Cillian Murphy

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

Talk about refreshing.

You know what else is refreshing this summer?

A brand new phone with Verizon.

Yep, get a new phone on any plan with Select Phone Trade In MyPlan.

And lock down a low price for three years on any plan with MyPlan.

This is a deal for everyone, whether you're a new or existing customer.

Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals.

Three-year price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate only.

Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

If this is your first episode, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode.

Some people even begin from the start, which was seven years ago, this week.

I put out my first ever podcast this week.

Seven years ago.

My first ever episode?

I read out a short story that I I wrote because I didn't think anyone would be interested in my short stories.

So I created this podcast with the intention of just drawing attention to some short stories that I'd written.

I never really intended the podcast to become a regular weekly thing.

And here we are seven years later.

And I haven't missed.

I've delivered a podcast.

every single Wednesday since 2018.

And I'm going to continue doing that so long as somebody's listening and as a wonderful piece of just bizarre synchronicity the short story that I read on that first ever episode that short story was called

Did you read about Arskine Fogarty a story set in 2007

about

About a man a man a limerick man living in Dublin who'd made a lot of money in the Celtic tiger and then it suddenly disappeared with the economic crash and all he has left is his American American fridge freezer.

So he drags his American fridge freezer all the way back to Limerick.

And that story, that was the first ever episode of this podcast.

But this week, I'm adapting that short story into a fucking short movie, a short film, with the actor Robbie Sheehan.

That's what I'm doing this week.

I'm on set.

I want to thank everybody who's been listening to this podcast.

I want to thank the people who've been supporting the podcast on Patreon.

You've completely changed my life.

You have completely changed my life.

When I began this podcast, I thought that my career was over.

I'd spent my 20s trying to make it in television and music.

And it didn't work out.

My book of short stories was just, it was like a last shot in the dark.

And that and this podcast.

That's allowed me to earn a living.

That has allowed me to earn a living for the past seven years.

And that's all I want, to be honest.

I I don't want much more than that.

I want to write, I want to be creative and I want those things to be my job.

And that's what my podcast is.

So thank you so much to every single listener.

We're up to fucking 75 million listens now lads.

Most of my listeners aren't even fucking Irish.

It's mainly

in England, Scotland, Wales, Australia, America, Canada.

By the way, I have a UK tour announcement for 2025, which I'll announce in the Ocarina Pause.

So I have a very special guest this week.

Again,

this wasn't planned as some special seventh anniversary thing.

It's just coincidence.

I'm chatting with the wonderful Killian Murphy.

Long time listeners will know.

Killian's been on this podcast before.

He was a guest in 2018.

I've done a few bits of pieces with Killian Murphy over the years.

He edited a book in 2021, I think it was, called INVA the book of empathy and I submitted a bit of writing to that but Killian is back killing is back for the chat to speak about his new film small things like these

which is it's in cinemas November 1st small things like these

it is a wonderful film it's based on the book by the same name by

Claire Keegan

one of the one of the greatest living writers one of my favorite short story writers like

My top short story writers, who I'd be reading frequently and who are writing right now, would be

Claire Keegan, Wendy Erskine, Kevin Barry, Mariana Enriquez.

Claire Keegan is a wonderful writer, in particular her short stories.

I don't know if you remember an absolutely incredible film from 2022 called The Quiet Girl.

on Colleen Kuhn.

Nominated for an Oscar, I believe.

But that film is based on a Claire Keegan Keegan short story she's an astounding writer so Killian's new film small things like these is based on a Clare Keegan book the story

the story revolves around the the Magdalene laundries in Ireland mother and baby homes this dark period of recent Irish history where women were institutionalized against their will by the church and the state

I touched on I touched on that subject in a podcast about three weeks ago, but it's a historical area that I'm going to start focusing on more and speaking to the right people about it.

So for new listeners to this podcast, because I'm conscious there's going to be there's going to be a lot of people listening right now who've never heard my podcast and they're they're here because Killian is on the podcast.

You're more than welcome.

Just as a heads up I don't really I don't really do interviews.

I try and aim instead for conversations.

And when I'm speaking, I'm speaking to someone like Killian Murphy, an Oscar winner.

Killian is a master of his craft.

He is a master of the craft of acting and storytelling and performing.

So when I speak to a person like that,

I want to speak about art.

I want to speak about the craft.

That's what I try and focus the conversation on.

And this conversation is about the film, small things like these.

That's what this conversation is about.

Regarding spoiler warnings, this isn't a spiler warning type of film this is a piece of art it's a slow piece of work that I'd advise I'd advise you to watch multiple times so this chat with Killian it works

it works as something you can listen to before you see the film and it will definitely works as something to listen to immediately after you watch the film as a companion because we go in depth into the storytelling and the characters and his performance.

And just another one for new listeners.

I am autistic, right?

So I try my absolute, very, very best to not interrupt when I have a conversation.

I really, really try hard

to not interrupt.

But sometimes my curiosity and excitement gets the better of me.

and I do interrupt, which is,

that's, autistic people struggle with that, and I struggle with that.

so please please extend a small bit of understanding if i interrupt once or twice so small things like these it's out it's out in the first of november go and see it go and see it in the cinema all right and here's the chat i had with the the oscar winner from cork killian murphy all right killian what's the crack how are you getting on i'm very good how are you i'm fantastic i'm fantastic

you're on set at the moment you are you will outside what you're on set for yes yeah we're shooting the Peaky Blinders film.

You're shooting the movie version of it.

We are, yeah.

Is that like a bigger, bigger production than shooting the TV series?

Like, is it

more different?

Well, we have more time.

Do you know?

We did the

television show, we would have to, we'd do six episodes.

So, that's effectively three feature films, and now we're doing

one feature film in the same time.

Okay.

So we,

like on a film set,

time is the most important currency of all, and we have more time with this, which is lovely.

Absolutely.

I'm actually, I'm on set myself.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I'm making one of my short stories into a short film with Robbie Sheen playing the lead.

So that's actually what I'm doing today.

Class.

So

that'll be very enjoyable.

