Lola Petticrew is just seven years into her on-screen career, but in playing former real-life IRA member Dolours Price during Northern Ireland’s “Troubles” in Say Nothing, Petticrew landed one of the great roles of the decade. Taking place over several decades, the depiction of The Troubles in the limited series is cloaked in the murky grey of death, loyalty, and regret. It’s an excellent and admirable primer on the circumstances of the civil war that took place between Catholics and Protestants, the loyalists to the crown, unionists, and the nationalist republicans. What Say Nothing doesn’t do is tell you how to feel. In a series that is a true ensemble, Petticrew is first among equals. Their remarkable performance shows all sides of that grey area Dolours operated in, with high hopes that would be dashed over a decade of service to the IRA. I came to Say Nothing late, just a couple of months ago (FX released the series last November). I have since watched it three times. It is a riveting drama.
In our conversation, Petticrew discusses the weight of her performance, her warm feelings toward the cast and crew, the challenge of playing a character in a hunger strike, and the reasons why the West Belfast native took on a potentially highly controversial subject.
The Contending: I didn’t dial up the screen time, but I’m pretty sure you had the most, so you end up carrying the bulk of the series. What did that feel like for you on a production like Say Nothing?
Lola Petticrew: It was scary. I was very anxious. I feel like it was less about the screen time itself and more about shouldering the weight of a topic like this, and the heart of the show, and the story that we were trying to tell. Especially because I’m from West Belfast, and the community that this story centers around is my community and my people. I had a massive responsibility to them to make sure that their stories were told with reverence and respect, and that they felt like their experiences were being reflected back. Also, to make sure that the show did good and not harm. Living here in Belfast, the effects of the Troubles still ripple through all of society. Part of the reason I wanted to do the show was because all of the questions that it asks of an audience are questions that land with me. As a young adult who still lives here and wants to build a future here, it felt like a massive responsibility to tell the story and to do right by my community.
The Contending: Speaking of your community, I spoke to Anthony Boyle a few weeks ago, and I know you two have been friends for a long time. Did it help having him there to work with, to settle your nerves?
Lola Petticrew: Having Anthony along for the entire ride was really useful. Before we took the job, there were a lot of conversations back and forth, and ultimately, we thought, if not us, then who? We need to be able to shout from inside the room. Then, just having him there every day. Not many people get to go to work every day with their best friend. And especially not a best friend who’s so talented. It definitely quelled my nerves, and it made the experience a lot easier. Having somebody there who felt like home.
The Contending: The Troubles technically ended in 1998, when you were very young. Anthony said that The Troubles are ingrained, it seeps into the bones and creates generational trauma. The Troubles really aren’t over. They rest inside you.
Lola Petticrew: The Troubles are in every fiber of our being. Everybody who lives here and in every ceasefire baby. When you look at statistics, more people have died by suicide post-ceasefire than died during the entire war. That’s flabbergasting. It’s quite simply, not good enough. After I read Patrick Radden Keefe’s book, I read the first two episodes of the show. I knew that it had to be me because these are questions that I’m asking myself. Intergenerational trauma is something that we’ve only really started scratching the surface of. The amazing journalist Lyra McKee, who was sadly murdered a few years ago, had been doing some great work on it. These are the questions that I find myself asking every single day. What is peace and reconciliation? What does it mean to have a shared future? What does this place look like in 10 years?
How do we deal with our trauma, but also allow ourselves? How do we find the space to move on? Those are the questions that the show asks. I don’t think that there are necessarily answers in stone. I don’t claim to have any of the answers, but I think that it’s important that we ask the questions, and in order to begin to find the answers, we need to be able to talk about what happened in the first place. For a long time, like the show says, there was a code of silence. Don’t talk about it, don’t speak about it, and just move on. We didn’t have a peace in reconciliation process, like South Africa had. The quote-unquote “peace process” has been a band-aid over a bullet hole.
The Contending: For many people on either side of the conflict, I suspect they are similar to Dolours. Where they are gung-ho at the beginning, they go through miles of shit, and then on the other end they’re asking, was it worth it? How did you key into that perspective?
Lola Petticrew: I can only speak for Dolours. It’s important to make a distinction that there are three different Dolours. There’s the Dolours who existed in real life that I didn’t know. There’s the Dolours in Patrick’s book, and then there’s the dollars in our script. My job was to play the Dolours in the script. She always thought that the ends would justify the means. There was always the promise of this socialist United Ireland. When the ceasefire happened, and Ireland wasn’t united, and it was still colonized, and it wasn’t the promised land that she thought that they were going to have, it was a little bit harder to justify the means. She wasn’t able to compartmentalize that. And all of a sudden, you have to deal with the fact that you didn’t get the utopia that you thought you were going to get.
Now, all of the consequences of all of these actions catch up with you. Maxine Peake (who plays Dolours at an older age) and I shared the part. She sort of book-ended it. I played a lot more of the revolutionary spirit of youth. As the episodes go on, you find yourself having to play her in the midst of making those difficult decisions. Okay. The most important thing for me in doing it and in playing her was that I couldn’t judge her. As an actor, that’s a really important thing to do, to play the situation that you’re in and the decisions that the character is making, and to bring no moral judgment. It’s something that the show does really well. It’s not painting heroes or villains. It gives you the context of the situation, the decisions that people made, and the consequences of it, and it makes the audience draw their own conclusions. I think that’s more interesting and also better. It’s not wagging the finger at anyone. It’s not telling anyone, this is where you should stand. It’s asking, what would you do?
