Lacy Moore on 'Age Of The Living Dead' and her journey to television

As the Covid-19 pandemic was starting to wreak havoc across the UK, Lacy Moore was shooting Age Of The Living Dead, a TV series about an (un)deadly virus. You could say that the second series of the Amazon Prime show was shot in the nick of time.

“It was possibly the oddest thing I’ve ever done,” the Dublin-born actress laughs. “And I’ve done some odd things in my life! I think there were 22 cases in the North of Ireland when we were due to start filming.”

A surreal experience to be sure, but Moore maintains that the bizarre synchronicity enhanced everyone’s performances. “People could really relate to the scenes in the script,” she says, “because it was happening right outside the door. The atmosphere on set was really eerie.”

PIRATE RADIO

Age of the Living Dead is set in a world where vampires and humans have to co-exist in America. “The East coast is where the vampires are quarantined, and the West Coast is where you have the humans,” Moore explains. “The space in between is called ‘no man’s land’ and no one is allowed to go in there, save for a few militia – who are stationed there, in case the vampires ever break quarantine. They have a treaty signed between the humans and the vampires which is called the Bloody Sunday treaty.”

Moore chuckles. She plays the Minister for Defence, working alongside the Prime Minister to develop a strategy for handling the crisis when the treaty is broken. Chaos – and I’m sure more than a little bloodshed – ensues.

“I always thought that if I were to ever get into a sci-fi drama I would find it really tricky,” Moore reflects. “I don’t know, normally, how you would relate to those supernatural ideas. But because I was filming these scenes in the midst of a pandemic, I didn’t really have to do any digging. I was genuinely anxious, so in the series, on this occasion, I was drawing a lot from what was happening outside.”

Moore also landed a part in Allan Cubitt’s serial-killer drama The Fall back in 2016. Though the show is years old, it gained an entirely new audience – and millions of fans – when it became available on Netflix. It was a dream come true for any actor, but initially Moore wasn’t so sure she would get the part.

“It’s Alan Cubitt, so I prepped as much as I could,” she says. “I love playing really passionate characters. I also love any show, film, or book to do with serial killers.”

Moore had a less than conventional upbringing – her parents used to run a pirate radio station out of her bedroom.

“They were doing the pirate radio stuff from the time I was born until I was six or seven,” she recalls. “It’s strange. I have really vivid memories of being one and two, and I think it’s because of the situation I was growing up in. My bedroom doubled as the studio, and that’s what they were broadcasting from. I remember that like it was yesterday – and I can only put it down to the fact that it was a very vibrant time in my bedroom.”

FROM BURLESQUE TO ROAD TRIPS

Later, fleeing from a conservative Ireland, Lacy Moore moved to San Francisco,. It turns out she did it in an adventurous and freedom-loving devil-may-care spirit, becoming a burlesque dancer.

“I worked in a burlesque club. I was also a bike courier at the time, and I was working 9 hour days, six days a week. I had a friend who was a Burlesque dancer and she said, ‘Why don’t you just do burlesque – you can do it 2 or 3 times a week and earn 3 times the amount’.

“Because I was quite into performance as well,” she adds, “I used to love getting up on stage and dressing in these 1940’s costumes. I did that for the whole rest of the time I was there.”

Does that take confidence?

“I think so,” she laughs. “In the 90s in Ireland, everything was very conservative and conventional for my upbringing. When I got to San Francisco, I wanted to do everything that was crazy, from burlesque, to acting, to road trips. Anything wacky and zany.

“But you definitely have to be a bit of an extrovert to do burlesque. I was always a bit of an extrovert as a child. I’d come from these kooky parents, and I just wasn’t conservative at all.”

She began to train as an actor in the San Francisco New Conservatory Theatre, but later graduated from the Manchester School of Theatre, which also was the spawning ground for greats like Julie Walters, Steve Coogan and Richard Griffiths.

“I didn’t know how hard acting really was, until I studied it,” Moore reflects. “I thought it was just getting up and performing, but the craft itself is such hard work. When I started training, I learned quickly that it’s very complicated to create a show or a piece of theatre.

“And to be convincing,” she adds.

“Acting doesn’t look on the outside how difficult it is on the inside. It encompasses your whole soul. You’re working on an emotional, psychological, physical level.”

She pauses.

“You’re using everything inside of you,” she adds, “so it’s very delicate work.”

Especially when there’s a deadly virus around...

• Age of the Living Dead Season 2 will air January 15th, 2021.