But it's my, yeah, it's my personal working on users, anything that looks like a film set it's not just because i'm used to television you see so it's you having that many people is mad and are you are you directing it not directing it but like it's so it was one of my short stories it's called um did you read about arskin fogarty it was my first ever podcast episode and wow the fella who drags a fridge from dublin all the way down to limerick and robby's playing that person and i wrote the short story and i adapted the script but i'm not directing it, but I'm keeping an eye on set and just trying to not get involved, if you know what I mean.

You're hovering.

I'm hovering because I suppose the reason I'm bringing up is

like this film that you're doing, small things like these, right?

It's an adaptation from Claire Keegan's novel.

Yes.

And I saw that, like, Endo Walsh is the one who wrote the script.

Yes.

And

I watched it, and

you've done an amazing job.

So the thing about Claire Keegan's book

it it's so quiet it it's so quiet and silent it's

it's almost there's there's a hemingway technique of writing he called it the iceberg theory you know that or the iceberg technique where

it's the emotions bubble up underneath you know you don't describe it it bubbles up underneath and that technique is very literary.

It's very much about words on a page and the theater of your mind.

But you've managed to nail it with the film.

Like,

Jesus, the character that you're playing at Bill, right?

Yeah.

I literally, I worried for your mental health afterwards.

I was like, but like,

you play this character who really has the weight of the world on his mind, and

he never expresses it with words.

And I could even...

What made me concerned for your mental health was

I could see it in your body language.

like when a human is is suppressing memories or suppressing things it it forms in our bodies and the way that we hold ourselves you were you were very tense you were you were like in a defensive ball

like what what was that like

well i'm glad you picked up on that because we worked on that um

And I also like what you said about Claire's writing, that wonderful kind of economy of language that she has.

And it gives the reader an awful lot of space in her work and in her short stories and in the novellas.

And I think Enda was very keen to be faithful to that.

I mean, it's a very, very faithful adaptation of the book.

And again, we want to leave space for the audience.

And what's really interesting about the book, and hopefully about the film, is that

the real drama, the real conflict, the real

story starts when the film ends.

If you know what I mean?

When it goes to black and there's that dedication.

And

what I love about that is it's a provocation to the audience.

So

every time we've screened the film, you know, it goes to black and then the credits roll and then people there and they don't get up.

And

then the discussions start.

And not just in Ireland, because it's an Irish story, but everywhere that we've screened the film, like we screened it in Berlin for the first time.

And so people are invested in different ways in the film and different characters, and they have different points of view about what will happen after the film ends.

And then, in terms of playing him,

yeah, I wanted to make it a sort of a physical performance.

I'm very interested in acting with the body, you know.

And myself and Nenda from the very beginning, we wanted him to be primarily kind of non-verbal, you know?

And when they do, when the characters do talk in the film, they don't talk about what's actually going on.

They talk in sort of banalities.

You know, and it's perhaps only there's only one real conversation, I think, about what's actually going on.

And that's between Eileen and Bill in the bedroom and everything else is just sort of noise you know it's noise and it's it's it's sad what made me feel sad about it too is is

so when a human lives their life that way and a lot of humans live their life that way where

memories and pain are under the surface but are not spoken with the mouth Yeah, Bill has to engage in this performance of,

it's kind of inauthentic.

So even he loves his daughters, like it's very clear.

This man adores and loves his daughters, but even when he speaks with them,

there's no playfulness, compassion.

Do you know what I mean?

It's still quite direct and matter of fact, even when he's dealing with his daughters.

And that, to me, I see that as the that's the consequence.

That's the price that a person pays when they live their life in such a repressed way, when they repress so much pain.

what was

like i we all know someone like bill it's it's it's it's actually quite irish that that character is very irish

when you were trying to get into that that character was was there anyone that you knew or someone from your childhood that you you were evoking

uh not directly no uh not directly but i know those those working men do you know what i mean do you know what i mean those those men that have uh

they they've worked with their bodies all their all their lives And I kind of have studied them, do you know, the way they stand and sit?

There's the coal as well.

Yeah.

When you're thinking about,

did you drag a bag of coal around for a while?

Like, that's in his body, too.

You know, there is the little humpback.

Yeah, well, we had one of the prop lads that worked on set, like, miraculously, used to be a coal man.

So

he showed, because I was like doing the full, like,

sort of actory thing, thing going, I'm going to work

in a coal yard for a week before the shoot.

And of course, there's no coal yards in Ireland anymore.

They don't exist.

So I couldn't do that.

But

this fellow anyway showed me how to lift them and all.

And they're proper coal bags.

And anyway,

so there's that sort of...

And then Claire Keegan said something really interesting.

I listened to her on a podcast and she said that

simple thing that that I stole was that he walks always looking down.

And you know, that's a very Irish thing as well.

Do you know, walk looking down at your feet, looking down at the floor, looking down at the pavement as you're walking.

And

rarely will you make eye contact.

It's a beautiful thing she wrote because it's so that it's A, he's a coal man, so he's going to be looking down at the ground.

B, it's always raining, so we tend to look down at the ground.

And C, it's the Catholic, the Catholic repression, that the looking down, the looking away from the horrors that are over there.

And also, what I love about Claire's choice of making Bill a coal man is, because I was thinking about it when I was watching it.

It's like, why is he a coal man?

He brings warmth to people and everything is fucking cold.

Like it's Christmas, it's cold, but emotionally, everything is cold.

No one is really saying what they want to say.

No one is speaking about the injustices that are happening behind walls in Wexford.

So, and Bill is the only person who brings physical warmth and then by the end, emotional warmth.

You know?

Yeah, that's true.

And I suppose if you're going to write a protagonist, you write a protagonist that has access to all the community's homes.

Do you know what I mean?

He's there.

He's always in doorways.

And he's the only fella that will have access to

the convent and to the laundry.

Do you know what I mean?

Because if you wrote, if you, how, it's a genius trick as a writer.

Like, how do you write a story story like that unless you give the character access?

How is he going to get in?

Do you know what I mean?

How are you going to tell that story?

So it's just a brilliantly executed story.

