In Conversation With Niamh Algar
Niamh was virtually photographed and interviewed in South Africa by Alison Engstrom
I read that when you told your family you wanted to be a performer when you were younger, they were perplexed by that idea! Did you have to do any convincing on your part?
Oh yeah, consistently convincing them. It was hard at the start because it’s hard to convince someone of something when it lives inside of your head and you see where it’s going. It was quite difficult because no one in my family was in the industry or part of the arts, so for them, it wasn’t a very intangible idea. It’s not to say they weren’t supportive—they always supported me in a lot of ways and I am incredibly grateful. I am the youngest of five kids and if I would be short on rent, I would have to ring up your brother or sister and ask them for a couple of quids. That’s hard because you want to let them know you got this.
It’s an unconventional path for sure.
That’s the hardest part, keeping that ambition and dream in your head alive and convincing yourself it’s the right thing. People weigh up success in regards to the jobs you do and I suppose not the journey it took to get there.
I love talking about that, it’s that decision people often make between choosing a passion that’s a risk or choosing the stable path that is linear. How did you get the ball in motion and what was your original dream?
I grew up in the countryside and I spent a lot of time by myself. When I was in my teens I would watch films and then go into my room and try to recreate them. At the time, I didn’t know why I did it because it wasn’t like I was scriptwriting, it was more trying to figure out why that provoked an emotion in me or why that made me laugh. When I told my family I wanted to do acting my mom put me in a drama or youth theater program and I started doing that in my local town of Mullingar. I was really into art and design in school and music and art were two things I was good at, I was so bad at math (laughs). I got a scholarship to go to the Dublin Institute of Technology; I did extra seminars on cinema studies where I was like, this is going to define it for me. It’s not the usual narrative of an actor, my story doesn’t make sense but in my head, it makes sense.
Well hey, you also had the passion and talent to get you there and you also didn’t give up. How did growing up in a big family inform your view on the world?
I hung around with my sibling’s friends, there were always older people around me. I always thought I could get away more. I was always independent—when I was 12, I would take the bus back and forth to Dublin by myself to go to drama school on the weekend. I never felt sheltered.
Was there a moment or person who helped your dream come true?
It was when I moved to London and I met with my agent and we went through the film and TV we both liked. There were many parallels to what we were both after. I grew up watching Shane Meadows and that was one of the first things I auditioned for, The Virtues, and got the audition, which for me was huge, just to get in the room. I didn’t even care if I didn’t get the part because if I got to sit in a room and workshop with this director, who I admired so much, it was a huge win.
I know you are in South Africa filming season two of Raised by Wolves, congratulations on the success of the show! How did the role come to you?
I was trying to get a meeting with the casting director, and the day she was going to meet, I had just come from the gym and I was in my gym clothes. I met with her for 20 minutes; she said there was a role in there of this character, but at the time, they only had two episodes. She sent me away with the script and to self-tape a scene out of it and I was leaving to go to Ireland to film The Last Right. I was trying to imagine the whole world that Aaron Guzikowski had written but also knowing that Ridley Scott was behind it. The character, Sue, had a quality to her where she was a soldier but she wasn’t defined by her strength. When I landed in Ireland I had heard that Ridley had seen the tape and wanted me to film another scene.
Do you prefer filming somewhere on location like South Africa or do you prefer being close to home? I was reading that you said it can be a lonely feel since you are traveling so much.
I think I like the best of both worlds where you can travel but you can travel back when you have downtime. This year has been the hardest because when I left my home in London in January, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back until July. So that's a set six months of being away from friends and family. In your head, it’s about putting yourself in a place where you go and do the job but you also have to find the routine that you have at home in this other place so that it doesn’t all become about the job. I think that’s the balance because you can lose sight of who you are as a person especially if you are still growing and figuring out what you want. It’s important to find other outlets that aren’t just the work because you can lose grasp of what story you are telling.
Now to talk about your film Censor, a new horror film which is just that! What was it about the project that drew you in?
I was filming season one of Raised by Wolves when I got sent the script. I didn't put it down from when I first picked it up. The first couple of pages I thought, I know what this is about, but then seven pages in I was like, oh my gosh, I have no idea what the heck is going on here (laughs). It was so engaging and Prano (Bailey-Bond) had written a character I hadn’t seen before, I told her, I had seen guys playing this character. She is not trying to be likable or sexy in any way, from the first few scenes you know what she is fighting for, she has a clear objective and Prano throws so much at her. The idea of this repressed memory and psychological distortion—I just thought it was really exciting to take something like that and create a character that audiences haven’t seen.
How do you do research for a character like that because as you said, she is so complex and nuanced. How do you get into that headspace?
Prano and I sat down months before and talked about PTSD and trauma as a child. We read articles about how children have this incredible ability to change the narrative on how they have seen it or experienced it, so it is more tangible and easier for them to swallow. If that is the case, we knew exactly what that trauma was and she’s like an onion—you have this trauma inside of a person and as it progresses, you are peeling off the layers. That was the beauty of building the arc of this character and how each person she encounters exposes another layer and how it changes her. It was coming at it from a very honest perspective and I researched patient testimonies on how people have dealt with childhood trauma.
How do you step away at the end of the day filming something so raw like that?
It’s a hard one because there were heavy chunks of emotional scenes that were compacted into a week or two. I did that thing if I didn't sleep at night, it would just help me in the morning—like a twitchy eye or dark circles—that’s also not sustainable either (laughs)! My friend told me to keep a candle in my trailer and when I go in at the end of the day to light it and then when the time comes to step out of your trailer, blow it out and then you have left that character in that trailer and you can go home and switch off. But again, I am not a robot; you almost have shadows that come with you as you go home. I do find it hard to sleep when I am on jobs because my brain is thinking about what I could do in a scene or what I could have done in a scene.
Do you think back on a day of filming and get stuck on what you wish you did differently? How do you practice self-love in that respect?
The reason you think about the work so much is because you care. The day I stop caring about the job, maybe I shouldn’t do it anymore. I also don’t think you need to torture yourself, when someone says, oh you nailed it, I don’t think that expression exists because you are always going to be thinking of how you could have done something better. You just have to learn to let it go, I am still trying to learn that.
What types of material peeks your interest the most?
I am obsessed with psychological drama and people and why they do things. In Censor I did some stunts and I am also very interested in doing a project with a lot of stunts or action-packed. I see these amazing stunt artists on Raised by Wolves and I am so jealous they get to do that (laughs).