Interview: Dervla Kirwan, actress in BBC1's Material Girl

Published on Friday 14 August 2009 13:14

Dervla Kirwan opted out of the red carpet game. Now she's back and in the BBC's glossy send-up of the fashion industry, Material Girl, taking control of her career and relishing a new phase where she's no longer cast as the Cinderella but the wicked stepmother.

I Have died and gone to model heaven. I'm in a swanky country house on the outskirts of London, surrounded by ridiculously Beautiful People. Before the launch of a new perfume, around 60 laughably attractive fashion models are swanning around with a cigarette in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. All as thin as rakes, they look like they survive on fresh air and – when they're feeling really naughty – the odd swig of Evian. Amy Winehouse's 'Valerie' is blasting out of the PA system. There is a lot of loud tartan trouser and outrageous pink tutu action going on. I've clearly pulled into Fashionista Central.

The models are readying themselves to play extras in a key scene from Material Girl, a new BBC1 drama series based on the best-seller Fashion Babylon, by Imogen Edwards-Jones. Summed up by all those adjectives beginning with G – glossy, glitzy, glamorous, gorgeous – it aims to do for the fashion industry what Hotel Babylon did for five-star accommodation, and in doing so unbuttons a world ripe for satire.

Lording it over this relentlessly pulchritudinous, deeply shallow universe is the character of Davina Bailey (played with rare panache by the Irish actress Dervla Kirwan). She is the fashion designer responsible for the outfits every hot young starlet wants be seen in when sashaying up the red carpet, and a gloriously catty cross between Coco Chanel and Cruella De Vil.

Davina is determined at all costs to hold on to her crown as the queen of fashion and see off the threat of a gifted Young Pretender called Ali (Leonora Crichlow, from Being Human and Sugar Rush). It's a terrific piece of acting by Kirwan because in real life the actress would rather wear a bin-liner than hang out with fashion's glitterati.

We meet in her trailer during a break in filming. A natural beauty gifted with immaculate porcelain skin, Kirwan is in her civvies – a defiantly un-fashionista ensemble of a dark jersey and blue jeans. The one concession to the part is the pink hair-net keeping Davina's immaculate coiffure in check.

Gesturing at her unusual headgear, the actress laughs that she may well have created a new haute-couture look (stranger things have happened in the real-life fashion industry, after all). The hairdo itself is a work of art. "Half of it is fake, and it takes two hours to get ready every morning," Kirwan says. "I just sit there reading the papers. It's a great way to catch up!"

So would it be fair to say that the fashion world holds little thrall for the actress? "I used to have a very dismissive view of fashion. I'm a mother of two, I'm very pragmatic, I live in jeans, and I don't have to wear make-up. But I absolutely recognise the power of an impeccably dressed man or woman. Clothes maketh the man or woman."

Filming this series, she says, has made her realise the importance of fashion. "You can use it to create your own form of self-expression. And the industry is in no way frivolous. It's a multi-billion-pound business, and it's deeply exciting to be involved in it."

However, the actress is also conscious of the industry's dark side. "I have great difficulty buying tops for a pound. I find that hard to stomach, especially when we now know what goes on in those sweat-shops in China."

Nevertheless, Kirwan is in awe of those capable of designing and making their own clothes. "I'm one of the most untalented sewers in the world. I'm almost dyslexic when it comes to sewing – my husband would laugh at the very idea of it! Much as I'd love to darn his socks, let him darn his own!"

Brought up in Churchtown, Dublin, Kirwan didn't like school, and her unhappy time there only encouraged her long-held dream of acting. "Everyone else was busy studying to become doctors and lawyers," she recalls, "and I was deemed most frivolous for wanting to become an actress. Who's having the last laugh now? I think you always have to aim for the stars."

At 16, Kirwan ran away to join a theatre troupe in London, and has never looked back. In the mid-1990s, she starred in two of BBC1's biggest primetime hits, the sitcom Goodnight, Sweetheart and the gentle rural Irish drama Ballykissangel. On the latter, she met and became engaged to her co-star Stephen Tompkinson. The relationship gripped the tabloids – partly because she played a barmaid and he a priest – and gave Kirwan her first taste of red-top intrusiveness.

In 2001, she met the actor Rupert Penry-Jones (from Spooks and Persuasion), on a production of JP Priestley's Dangerous. It was evidently love at first sight. She remembers, "As soon as he walked in the door, I said, 'I'm having a bit of that, thanks very much!'" They both prize family very highly, and it is a thoroughly modern relationship – they take it in turns to work and look after the children. She calls their marriage "a very good meeting of minds".