Something as well, too, I'd love to ask you about.

So

I've often wanted to do podcasts about Magdalen Laundries.

Even last week, I made an attempt.

It's so difficult to find information because so much of it is repressed.

There's so like

I went to art college, Killian,

in a Magdalena Laundry.

I went to Art College in the early 2000s and this place had been a Magdalen Laundry up until 1996.

Yeah, 96.

Yeah, and I'm in there in the early 2000s and the shit that I saw, like this building is still in Limerick.

And

like it was only recently renovated.

So it was renovated about eight years maybe.

the college part was downstairs but upstairs had been untouched and i knew the caretaker and the caretaker let me upstairs so I went upstairs and it was the 1970s the wallpaper everything it was the 1970s and then there was a bathtub full of women's hair

yeah and and the other thing as well about this building

is like

so there's a church the church is now the the gallery space in the college but this church if you were a crow looking down from above you could see that the church was shaped like a crucifix right?

So the pews are basically different arms of the crucifix.

And they had designed this church in such a way that there's little tunnels, tiny little tunnels going in underneath the church.

And I asked the caretaker, because he showed me, I said, what the fuck?

Why is there tunnels underneath the church?

And he said, that's so the women could never see their children on a Sunday.

So the women were in this laundry in Limerick and their kids were in the same laundry, but

they must never see each other.

So even though they'd go to church every Sunday and the the women could hear their children singing they could never see them and and they'd move in tunnels underneath that that closed in 1996 and something about the film is

if i i knew what year it was set right i knew what year it was set but if i didn't it could have been the 60s like wexford the the only thing that gave away 1982 was

1984 is it 84 near the end of the film when bill is talking to a lady lady in the pub, I can hear, Don't You Want Me, Baby, in the background.

If I didn't know that, I'd go, this could be the 60s, this could be the 70s.

But

we're talking about recent history here.

1984 is not a long time ago.

That's our lifetime.

And

it feels so ancient.

I mean, what really jarred me was

the nuns as basically prison officers, the nuns as people to be legitimately feared.

Now, I don't, I vaguely, vaguely recollect that from my childhood, but we kind of lived through this.

Like,

how do you feel about that?

How much of your childhood was coming up here?

Like, do you remember any of this extreme terror around the church?

No, no, I didn't, thankfully, didn't experience any of that.

I mean, you know, I

so in 84, I would have been eight or something.

So, I'm

older than you, but I would have been about, yeah, about eight or something like that.

And then,

you know, but

I went to

you know, I was taught by brothers in secondary school.

And so, you did the Catholic education thing, same thing.

Yeah, yeah, the full thing, yeah, all the way up.

Everybody that I know

did that.

But I think if you're someone that's my age, you're going to have one foot in

two different worlds, if you know what I mean.

Um, you have the foot in

that Ireland of the 80s and the early 90s.

And then you have obviously a foot in what's happened since in the last 10, 20 years, this massive, progressive change socially.

So

it gives you an interesting point of view, I think.

But

I think we tried to be very careful with the film.

And also, I think the book is trying to be careful

to not make it about

blame really, but more about kind of understanding.

And,

you know, it's very clear

that there are survivors who are victims of this abuse and cruelty, and then there's the people that perpetrated it.

But the sort of interesting place is the people around at the time and the sort of spectrum of

innocence to complicity, or does that spectrum exist, or are we all on the same spectrum?

That's interesting.

Do you know, and

so it, but again, without apportioning blame, without being sort of dogmatic, without making it

an angry film, it's a very gentle film, I hope, you know, and the book is also very gentle.

And I think art should be gentle in approaching these topics.

And there's a lot of people that are walking around that live this reality so you have to be very careful about it about it all um

but on the other side of that as well though killian is

like

you you've just come off the back of an oscar fair play to you by the way you've just come back off the back of an oscar right and now you're doing this relatively low budget film about Magdalen laundries in Ireland.

Is there a part of you?

So I often wonder, is there a bit of an activist in you?

If you know what I mean?

Like

there's young British people, right, who listen to my podcast and they have an understanding of Irish history because they watched Wind That Shakes the Barley.

You know, that reached them.

Young English people who grew up with nothing but propaganda towards the Irish watched Wind That Shakes the Barley.

And now they're going, oh.

You mean the British soldiers were actually acting as terrorists towards the local population?

I didn't know that.

And now

there's people going to be watching this movie

who

don't have a clue about the Magdalen Laundries, don't have a clue that.

I mean, what's often said is in the 20th century, Ireland had one of the world's largest prison populations.

If you look at the Magdalen Laundries that way.

Is there a sense of activism in what you're doing?

I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier on about, you know,

when the lights go up in this film, people are still sitting there and still

and then people go and talk about it and talk about it.

And that's what that's the sort of work that I like to make, if possible.

It can't always be that way.

You want to make a work that has a point of view, really, or that tells stories, I think, that

are of a human dimension.

You know, because you could go and read, there's plenty of reports on all of this that went on, and there's more being written, and there's more revelations coming out.

it's like an avalanche of this stuff.

But I feel like there's a gentle way to do to do this.

And if people watch this film and people in

different countries watch this film and decide to read about this, then that's a good thing.

Do you know what I mean?

Because I do think there is a universality in this specificity of the story.

Do you know what I mean?

Well, the church did this in a lot of places, just under different guises.

Like if you go to Canada, for instance.

Exactly.

Indigenous people in Canada were forced into church-run residential schools.

Very similar situation, too, with Indigenous people in Australia.

And in America, in Boston, you know, it happened all over the world.

And again, talking about complicity, it wasn't just the church.

Like,

I'll tell you one of the maddest things.

Now, I'm going to fact-check this one afterwards, but I know I'm 100% right.

And if it's wrong, I'll delete it.

But I am 100% right.

One of the maddest things that happened with Magdalene Laundries in Ireland was, do you remember playing that game Mousetrap when you were growing up?

Remind me.

It was Mousetrap would have been

like a board game you'd get at Christmas.

It was not far off operation.

You know, one of those ones that are, or Monopoly, one of those ones that all the family would play.