The Contending: Did you feel the responsibility of playing a real person?
Lola Petticrew: I wanted to do this entire project with reverence and respect. For a lot of people, these are just names, but even when reading the script, there would be the names of streets or certain areas in Belfast, and for a lot of actors reading that, that’s all they would be, but for me, it was different. That’s where I used to have a smoke before school. That’s where I used to go to the bakery. That’s where me and my friends hung out and underage drank. It’s so part of who I am. Knowing, not even just that Dolours is a real person, but this is such a recent history, I felt the weight of that. When we talk about history, it’s sometimes easier for us to put distance between us and the events. But this didn’t happen that long ago.
Also, the consequences of it are still rippling throughout the people here, and especially in episode six when Dolours turns around to the prison guards and screams, ‘My sister’s 19 years old.’ You realize how young people were making these decisions. They’re not that old now; some are still around. The responsibility was making sure that it was as true to life as possible, while also understanding that it is a piece of television and it is drama. Ultimately we tried to be as respectful as we possibly could–knowing that the intention that we all went with in making this was that it would do some good. When I spoke to the team, the producers, and Patrick and Josh (Zetumer), the showrunner, it was very clear to me straight away that they all had the best of intentions and that this was something they truly cared about.
The Contending: Is it challenging to play a character who will also be played by another actor, to set it up for them?
Lola Petticrew: Maxine had a harder job there than me. I had been cast before Maxine, and we had already begun shooting when Maxine was cast. We didn’t get to talk a lot because I was on set, and Maxine was beginning the work that you do as an actor at home, before you even step on set. We did exchange a few emails, and she had asked to see some rushes of what I was doing, because although nobody’s the same person. At forty or fifty, no one is the same person they were at 17, 18, 19, 20, or 28. It was important that the spirit of Dolours was still there, but of course, by the time Maxine plays her, that spirit has been dampened.
The Contending: Dolours spends roughly eight years in jail. During that time, she and her sister went on a hunger strike. That was appropriately grueling to sit through. I’m not sure what you did to convey starvation, but between you and Hazel Doupe (who plays Dolours’ sister and fellow IRA member), I was impressed by how authentic it felt. How did you manage that?
That was difficult. We shot that episode in a real prison, which was traumatizing. I just knew that in the end, we would have something really special if we did it right. It was four weeks of very intense pain. I am so proud of that episode, and I think that it really did what we intended to do. That was not just because of Hazel and me; it was the entire team. The crew were such amazing cheerleaders for us throughout that entire process. They made it a joy to come into work every day, doing things that were horrible and hard. We became such a tight unit, and Alice Seabright, who was our amazing director, helmed the ship. We had amazing intimacy. The crew made sure that everybody was safe and okay and looked after. It’s a real testament to our producing team as well.
The Contending: You and Hazel build a relationship that feels like real sisters. It made the episode more harrowing because it was so convincing how much you two cared for each other. What was it like working with Hazel?
Lola Petticrew: A lot of people are surprised to find out that we didn’t have a chemistry meet together. That was anxiety-inducing for me as well because in the weeks running up to the shoot, I was like, what if I hate Hazel? (Laughs). Then, I met Hazel a week before we started shooting, and the sibling bond was there. I fell immediately in love with Hazel. She’s not just an amazing person, and so easy to be around, she’s such an incredible actor. She’s so detailed and precise in her work, and just watching her do that was phenomenal. It was also great to have somebody who was going through it with you. In the trenches with you, and after a really difficult day on set, we could go home to the apartment and watch Gilmore Girls together and just hug and sit in it with each other. That all came quite naturally. Hazel really is like a little sister to me now. The love that I have for her is astronomical. I’m so glad that came across on screen because it was all quite real.
The Contending: You mentioned that when you were reading the book and the script, these are streets you’re familiar with, where you grew up. This had to be a very personal role for you in any number of ways.
Lola Petticrew: It was very personal to me. I’m not sure that I’ll ever get to do a project that’s quite this close to home again, and quite this personal. It means so much in that way. I’m so grateful that I got to do it. It definitely added a lot of anxiety over the two years that we filmed it and the year waiting for it to come out. I’ve never woken up in so many COVID sweats, panicking about how people would find it. But waking up every night, in cold sweats, was worth it,
The Contending: Was this your favorite project thus far?
Lola Petticrew: Definitely. Being able to represent my community means something. I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to put it in words, and I think anything that I say will fall short, but it has been the biggest privilege of my career so far, and also my life to represent my community and to be a part of the conversation with them, even after it’s come out. Every time somebody approaches me in the street, a coffee shop, or a restaurant, and they talk to me about it, they share personal things with me, and they open up, I am smacked bang in the heart. And so grateful.
Say Nothing is available to stream now on Disney, Hulu, or FX
