photo: Aidan Monaghan

Has he watched Good Vibrations, which in this writer’s humble opinion is one of the best rock ‘n’ roll movies ever made.

“Oh yeah, it was a huge film for me,” Éanna shoots back. “Richard Dormer’s performance as Terri Hooley was just brilliant. He totally nailed the voice and Terri’s mannerisms. And, of course, the soundtrack is immaculate!”

I just think it’s great that we’ve got Irish people telling Irish stories without having to resort to the Darby O’Gill-isms of old.

“I totally agree,” Éanna nods again. “In the last ten years the genre work in film in Ireland has really, really expanded. Whether it’s folk horror, comedy drama or social realism, we’re making it – and making it to an extremely high standard. There’s been an opening up of our cinematic palate. One thing we perhaps don’t have enough of is films about cultural moments: events which, like Saipan, speak volumes about where we were as a country.”

Saipan’s opening montage of archive TV and radio coverage is a reminder of just how gripped the country was by the drama unfolding 7,420 miles away in the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands, which is the last place you’d want to bring a group of elite sportsmen. Well, unless you’re going for that cheap third world package holiday vibe.

“Friends of mine have said, ‘I’m dreading reliving the whole thing because it was genuinely traumatising,’” Éanna reflects. “This film is going to totally reignite the ‘Who’s fault was it?’ debate.”

We’ve lit the touchpaper, now watch the fireworks…

“Exactly!”

There are two sides to every story, but if you believe the version told in Saipan, Mick McCarthy was the David Brent of international football management who gets the heebie jeebies whenever in close proximity to Roy Keane.

One could argue that this tragicomic portrayal of Mick is unduly harsh, but the film is spot on with its evisceration of the FAI hierarchy who were ultimately responsible for the shit show and demonstrate breathtaking contempt for both manager and star player.

The team meeting – or, as Roy calls it in Saipan, kangaroo court – which sealed his World Cup fate is genuinely shocking in its intensity and asks serious questions of the other players.

Of course, you might hear Keano tearing Mick a new one and decide that he was bang out of order and deserved to be on the first flight home to Dublin.

While there’s little love to be found in the middle of the Western Pacific Ocean, Roy’s phone calls back home to wife Theresa provide Saipan with an unexpectedly tender subplot.

Saipan. Photo: Aidan Monaghan

“Harriet Cains, who plays her, is just brilliant,” Éanna enthuses. “One of the weird things you have to do in film is meet someone for the first time and then the next day create this whole marriage story and relationship chemistry. That’s really easy with someone like her, because she’s very funny and very instinctive. I really enjoyed shooting that part of the story because so much of Saipan is about the relationship between a game which feels like life and death – but is only a game – and the more important things in life. Despite being known for his phenomenal commitment and dedication to the footballing cause, Roy has a strong sense of that.”

AGAINST ALL CERTAINTY

Saipan gets extra marks for its pulsating soundtrack, which takes historical liberties by including Fontaines D.C.  but, hey, their mate David Holmes is on music coordinator duties. Elsewhere, Oasis, Stone Roses and The Walker Brothers do a brilliant job of rock and rolling back the years.

And let us also acknowledge the canine acting talents of Misty the labrador who deserves a WOOFTA for her portrayal of Keano’s dog Triggs, who was the most-walked pooch in the world when Roy got home.

“There actually is a Woofies because I remember the dog in Anatomy Of A Fall winning it,” Hardwicke chuckles. “Misty should absolutely be up there because she was a dear to work with. We got very close.”

A game-changer for Éanna and lots of other Irish actors was appearing in Normal People. Did he know, shooting it, that it was going to become a global lockdown phenomenon?

“Not to the extent it was but, yes, I did have a feeling that it was going to be a big cultural thing,” he says. “Sally Rooney is such an extraordinary writer and the book was about a time and a generation, that I was a part of, which shaped modern Ireland. Intermezzo is another stunning Sally Rooney novel, the audiobook version of which I had the pleasure of narrating last year.”

Which ran to a whopping 16 hrs and 29 mins.

“There was a lot of narrating!” he admits.

Were Éanna’s own college days as hedonistic as the ones depicted in Normal People?

“They were not hedonistic at all,” he sighs. “I went to the Lir drama school, which is up the road from Trinity and, without sounding pretentious, it was a bit like bootcamp. You’d go there from 9-7 every day. There’s no gaps, we were in class all the time and I took it really, really seriously. I needed to be prodded and told to loosen up, which I did a bit after the first six months. We had good nights in the pub on Fridays, but it wasn’t Normal People!”

Paul Mescal and Éanna Hardwicke in Normal People

After playing Rob Hegarty, Éanna parachuted into the Fate: Winx Saga fantasy world. Was his mind blown by the scale of the Netflix production?

“Sebastian Valtor was such a fun part,” he resumes. “Maybe it was the foolhardiness of youth but despite all the moving parts, the massive sets, the CG and everything else, I went in thinking, ‘Oh, this is great’ – and it was. The nerves have only increased since then!”

Éanna admits to some delicate throbbing behind the temples after attending the wrap party last night for Ancestors, the missing persons drama he’s been shooting in Dublin with musician-director David Turpin, and a cast that also includes Jack Wolfe, Jessica Reynolds, Rupert Everett and Christina Hendricks.