A lot of those games were actually made in Magdalen Laundries because the company who made them had a contract with the Catholic Church.

So a lot of childhood games that we played, I can't remember the exact company, but a lot of those were actually made in Magdalene Laundries.

They were farming out the labor of these women,

a bit like private prisons in America now.

Well, you see, this is the thing that is hard to quite comprehend.

Not only was the behavior abhorrent and appalling, but it was then monetized.

That's the thing

that is hard to quite comprehend.

So hotels and everything would send in their laundry to get them washed.

And if you were saying this is true, then, you know, so

the institution was making money from these women.

And that's the thing, or that's the thing that always.

Not my real name, Blind Boy.

I'll say it again.

That's the thing, Blind Boy, that always

strikes me in these sorts of stories.

It's always women and children that are the collateral damage.

Always.

And that's what we're trying to reinforce in this story.

Even though it's told from a man's point of view, it's a story about women written by a woman.

Yes.

Yeah, because that was one thing that

kind of flagged for me as this is a man as the savior of this story.

And this is a man, Bill Farlong.

And Bill Farlong cares about women because he has a bunch of daughters.

His mother is dead.

But

it's on closer inspection, I was like, no.

Because

there's more depth to that.

I think Claire included those details.

I think for men, for men to be able to listen to this story more, I think you're probably right, Jim.

There's a sense that some men only begin to see women as humans or even notice misogyny when those men have daughters of their own.

And I was left wondering that about the character of Bill.

You know what I mean?

And that left me, it left me questioning the empathy and altruism of Bill.

Men should

acknowledge women's suffering because they're human beings without that being conditional in any way.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah.

Um,

another thing about this film, there's a sense of it going full circle, right?

And I want to know if this was deliberate or not, because you've Enda Walsh writing it, okay, and Enda Walsh wrote Disco Pigs, which was your uh first proper play for stage, and then Eileen Walsh uh plays Bill's wife in this story, and Eileen was opposite you

the play version of Disco Pigs 2.

Like was that deliberate?

It felt like the universe was kind of making that happen.

Okay.

It really did.

So I've worked with Enda many times since we made Disco Pigs, which is now 28 years ago, which you believe.

But I hadn't worked with Eileen and we've remained really, she's one of my favorite people in the world, one of my favorite actors in the world.

And we've remained like really, really close friends.

But for some reason, we hadn't worked together since we made that play, which changed both of our lives.

And then when we came to make the film, you know, the character is called Eileen.

And

it just seemed to be the universe telling us that now is the time for you to work together again.

And I remember

we did our first scene together, which was just me and her sitting in the church.

And the director, Tim Meelins, who I've also worked with three times, but he put the camera on us and

he said you could feel the history through the lens and then that you know he got it for free because we had that comfort or that ease or that discomfort or whatever that you get with a long-term marriage.

And a lot of the time,

you know, you're playing a married couple or lifelong friends, whatever.

And

you meet the actor on the first day of work and you have to, you know, that's your job.

You have to convey that and

make it feel real.

But with Eileen, we got it all for free.

And I don't think

you would have had that

real depth of a relationship if it hadn't been her in it.

And aside from that, she's just stunning.

stunning actor.

Oh, she's phenomenal in it.

Yeah.

And, you know, the two real real set piece scenes in the film are the scene between myself and Eileen in the bedroom, where she actually finally addresses what's actually going on and we talk about it openly.

And then the other set piece is

the scene with me and Emily Watson as Sister Mary.

And they're just two phenomenal actors.

And

I don't think the film would be the film it is without them in it.

I'd love to talk a bit about the character of Eileen because she's really into that.

So Eileen's character,

she's almost like

Irish society a bit.

I wouldn't say that.

I'd say that the character of Eileen is, I'm not going to say cold.

She's practical.

Practical.

Bill is about

emotions.

Bill is about...

Sometimes I don't know, is Bill trying to do what's right or does he somehow feel that by rescuing or helping these women that somehow he's bringing his own mother back to life?

Like it's very much related to a trauma that he suffered with his mother dying young.

I think that's it.

And then not knowing who his dad is.

Yeah, that it's a personal thing.

But then

Eileen, Eileen speaks about money.

A few times Eileen speaks about money.

She speaks about the practicality of Christmas is very expensive.

We need a few quid for that.

We need a few quid for this.

And then you get the sense of the price that that bill if bill does what he wants to do and i'm guessing what bill wants to do is to is to go to the magdalene laundry and rescue them all

but he's warned these nuns have their fingers in every single pie so he will be financially destroyed and then eileen is right right there down the middle saying

well you kind of just have to yeah you have to kind of turn away you just have to move on with life and turn away we're aware there's some type of suffering happening behind these walls but you you just have to move on with it.

And that's very jarring because

what it reminds me of is obviously, like in Ireland, we've had direct provision for the past 20 years.

I know they're removing it now and replacing it with something else, but direct provision was very similar to Magdalene Laundries in that there were these very high walls with people you didn't see.

And you just got a sense in your tummy that something bad was happening in there and we'll never know the full picture.

We might one day.

That's always been my vibe about direct provision.

And

Jesus, even now, with

Gaza and Palestine, you know what I mean?

You're just like,

everyone's just like, just get on with your life.

What can you do?

What can you do?

Get on with your life, you know?

Yeah, but that is,

yeah, I think that is the power of the system.

That's how powerful it was because the church controlled education, the church controlled health.

You know what I mean?

And

sometimes the system of oppression is run by the oppressed themselves.

And I think that is the case, certainly

in this story and in a lot of Ireland.

Bill is delivering the coal and it's Bill's business.

It's Farlong's coal company.

So he's delivering all this coal to the business.

That's worth him a nice bit of money each year.

That's the thing.

It's what you have to lose.

It's the leverage that they have is that, like, what are you going to lose if you stand up and say something?

And for this particular family, it's pretty much everything.

You know, everything.

And in that scene with Sister Mary, she makes it very clear that there's not much room, you know, in the school, and that hopefully she'll be able to make space for the kids.