But Kirwan can scarcely have had to time to see her husband lately. In addition to Material Girl, she has starred in an episode of ITV's Law and Order UK and Moving On, Jimmy McGovern's well-regarded BBC1 series about turning points in life. The actress will also soon be appearing opposite Colin Farrell in Ondine, Neil Jordan's big-screen fantasy about a fisherman who lands a woman in his net and is convinced she is a mermaid.

Ever canny, Kirwan is well aware of the dangers of overexposure. "Will people get sick of me? Will they start talking about 'the ubiquitous Dervla Kirwan' instead of 'the ubiquitous Carol Vorderman'? That would be a fate worse than death. I do worry about being overexposed, but the only way to keep your profile is to keep working."

A pause. She breaks into another broad smile. "There is plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."

The actress offers a wry, sane perspective on her industry not always evident in some of Equity's more hysterical members. She admits, for example, that she would like to be offered Hollywood films, but "unfortunately, Jennifer Aniston is always available".

Later, the actress recallsmeeting one designer – who shall remain nameless – while researching Material Girl. "She was utterly terrifying, but mad. There is a fine line between greatness and insanity. I'm not insane – therefore I'll always be mediocre. But that's okay. I can live with that!"

But as well as being winningly self-deprecating, Kirwan can also be furiously animated when the mood takes her. Witness the vehemence with which the actress expresses her distaste for the all-pervasive celebrity culture. She and Penry-Jones have recently left London for deepest rural Hampshire in an effort to bring up their two young children, five-year-old Florence and Peter, three, to be accustomed to long walks and pets rather than paparazzi.

The actress, who gained recognition after breaking through as a fresh-faced 19-year-old in Melvyn Bragg's steamy drama A Time to Dance, says she has no desire to conduct her family's life through the pages of a celebrity magazine. "Rupert and I just keep ourselves very low-key. I can't stand it when I see people complain about press intrusion. Don't go to the parties. Don't fall out of the dress. Don't have dalliances with other people."

She adds that she and her husband are anxious to shield their offspring from the more malign influences of showbiz. "We're really crazy about our kids, and we've seen too many casualties of what this business has done to children," she says. "What you have to do is pull back."

Kirwan, whose father was an insurance executive and mother an English teacher, rues the modern obsession with all things Jordan and Jade. "In the old days, everything you did was not picked over by the press," sighs the actress. "But over the last ten years, the scrutiny has become terrifying. You have one spot on your knee or a tiny drop of sweat under your arm and you're instantly questioned."

The pressure to live up to a celebrity ideal has become intolerable – another reason for Kirwan's retreat to the peace and quiet of Hampshire. "When I get invited to an awards ceremony, I don't think, 'Great'. I think, 'God, what on earth am I going to wear?' I don't get given any outfits, so you end up spending a fortune on a fancy dress, and the press tear you to shreds for it anyway. If you go online, the abuse is worse – it's ridiculous.

"The red carpet thing is so boring," she continues. "True fashion should not be about that – it should be an expression of a great personality. Look at Lady Gaga – her wardrobe reflects who she is brilliantly."

The demands of life in the spotlight clearly annoy Kirwan. "It's all so predictable," she fumes. "If you're a woman of a certain age, you're supposed to look like Madonna. As a woman who will turn 40 in three years' time – not that I'm obsessed about it or anything," she adds with a knowing grin, "how do you age gracefully? How much work do you put in? And if you do put the work in, what ultimately does that say about you?"

And don't get her started on the issue of ageism. "Look at Strictly Come Dancing," she says. "Bruce Forsyth, who is 81, hosts it with the beautiful Tess Daly, who is 43 years younger than him! This hasn't moved on since the 1970s, and I'm sick and tired of it." She is also deeply concerned that actresses over the age of 35 can start to feel "invisible".

For all that, Kirwan herself has never been short of work and has landed some cracking parts of late. She wowed critics in a London production of Harold Pinter's love-triangle play Betrayal. The actress also thinks it is "pretty cool" that one day she will able to show her children her performance in the last Christmas special of Doctor Who. She played the evil Miss Hartigan, who joined forces with the Cybermen in an attempt to take over the world.

Arguably, Kirwan's most celebrated recent role was one in which her face did not even appear. She made men up and down the country go weak at the knees with her absurdly raunchy voiceovers for the TV commercials of a certain upmarket supermarket – they were not just any outrageously suggestive adverts, they were M&S's outrageously suggestive adverts.

