Irish actor Keith McErlean says home is where the heart is - and the work - as he is enjoying busiest time in his career from the cosy surrounding of his home in Donegal.
Despite the acting world taking a huge hit during the pandemic like everyone else, the Inishowen native found himself in two of the biggest Irish TV hits of the year, RTE crime drama Kin, and Virgin Media’s newest series, Redemption.
“It was a strange one for me… I was very worried at the very beginning,” Keith told the Irish Daily Mirror.
“I do a lot of my work in theatre as well, and that was the end of theatre for the foreseeable, but it was great, whenever TV did kick off again, I suppose what happened was there was six months of a lull, so there was a little bit of a traffic jams and when it did reopen there was a lot of work immediately,” he explained.
“There was a lot of TV being made and films being made and I was lucky enough to go on to several projects one after the other.
"It was perhaps one of the busiest times I have ever had.”
And thanks to a change in the old casting couch style and decades working to establish himself, he said he was able to bag them all whilst living at home in the Hills.
He beamed: “I live in Donegal now again.
“We are no longer required to go into rooms and meet people in the beginning stages of casting, it is all done with tapes.
“Later on maybe on bigger productions, but we have been making tapes now for years. We do not go into rooms anymore, or have to go in there with 50 people and sit very awkwardly in a casting session waiting to go in, looking across the room and sizing up your competition, those days are gone.”
But the seasoned star, who spent the beginnings of her career between Dublin and London, said it took decades of working in the hotspots to get to the point where he could make the break to move home.
And he would still encourage others to do the same groundwork.
“You had to be close to the work, I started in 1996, and back then, I suppose it was a training thing.
“I went to Dublin to train in the Gaiety School of acting, there was no form of training available to me in Inishowen and there was no access to work or auditions or anything like that back then.
“So first of all I had to go to the cities for training, but that was where the work was, in Dublin or Galway.
“And then I moved to London, and I lived there for 10 years, but the idea of the cities for me was, yeah I’m going to go there, and i’ll go to London and get set up and as soon as I do, I will move back home again and I will move to the countryside. That was always my intention.
“And now you can do that.
“But as a young actor, it's probably important to be as close to the work as you can be.
“Get in there, meet the casting directors, get your training done, get your auditions done, and just be there and be in the network of it and finding out through the grapevine what is going on.
“You are not going to have access to that kind of thing in rural Ireland, it is just going to be more difficult.”
Whilst he’s happy to be living in his native county, Keith admits he likes to escape it when he is playing a character - preferring to ditch his distinctive Donegal accent for something completely different.
Yet, despite playing Dubliners for years, the star who first found fame as Barry on Bachelor's Walk, said he is still conscious of ‘getting it right’ to avoid annoying any locals with his attempt.
The star, who played gangster Eamon Cunningham’s sidekick Con Doyle, in Dublin based crime drama Kin, and more recently detective Patrick Fannon in Redemption, also based in the capital, said: “To be honest it is sometimes in my head..
“I am really only concerned about Irish people, outside people don't really matter. You just want to get it right for them.
“And particularly if you are doing a Dublin accent and you are from Donegal, I mean god help you if you get it wrong. It will be ‘why didn’t they cast a Dub?’.
“And it happens to be a lot of the time I have played a lot of Dublin characters.”
Keith was speaking as all was revealed in Redemption this week as the first series came to an explosive end this week.
The series is now available to watch in full on Virgin Media Player.
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