I mean, it's, it's, it's a classic

completely.

Um, um,

but it it's just trying to

try to examine that asymmetrical power setup.

You know, how do how how did that carry on so long and it's because people want to survive people want to raise their children people want to get through the day people want to

just survive and if you like the 80s in ireland were were a very very very very tough time you know

because everything was closing down everyone was leaving there was no money

And so to have, like you say, to have a job and to have a business, are you going to gamble all of that or risk all of that?

Who would be be the one to sacrifice themselves?

I'm just gonna take a brief a brief interval here from the chat with Killian Murphy in order to do the ocarina pause, which is

I play an ocarina and then an advert happens.

Alright, I don't want the advert to jump out of nowhere and frighten everybody so I play a little gentle ocarina to lull you into the advert, which is algorithmically generated, I believe.

I've got a bit in my big bass ocarina this week, so it won't disturb any dogs that might be listening.

So let's play the ocarina here.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

Talk about refreshing.

You know what else is refreshing this summer?

I'll brand new phone with Verizon.

Yep, get a new phone on any plan with Select Phone Trade In MyPlan.

And lock down a low price for three years on any plan with MyPlan.

This is a deal for everyone, whether you're you're a new or existing customer.

Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals.

Three-year price guarantee applies to them current base monthly rate only.

Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

Tired of your car insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record?

You're not alone.

That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant.

Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease.

Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop.

No spam calls, no hidden fees.

Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year.

Switch with confidence, download the Jerry app, or visit jerry.ai/slash acast today.

It's Stock Up September at Whole Foods Market.

Find sales on supplements to power up for busy weeks.

Plus, pack your pantry with pasta, sauce, and more everyday essentials.

Enjoy quick breakfast for less with $365 by Whole Foods Market seasonal coffee and oatmeal.

Grab ready-to-heat meals that are perfect for the office and save on versatile no antibiotics ever chicken breasts.

Stock up now at Whole Foods Market, in-store and online.

I've been learning to play that one.

It's a tough one to play, but I like it.

I like the bass vibe of it.

Sometimes

I I play these ocarinas that are too high pitched and there'll be people listening with their dogs and the dogs are going fucking ape shit you know what I mean I don't want to be doing that to the poor old dogs so you'd have heard an advert there I don't know what for support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blindbuy podcast this podcast is my full-time job this is how I earn a living this is how I pay all my bills it's how I rent out my office that I record this podcast in it's how I pay for my equipment This podcast is my job, and if you listen to this podcast and you enjoy it, and it brings you mirth or merriment, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month.

That's it.

And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it.

You can listen for free.

Just listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free.

So everybody gets a podcast, the exact same podcast, and I get to earn a living.

It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness.

One other thing, because Patreon are after changing the rules.

So

if you're a new patron, if you're going to become a new member of my Patreon page, please do it on your computer, like patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast.

Starting on November 1st, if you have an iPhone,

if you subscribe to my Patreon on your iPhone and the Apple iOS App Store,

Apple will take 30%

of the fee.

So if if you become a new patron and you're like, oh,

I'm going to give Blind Buy the price of a pint because I like listening to his podcast.

Well, if you're a new subscriber and you do that now on your iPhone, 30% of that money is going to go to fucking Apple, the dirty bastards.

So please, if you're becoming a new patron, just take the time to go to patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast and sign up as a patron that way, not through the Patreon app on the Apple iPhone.

Thank you so much.

And also,

having this podcast being listener funded, it means I'm not beholden to advertisers.

Have you any fucking idea how many advertisers would want to knock down my door?

because I'm chatting to Killian Murphy this week.

If I was beholden to advertisers, if advertisers dictated the tone of this podcast, they're not going to let me chat to Killian Murphy for an hour about art.

They're going to say to me,

ask him what his favorite feeling is on a chicken fillet roll.

And then we're going to clip that.

We're going to clip that and put it on Instagram.

Fuck off.

Go fuck yourself.

Asking questions about putting on the immersion.

Fuck off.

Make it snappy and quick like a radio interview so that that clip can go viral and we can drive loads of listeners to the podcast and you'll get the most amount of listeners and then we can push that back to our product that that's what it means when advertisers dictate that's what has radio and television destroyed i keep saying it so no that this podcast is funded by listeners and when it's funded by listeners it means i can focus on quality i can focus on Shit I'm actually curious about.

I can speak to Killian Murphy about art.

That's what I want to chat to Killian Murphy about.

And that's what we do.

And that's what Killian wants to chat about, to be honest.

He doesn't want me asking him about chicken fillet rolls or

when did you get your first shift at the Teenage Disco or the bullshit that Irish actors get asked on the red carpet in order to create viral moments for TikTok and Instagram reels.

Right, quick upcoming live podcasts.

2025.

Fucking Australia and New Zealand, that's sold out.

Okay, so that tour is sold out for, I think it's April 25.

So right this Sunday, glamorous shit.

On the 2nd of November, I'm up in Clare Morris in Mayo, doing a live podcast.

Very few tickets left for that.

Let's get rowdy in Clare Morris, shall we?

Right then, Vicar Street, 19th of November, up in Dublin.

Fuck all tickets left for that.

19th of November.

Wonderful Tuesday night gig.

There's about, I'd say, 15 tickets left.

Come and get them.

Galway, Leisureland, on the 9th of February 2025.

Fucking Drahada, 21st of February 25.

Belfast, the waterfront theatre, 28th of February 25.

And then just announced my big massive giant tour

of England and Scotland but not Wales.

I don't know why that is.

This is for June 2025.

Gonna get hot and sweaty in England.

Just announced 1st of June, right?

We got the beacon in Bristol.

3rd of June.

I'm in the hall in Cornwall.

Fucking Cornwall.

Give me a bit of Cornwall.

5th of June.

I'm in the city halls in Sheffield.

6th of June.

I'm in the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

8th of June.

I'm in Osher Hall up in Scotland, in Edinburgh.

9th of June.

I'm in the Glasgow Pavilion.

10th of June.

I'm in the Barbican in York.

Can't wait to go to fucking York, man.