Before that he filmed the pilot for Helpless with Derry girl Saoirse-Monica Jackson and No Ordinary Heist, Barney McKenna’s recounting of the £26.5 million Northern Bank tiger kidnapping and robbery, which includes Eddie Marsan, Eva Birthistle and Michelle Fairley among his co-stars

“I’d previously worked with Saoirse, who’s a great actor and loads of fun, on The Doll Factory,” Éanna recalls. “Helpless is a subversive, black comedy drama written by Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney, which I really hope goes to series.

“Like Saipan, No Ordinary Heist picks up something ephemeral that was in the atmosphere at the time. It’s such an odd, unusual, beguiling story that speaks so much about the post-Good Friday Agreement North. Eddie Marsan is another of those incredible actors you can’t help but learn from.”

Who else has that osmosis-like quality to seep in to your own work?

“I remember working with Imogen Poots in the first film I ever did, Vivarium,” Éanna fondly reminisces. “Doing this hellscape of a scene – we’re talking unimaginable horror – she managed to go to this incredibly tense place and stay there for the duration of the six set-ups we were doing. I was blown away by that emotional commitment and discipline.

“Working with Timothy Spall and Anne Reid on The Sixth Commandment was another masterclass. I got so much from them. Sensing I was bit flustered when we were doing our first scene together, Anne leant over and said, ‘Remember, it’s only you and I. There’s no one else here and we’re just having this conversation.’ The simplest piece of advice in a way but, of course, when you strip it all away that’s what acting is. It’s about giving your full attention and listening to the person in front of you. I got that from Annie in spades.”

A huge music fan, Éanna’s Gig of the Year was Fontaines D.C. and Kneecap ripping it up together in London’s Finsbury Park.

“It was a moody summer’s day, storm clouds were gathering and there was an energy in the air, which both bands fed off,” he says switching into music critic mode. “I’d seen Fontaines D.C. before at All Together Now and Alexandra Palace, both of which were amazing gigs, but they took it to a whole new level in Finsbury Park. Kneecap did their best to upstage them, but I don’t think there’s any band in the world who could do that at the moment. Fontaines are just phenomenal.”

Indeed they are. Another of the former child actor’s favourite roles this year was appearing in the music video for Michael D. Higgins' ‘Against All Certainty’ video.

“Ages ago, I instagrammed Junior Brother, another icon, saying, ‘You don’t know me but if you ever want to make a video for anything, just let me know,’” Éanna recalls. “He said, ‘That’s great, thanks’ and five or six years later invited me to be in the video for his song ‘Take Guilt’, which I adore.

"The person who directed that, Ellius Grace, also directed the President Higgins video and asked me to get involved. I loved the poem and Ellius’ concept for it, so we spent two days shooting it in The Complex in Smithfield. To be a very small part of Michael D.’s presidency is a total honour. He’s been an incredible statesman and represents what we love about this country.”

RISING STAR AWARD

The likes of Kneecap, Derry Girls and Say Nothing have taught English people more about Irish history than the whole A-Level syllabus.

“They have and it’s much needed,” Éanna nods. “You’d think that being shared history and recent these things would be known, but they’re not. I only processed that when I moved over to London, which otherwise is such a phenomenally diverse, brilliant city. The fact that Derry Girls and The Young Offenders are bigger there than they are here even is a great thing.”

How accurate a portrayal of his home city is The Young Offenders?

“I’m a superfan of the two boys, Chris and Alex, and they’ve got it spot on,” Éanna replies. “My brother says that growing up he was terrified of lads exactly like Billy Murphy! The show has a very special DNA, which makes it funny, ridiculous and heartwarming in equal measures.

“The same’s true of the Kneecap film. I love that it’s about the Irish language and Irish identity, which are such hot topics in the North for both communities. Identity becomes an even more essential component of your life when it’s under threat or been eroded.

“Brendan Canty, the director, said, ‘If you can rap, you can act’,” he adds. “That’s been proven by both the wonderful film he had out this year, Christy, which is set in Cork and the Kneecap movie.”

By the time you read this, Éanna will be appearing alongside two more Derry Girls alumni, Nicola Coughlan and Siobhán McSweeney, in the London West End revival of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy Of The Western World.

The Playboy of the Western World

“Myself, Nicola and the director Caitríona McLaughlin did some workshopping around it during the summer but the hard graft in terms of rehearsals starts next week,” he explains. “I hadn’t met Nicola before, so in advance of us working together we went for a drink with Siobhán and got on like a house on fire. On screen and off it, they’re class.

“It’s not just that they’re brilliant character actors. For the last two years, Nicola has advocated very powerfully for people in Gaza and been genuinely influential. With Bridgerton and the other work she’s done, she has a huge following and it’s a really principled thing for her to have done.”

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Oscar Wilde Rising Star Award that Éanna went all the way to Los Angeles to collect in February. Was it a good night out?

“The best!” he concludes. “It was in a place called the Ebell hotel, which is a very beautiful, old world mahogany building. We all had to make a speech. I tried to be witty and pithy and probably failed on both counts. John C. Reilly, on the other hand, got up and gave this extraordinary talk about love and compassion.

“There’s a part where he said, ‘A nation’s greatness is measured by the care they give to the most vulnerable. You put your beliefs to work. That’s what the Irish do’, which really moved me. It was my first time in L.A. and I absolutely loved it so, yeah, it was a very good night.”

• Saipan previews in selected Irish cinemas on St. Stephen’s Day and goes on general release on January 1

Éanna Hardwicke. Copyright Abigail Ring/ hotpress.com