The actress claims that her voiceovers boosted sales of M&S chocolate sauce by 7,000 per cent. She says, "Even without the voiceover, it was the most sexual thing I've seen. That oozing chocolate! When I get bored, my lowest form of wit is smut, so I decided I would go for it. They didn't say stop. I did a lot of versions – the outtakes would be interesting." Now friends beg her to record their answerphone messages.

For the time being, however, Kirwan is focusing on Material Girl. She has relished donning Davina's designer threads. She is a brilliantly bitchy character, capable of uttering the word "sweetie" as though it's a death threat. She air-kisses all her "friends" whilst remaining at least a foot away from their faces.

When a famous actress is lukewarm about one of Davina's outfits for a red-carpet event, the designer hisses, "She's wearing Davina Bailey to the Baftas if I have to Superglue her arse to it." She dismisses a competitor's work as "council-house chic", and when a young rival looks set to usurp her position of power, Davina sends her a bouquet of beautiful lilies with the message attached: "This is war".

Davina is a delicious panto villain for Kirwan to sink her teeth into. One of her only concerns has been that viewers might compare her character with Miranda Priestly, the uber-bitch played by Meryl Streep in the movie The Devil Wears Prada.

"I've tried to veer away from her," Kirwan says. "Of course, there are similarities – they're both very powerful women in fashion. But the main difference is that Miranda is played by Meryl Streep! I hope I won't be accused of stealing – maybe just slightly plagiarising!"

More of an inspiration, Kirwan reveals, came from the great female role models of the golden age of Hollywood. "We looked at all the oldies and fantastic strong women like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. You hope you're hinting at someone like that, who sucks like a vampire from everything around her."

The actress doesn't deny that it was a joy to play a character metaphorically twiddling a moustache (although, of course, all of a top fashionista's unsightly body hair is waxed off with military precision twice a week). "Now it comes to the stage of my career when I get to play the wicked witch all the time," Kirwan smiles. "You know, you start off with Cinderella and then you end up playing the stepmothers," she says.

There is no doubt that Davina is a control freak. "She's good at manipulating the world she's in, and that's why she's successful," says Kirwan. "Davina is a self-made woman, an individual with a desire to control everyone and everything in her empire.

"She is a villain because the stakes are high. I've chosen to play her as motivated by greed, and when that's what drives a person nothing will stand in their way. She has put 20 years of her life behind the business, given up her life for it. She has no family, no relationship. Everything is her work and she's not letting anything stand in her way."

Davina could have been a cardboard cut-out baddie, but Kirwan invests her with the odd glimpse of humanity. "When I first read the script, I thought, 'How am I going to play someone who takes herself so, so seriously?' She's a megalomaniac. If Ali represents the innocence that could be corrupted by ambition, Davina represents utter corruption," she says.

"But I've tried to give a humorous performance and to humanise her in fleeting moments – even if in the first four episodes, it's very hard to find those moments! I kept thinking, 'She is a workaholic, but what the hell is she running from?'"

"Normally I only get to play depressed housewives," continues Kirwan. "So to play a proper, big character like this is tremendous fun. Davina is a character verging on the Titanic – in impact, if not in subtlety."

The actress did a lot of research for the part and discovered a world that was all too Ab Fab. "I met a lot of extraordinary figures from fashion, and what I found out is that the caricature is reality. They use outrageous behaviour as armour to deal with their ever-diminishing hold on reality. We never see Davina without her make-up. In the same way, in The Devil Wears Prada there is one brief scene where Miranda sits there in her dressing gown and has clearly been crying. But she soon gathers herself and just gets on with it."

Davina has a signature, funereal look, which Kirwan describes as "an amalgamation of icon and siren. She's like a female Karl Lagerfeld with attitude, Mrs Robinson meets Deeta Von Teese. She's always dressed in black, very 1940s Hollywood, Joan Crawford with a twist. The clothes add this black-widow-spider quality to the character."

Material Girl is a light, throwaway piece of escapist fun designed to lift the recessionary gloom. It is about as substantial as a glass full of champagne bubbles, but Kirwan is savvy enough to know that not every reviewer will rave, "It's absolutely fabulous, sweetie."

"Potentially, we could be absolutely torn apart for this," the actress acknowledges. "Critics could say, 'We see ourselves as above this. We prefer to watch depressing kitchen-sink drama because we have a conscience.' But I came into this business to entertain. I'm nervous as hell about the reaction, but I think we've been creative with this series. Material Girl is big and bold, and I hope people enjoy its gloss and escapism." r

Material Girl starts on BBC1 on 1 September