Good, good, strong Viking city that used to be called Yarvik.

Give me a bit of York.

Then down to London.

I'm in the Troxy in London on the 11th of June.

Then Bex Hill.

Bex Hill.

My tongue is hanging out for a bit of Bex Hill on the 13th of June at the Delaware Pavilion.

And then I'm finishing the tour on the 15th of June 2025 in Norwich.

In the Theatre Royal.

Now my England, Scotland and Wales tours, they sell out quite quickly.

So get your face into a load of that.

Back to my chat with the magnificent Killian Murphy, whose film Small Things Like These is out on the 1st of November.

Yeah.

The way you say the film ends, right?

And we're just left going, what happens next?

And like,

Jesus Christ, what happens next?

Because it would have made the papers, you know?

Well, this is the thing.

And this is why people talk about it so much.

And I don't know if I should...

I mean, most people have read the book, to be honest with you.

So if you don't know what I'm saying, I don't know what the rule is with.

well, if you don't want to, if you don't want to hear about the end, skip forward now.

But there we go.

Yeah.

But my feeling is that there's two points of view, right?

My, you know, there's the view where he brings the girl home and into the house, and

then the parish priest is called down, and then the cops are called, and then

she's taken away, and the marriage collapses, and the business is gone, and he has to leave the country.

Or

she's,

Eileen says, sees that this young child that's pregnant and says, right, come in,

we'll take her, you know, and they keep going.

It poses a very interesting question about class and class in Ireland too, Killian, because the thing is, so if we look at that, so the film version, right,

Bill, so Bill kind of grew up kind of posh, right?

But Bill's ma by accident, yeah.

So, so, so, Bill,

Bill is a kid who did not get institutionalised as a result of class.

That's who Bill is.

Also, but as a result of an act of kindness.

There's that too.

There's that too.

But

if I ask my ma, right, so my ma's in her 80s and I ask her about these laundries and all this, something she said that really

made me think was, well, it wasn't the middle-class girls who ended up in the Magdalene laundries.

It wasn't the girls from the quote-unquote good families in the town who might be related to a priest or a doctor or a solicitor.

It was the girls who came from poor families who were sent to the nuns.

This is anecdotal and based on something my ma would have said to me, but if women who were middle class got pregnant before marriage, they could go to the local doctor and the local doctor would basically allow the

the girl could have the child in private and then the doctor would ensure that the baby was sent to a middle-class family somewhere in Ireland.

And my ma said that that was well known what would happen.

So it was a class issue.

So I think with the ending of the film,

I don't think Bill, I don't think that girl gets to live with Bill.

I think because it's 1982, the girl is from the north of Ireland.

She's a Catholic.

the six counties, the troubles.

She got pregnant.

She's been forcibly sent to the nuns in Wexford.

Those writing choices indicate to me that this girl is at the bottom of the system.

She's probably a poor working-class Irish person, and she would have been sent back to the institution.

That you would have needed to have some amount of money and clout and power

to be able to take a woman from the Magdalene Laundries and say, This is my new daughter.

I'm minding her.

You'd need to have the type of clout and money that Bill benefited from when he was a kid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that's probably the realist uh view of what happens after the the film ends i think but then again it's 1982 though because you're really at the cusp of this shit too with 1982 for

or 1984 even but still it's it's the same difference like when i was a kid killian right um you know i've been diagnosed with autism recently yeah no i didn't know that all right i got diagnosed with autism right and What that's done for me is I've been reappraising my entire life.

I imagine so.

I was a bollocks in school, right?

I was really, really troublesome because school just didn't work for me.

And in the early 90s, when I was like seven, so I would have been in Catholic school, nuns, all that crack.

I was so poorly behaved that I wasn't allowed to make my communion, right?

So that's the fucking worst.

Yeah.

He's not allowed to make his communion for another year because, because he's so bald.

And

the nuns dragged my ma in and basically said, this kid is just so bad.

He's so poorly behaved.

He has no concept,

all this crack.

No one knew I was autistic.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And what my ma always says to me is,

if that had been 20 years earlier, you'd have been taken from me.

If that was 20 years earlier, the word of those nuns would have been enough for the guards to come and say, this child needs to be taken away and put into an industrial school.

And I never gave a shit about it when I was younger, but now I look at it and I go, she's right.

What protection is

the early 90s?

If this was the 60s, 70s, I'd be gone because the nuns are saying he's wild.

He can't be controlled.

There's a demon in him.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we all know what happened in those industrial schools.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, how many people in these laundries were mentally ill?

How many, you know what I mean?

There's so much.

I mean,

there were women thrown into Magdalen laundries because

they would have been considered too attractive.

As in, they would have decided that one there is too attractive looking, so just throw her in there.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, my mother taught me that

she

remembers this expression when she was growing up:

lipstick on the lips, lipstick on the lips, dust on the shelf.

What does that mean?

That was the sort of way women were viewed.

So if a woman was overly concerned with her appearance,

you'd have a messy house at home.

Wow.

Do you ever hear this thing called churching?

So there was this practice where if a

so when a woman had a baby, she had to get blessed by the priest before she could go back to mass.

Like, so you weren't allowed back into mass

until you had this.

So my grandmother, who

like

was an eminently practical woman and refused to do this.

And it's it's a minor, minor, small protest, but she refused to be churched before she went back to the...

Is it the sin of sex?

Is that it?

It's just about, as far as I know, it's about the woman had to be cleansed.

Even like this is, these are like, you know, married women having babies,

but still, yet they were deemed not fit to go and receive the sacraments.

So it's just insane.

So I'm sure along the way, there's plenty of men and women that did if you think about edna brine do you know what i mean she

she was standing up to all of this

and shineado connor was doing you know what i mean later on so there were people and it's just that bill furlong seems very much ahead of his time in our story and that part of the country is very very very different to dublin and even Cork, I imagine.

Do you know what I mean?

But even there is, like, like what I was teasing at earlier.

Bill Farlong is a good man, but I don't think selfish is the right word.

I don't want to say selfish, but

I think his desire to save has a lot more to do with personal trauma and his mother's death.

