Mrs Brown's Boys star Fiona O'Carroll opened up to RTE's Ryan Tubridy on how she struggled during lockdown following her marriage split.
The actress and mother-of-four, 42, is one of the recruits taking part in the new celebrity series of RTE’s Ultimate Hell Week: The Professionals.
Speaking to Tubridy on Friday’s Late Late Show, Fiona explained that she was struggling so much mentally during the pandemic that she actually volunteered herself to undertake the gruelling competition.
In an emotional moment on the show this week, she broke down in tears as she opened up about her separation from her co-star husband Martin Delany saying she had reached a point in her life where she was feeling “a bit lost”.
READ MORE: Mrs Brown's Boys' Fiona O'Carroll breaks down in tears on RTE's Ultimate Hell Week
“Covid has an awful lot to answer for,” she said. “I probably wasn't in a very good place at the time. I felt like I needed a purpose.
“I asked to do it, I actually volunteered. I rang them and said ‘I want to do this’.”
Fiona said it was the breakdown of her marriage as well as taking care of her four children alone during the pandemic that inspired her to take part in the series.
“I separated [from my husband] three years ago and that was very difficult,” she said.
“I had chosen to take a year out of work to spend some time with my children and that year happened to be the year that Covid started. I had all these great plans of doing this and that with my kids and that just didn't happen.
“The first time around it wasn’t so bad because it was lovely to be at home with my children. The sun was shining, it was a break and there was no travelling.
“But then, it was a combination of everything. All of a sudden your family are all over the world, you can't see them. You can't see your friends. You’re home with your four kids.
“Your ex-husband is locked down in Portugal, so my kids weren't able to see their father.
"And then, I was having to homeschool four children who are completely different ages.”
Fiona and Martin share four sons, Felix, 15, Eli, 13, Isaac, 8, and Dexter, who is almost 7.
She continued: “They are great boys, they are wonderful boys and I have to say I am so proud of them and how they coped through the whole Covid thing.
“Three of them are on the [autism] spectrum and that's been difficult over the years… But Covid was difficult.”
Fiona told Tubridy how she felt Covid along with her relationship breakdown stripped her of many of her identities.
"Over the years I think you wear many hats…You have the mother hat, the sister hat, the daughter hat, the wife hat, the actress hat. You wear all these different hats all the time.
“I think Covid stripped me of a lot of those hats. [With] my marriage breaking down and the separation, I was no longer a wife.
I was no longer a sister because I didn't see my brothers. I was no longer a daughter because my father was on the other side of the world . I was no longer an actress because I didn't have a job.”
“All of a sudden the only hat I had was my mother hat.”
Fiona, who is best known as Maria, Agnes’ daughter in law on Mrs Brown's Boys, and Martin, who played Mrs Brown’s youngest son Trevor in the show, had been married for over 15 years before they announced their split in December last year.
Fiona said at the time that they ‘grew apart’ as they both wanted different things.
The couple first met when they were just 16 years old and married in 2006. The pair continue to co-parent their sons, whilst Delaney lives in Portugal.
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