It sounds like the set up to a joke (an outdated one at that): where do you find an Irish actor in London? Well, the punchline, according to Máiréad Tyers, the charismatic lead in Disney+ show Extraordinary, really is: in an Irish pub.
“I knew that there were Irish actor groups in London when I moved here,” Tyers, who is from Cork, says. “I was like, ‘Oh, how do I get in?’ I've met multiple actors now where it's kind of a case of, ‘Right, who's around on Friday?’ and going to the pub.” And they really do look for the the best Irish pubs to meet in. “It feels like a taste of home.”
Though she’s coy about exactly is in these groups, the prospects are tantalising – Irish talent is front and centre like it never has been before. From Bad Sisters to The Lovers and Derry Girls, from Barry Keoghan and Saoirse Ronan to Aisling Bea, Ireland is everywhere on the cultural stage – and not forgetting that Cillian Murphy is odds on to land an Oscar this Sunday. “It’s a huge representation for Ireland, yeah,” Tyers says. “I feel so proud to be Irish – any time, but I guess especially now.”
Having just this week been nominated for an RTS Award for her role in Extraordinary, the second series of which landed at the same time, it looks like Tyers’ own star is on the rise too. Recently returned from a press trip to Los Angeles, she is good company, as happy to chat about her experiences with American crisps – “my tongue was burning with the amount of sodium in them!” – as she is about the Disney show, in which she stars as Jen, a 25-year-old who happens to be the only adult in the world without superpowers.Written by Emma Moran, Extraordinary takes a superhero story and flips it on its head. Instead of superpowers being granted to the very few, in Extraordinary, everyone develops a power when they hit 18. And this being a comedy, those powers range from epic (teleportation) to the refreshingly weird (being able to make people orgasm with just a touch).
In season one, Tyers’ character, Jen, strugges to reconcile being the only person in the world who has no power. In season two, though, she’s one step closer to achieving her dreams: via what is essentially power therapy.
The entire show is anarchic, funny and bracingly rude. And there’s a main character called Jizz Lord. Plus, Derek Jacobi is roped in to read out a list of every time Jen has ever lied during sex.
“I think Extraordinary encapsulates that time in your life so well, where you've just left uni and you're having to turn into an adult, but you very much don't have the skills or abilities to do that and it can feel like such a lost time in your life,” Tyers says.
“It’s good to see other people going through that and realising that it's not meant to be an easy time. It's meant to be hard, you’re meant to be broken. You're meant to be suffering and live in chaos and have a messy room and all that kind of stuff, and that's okay.”
Can she relate? “I remember specifically graduating drama school,” she says. “I think when you're in those institutions you have your whole year, usually for the next three to five years, planned out… I remember graduating and just kind of looking at my whole life ahead of me and going, ‘What do I do now?’”
Up until that point, Tyers has always had a plan. Brought up in Cork, she can never remember not wanting to act; she spent her childhood going to open casting calls in Dubin with her family, standing in queues of “about 200 people”, and watching her contemporaries on the small screen.
“Saoirse Ronan is a prime example; she was so young when she started,” she says. “I used to watch Love/Hate when I was younger and [seeing] a young Barry Keoghan in that, and you're watching it going, ‘I want to be able to do that. How do I do that?’”
She did it by applying for RADA, a school she only found out about at 15 by googling her favourite actors and finding out where they’d gone to. When she got in, the thing most people would bring up was “Fiona Shaw because she's from Cork as well.”
With good reason. From Shaw and Tyers to Siobhan McSweeney (who plays Tyers’ mother in Extraordinary and the much-loved Sister Michael in Derry Girls), Cork actors are having something of a moment. “It feels like specifically Cork. There's loads of us from there,” Tyers exclaims. “I don't know, [there’s] something in the water, obviously.”
It was Kenneth Branagh, the president of RADA, who gave Tyers her big break by casting her as an extra in his acclaimed film Belfast straight out of drama school and whom she labels “one of the greats”.
It was her first taste of success. After Belfast, it was a case of juggling casting calls with a revolving series of odd jobs, including in a cinema (her favourite, because “you got free cinema tickets”) and in a call centre.
Then she got the role of Jen, and hasn’t looked back. Not only does she have a new season of Extraordinary just about to come out, but Tyers already has plenty of other non-superhero work in the pipeline: the upcoming series of My Lady Jane on Prime Video, in which she plays Lady Susannah, and action thriller Dead Shot alongside Felicity Jones, which was released last year.
Dream collaborators include Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan and when it comes to a dream project she’s back to the comedy. “I feel like Wicked Little Letters, with Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman.... to be in a comedic film or series like that, that is just wall-to-wall jokes, I’d love to do that.”