Yes, and I didn't ever want to play him as a hero.

I think he's actually a man that's in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

Do you know what I mean?

When we meet him.

And I think it's all this

grief about his mother and not knowing who his father was.

And, you know, it generally hits men in mid life.

That's where all this stuff

becomes,

if it's underdressed, that's where it comes at a fierce pace at middle age.

And I think that's when we meet him.

There's this kind of confluence of crises that he's dealing with.

And it's then

when he see when he finds the girl, that just sets everything off.

But I don't, it's like, I always feel like then when he's walking over the bridge at the end to take her from the shed, I think he's it's in his body, not in his mind.

I don't think he's intellectualizing what he's doing.

I don't think he's thinking this is a heroic act.

He's just been driven there.

And I do think that in his head, he's rescuing

his mother.

Oh, yeah.

Do you know?

And I think it's...

Harriers are like a bag of coal.

That was wonderful.

So, so I think you're right.

And I never ever wanted to make him like a conventional hero.

It's an act of someone in deep, deep distress.

And

it is like the title of the book.

And it's an accumulation of small things, small events that lead him to this act at the end.

It's his process of recognizing himself and recognizing the society around him and also grappling with his own past.

So it's all of these things are happening over these days leading up to Christmas.

So it's just brilliant storytelling, but it's absolutely not a hero, you know.

No, and

it's, it's the other, the absence of alcohol is interesting too, because Bill's character,

he really should be turning to the drink.

If you look at Irish culture, if you look at like something, like

mental health system didn't exist.

In the 80s, if someone was to describe Bill, they'd say, Ash, your man's nerves are at him.

Do you remember that?

Yeah, yeah.

His nerves are at him, which was the catch-all term we had for anyone with any type of mental illness.

And then, when he goes over the edge, that person had a nervous breakdown, stay away from them.

You know what I mean?

That's all we had.

And everything about him is he should turn to the drink.

And what I found so well observed about the writing is

he did have a sense of stability, even though his childhood was very sad and his mad died.

He had a sense of comfort, space, stability, and safety in his childhood.

And you can, I think that stands to him.

And I think

books.

And books as well.

An interesting one was how the character of Eileen raised her eyebrow when he asked for a book.

But it was nice because it made me go, Jesus, does she know fuck all about him or does he give nothing away?

I think it's probably both, do you know?

Like imagine being married to someone and you go, you're into books, yeah?

Yeah.

You kept that one quiet, did you?

And she says something like,

Would you not prefer a shirt or something?

That was interesting too, because the shirt wasn't for him, it was for her.

When she said, Would you not prefer a shirt?

I knew that was Eileen's character going, I wouldn't mind you.

You're covered in coal.

Would you get a new fucking shirt?

Yeah, but I do think that you know, he was given that thing of like of books.

And there, I think you do learn a huge amount of empathy through books.

And this is only my own sort of back story for him that I've been working out.

That, you know, and it's interesting, he's reading Dickens.

you know what I mean?

And that's very deliberate.

And, but it's all these lovely little breadcrumbs that you have as an actor.

Because, like, when you're an actor, it's like being a detective, you know, you're trying to figure out how do I build this story?

How do I build this character?

And all these little crumbs.

It was amazing having the book alongside the script to be able to piece them together, you know.

And something I can say for the film is like, even just there, the fact that you and I were able to pick one tiny interaction in the film, and there's so much there.

The film is incredibly literary.

There is nothing in this film that does not have intention and purpose in it.

It's incredible.

And when you speak about the ending, too,

we don't like those endings in films.

We don't like that type.

That's quite a literary ending.

Like something I adore about Claire Keegan's writing and her short stories in particular, and it's something that I always try and aim for when I'm writing, is

sometimes a short story should end

the way that a weird dream does.

You know, when you might have a strange dream and you're thinking about it for weeks, or it just pops up in your head.

Yeah.

If you can end a story like that, you've won.

If you can, and this film ends like that,

I'm going to be thinking about this in three weeks when I'm in Centra.

You know what I mean?

It'll just pop up and I'd be going, what happened?

Well,

I think if something achieves the condition of art, and that sounds very pretentious, but if it does, it can haunt you.

It can really haunt you, you know, and it can stick around with you like a good film, a good book, a good song.

And you're dead right.

It is like a dream.

It just colours you.

It can color your days and weeks after seeing something.

And that's what you really, really aspire to

as a storyteller.

You know that yourself.

You know, that's what you're trying to achieve, is something that will haunt people.

We've about 10 minutes left, right?

So, I want to ask you the

questions:

what's it like winning an Oscar?

It was wonderful and bizarre and

hard to process.

And I don't know if I've properly processed it all.

I went straight back to work.

That was

my coping mechanism.

Is it freaky?

Is it a bit fucking

terrifying?

You have to approach the whole thing with a bit of joy.

You have to approach the whole thing without any cynicism whatsoever.

Because if you do, you're screwed because there's no place for it.

And

it's a celebration of

work.

It's people showing their love for a film,

for several films.

Piece of work, yeah.

Yeah, and that's what you got to go into it.

Like, and that's what I tried to do.

And for me, it was strange because i think i did more press this year

in one year than i've done in like 28 years of acting combined so it was it was certainly a baptism of fire but i chose to enjoy it you know and i had my family with me and i had a great team around me and and i really felt profoundly the support

you know from from people particularly in ireland and from friends and it's amazing because of this the the nature of the media every single person knows about it.

Do you know what I mean?

Cork didn't need it, man.

Cork didn't need it.

I'll be honest.

Like, I mean, fair play to you, but fucking Cork didn't need that.

Come on.

I know in the context of Dublin, Cork needed it, but not in the because

Cork is Limerick's older brother.

So anytime fucking Cork does something good, like they look down at us and go, What are you up to, Limerick?

You know what I mean?

And we've got Cork's back when it comes to Dublin.

I'm not getting getting involved in this now.

All right.

Like, you're someone who you like to focus on the work and

the other parts that come with your job, I know that you tend to, you're not too interested in it, but winning a fucking Oscar, that changes your profile completely.

Has any of that been difficult for you?

Not so far, honestly.

I mean, like I said to you, I went straight back to work and these two jobs that I did directly after it were already set and ready to go.

So in terms of like worker,

it hasn't changed anything.

And I feel like I'm old enough now, like I'm like 48 and I'm fairly set in my ways.

I know what I like.

I have a lot of collaborators that I continue to work with and will hopefully keep working with.

So I don't think there'll be really any major change in any way.

But are you able to go to the shop?

Can you go to the shop?

Yeah, I mean, like at home, it's you know, sort of, you know,

kind of familiarity kind of evaporates fame.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Arsha, there's Killium.

There he is now by the fan.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So, so it's fine.

It's, it's, it's really fine.

And Irish people are just sound when it comes to that.

Like, they really are.

And I think they kind of know what sort of person I am.

So it hasn't been difficult.

Genuinely.

And I, and I would tell you, like, it hasn't been.

It's all been a really lovely, completely overwhelming

experience.

And

do you want to take a break at all?

Or are you just fucking, what's the next thing?

No, I'd like to have a rest.

I'd like to have a rest next year, for sure.

Because I don't have the stamina for going from job to job and being on that kind of carousel constantly.

This year has been a freak year because I've done...

made like three jobs and had all that that that stuff at the beginning of the year and it's so it's a very unusual year for me normally I'll do one job a year, and the rest of the time I'm just at home.

So I'd like to go back to that pattern.

I really amn't that resilient or strong enough to keep going from film set to film set to film set.

I just don't.

I've never been able to do that.

So

I really like just being at home and being among people, you know, just being in that kind of flow of humanity.

That's what kind of.

Having a bit of crack.

That's what keeps me.

Having a bit of crack, yeah, and just reading books and just doing stuff.

And I think then when you go back, you're rejuvenated, you filled up the tank again, and you can go back to work.

That's that's how it's always been for me.

And what about music?

Like, because like you, you're a former musician, but you're also a massive music nerd.

Like, nerd, yeah.

Do you have any desire to start making music again or anything like that?

Or are you happy to just be a fan?

Um, I'm always making and messing around, uh,

and like

it's it's it's something that I've that I, you know, I it was my first love and I really yeah, the thing of sitting because I know you're a musician as well and the thing of like sit sitting in a room with friends of yours and communicating again on that non-verbal way.

There's something that is magic about that.

And I sometimes get it in acting really, really good when you're with really good actors and you get it on stage as well.

You get this sort of connection and this sort of transcendental kind of connection with the other performer.

Empathic flow.

Totally.

And it's nothing to do with words, but it's just this energies.

But I think

you feel it much more acutely when you're making music.

So, I love to make music with my pals because

it feeds something in me that I don't quite get from you, from acting.

Was bass playing your thing?

Was this?

I know,

very average, very average guitar player.

Did you ever get into the band Micro Disney from Cork?

They were a bit before my time, but uh, yeah, very aware.

I'm not that old.

Fucking blind bike, blind bike.

I'm not that old, blind boy.

All right.

Listen,

I'll leave you going now, right?

So that's like 50 minutes.

I'd say we've covered everything there.

Unless there's anything else you want to chat about.

No, that was brilliant.

That was really great, man.

You really got the film.

It feels like you really connected to it.

I loved it.

I fucking loved it.

It was great.

And

again, just to see, to have read the book and seen the film and to go, wow, because that was hard to do.

That's really hard to do.

And every one of you nailed it, you know.

And Fairboy is Tim.

Tim is Belgian, is this?

Tim is Belgian.

And I, you know, you mentioned the Win the Checks, the Barley there earlier.

And that was made by an Englishman, you know, Ken Loats.

And I've always felt that

not being Irish gives you an advantage making these really peculiarly Irish stories.

And Tim is an artist.

He's a real, true artist.

And he did season three of Peaky Blinders with me.

And

he, you know, wasn't the

obvious choice for this film, but I just knew that he'd understand it.

And he had been through something in his life that really connected him to this, to this story on a very personal level.

And he's also the way he kind of

paints with the camera, like he's really, really beautiful

visually and as a director, and actors adore him.

So, yeah,

it was a really good team.

And many of the people, like the crew that I had worked, I hadn't worked in Ireland a long time, but many of them I'd worked with over the years.

So it was brilliant to be able to ask them all to come back and work on the film again.

All right, Killian.

Good luck.

Thanks, Amelian.

All right.

Thank you to the wonderful Killian Murphy there.

I thoroughly enjoyed that chat.

That was good crack.

Go and see the film Small Things Like These

in cinemas on the 1st of November, only a couple of days away.

I'll be back next week.

on time and schedule with a hot take.

I can't wait to get up tomorrow morning and start researching and writing for next week's podcast.

It's an absolute, it's a privilege, it's a privilege to have been able to do that every week for the past seven years.

I'll never ever take it for granted.

I'll never do it half-arsed.

I'm so unbelievably grateful to get to explore my curiosity each and every week.

for the past seven years and hopefully for for as many fucking years that that people are willing to listen and that podcasts exist.

Alright?

So, I'll catch you next week.

Genia fleck to a worm.

Blow a kiss at a Labrador.

Wink at a Pine Martin.

Dog bless.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

Talk about refreshing.

You know what else is refreshing this summer?

A brand new new phone with Verizon.

Yep.

Get a new phone on any plan with Select Phone Trade In MyPlan.

And lock down a low price for three years on any plan with MyPlan.

This is a deal for everyone, whether you're a new or existing customer.

Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals.

Three-year price guarantee applies to then-current base monthly rate only.

Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

Prime delivery is fast.

How fast are we talking?

We're talking puzzle toys and liquepad delivered so fast you can get this puppy under control fast.

We're talking shoe toys at your door without really waiting fast.

Keypads, coolie mat, and peg camera fast and fast.

And there's training TR-E-A T-S faster than you can take to sit fast.

And now we can all relax and order these matching hoodies to get cozy and cute fast.

Fast free delivery.

It's on Prime.