My initial thoughts on reading this wonderful interview piece with Damien!

"I auditioned to play an absolute bastard for Sharon Horgan’s series Women on the Verge,” says Damien Molony. “I was so excited as I’d never played anything like that before. It was a really good audition. They laughed and I was really horrible, I hope. And then they called me and said they were going with someone else because I wasn’t enough of a prick. I mean . . . ”"

I mean! Wonder if he channelled Hal for the audition...

"The Kildare native chuckles when he recalls this backhanded compliment, aware of a thread linking his recent roles: they tend to be life’s good guys, such as the love interest in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s proto-Fleabag series Crashing, and in Roisin Conaty’s excellent GameFace. Even as Dylan in Sky’s poignant dramedy Brassic, his shortcomings are forgiven due to his good intentions."

Yes, good guys, love interest..definitely... but never one note or one dimension - always layered, angsty and conflicted on some level, and open for interpretation...

"It’s an off-screen characteristic too. When we email to arrange a chat, he’s happy to let me suggest the time and place. And when we meet in a London cafe — Molony sporting shaggy hair and a thick, dark jumper with sleeves that stretch over his palms — he offers to buy the decafs. You can tell he’s a pleasure on set." 

Aw. Always good to have confirmed what we all feel!

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(THE SPLIT SPOILERS!!!!)

"But for his next role, there’s no more Mr Nice Guy. He’s a new recruit on The Split, a drama from Abi Morgan (writer of The Iron Lady and Suffragette) about the Defoe family, fronted by eldest sister Hannah (Nicola Walker), whose troubled personal lives entwine with their jobs as divorce lawyers. For the second series, which follows the tricky break-up of a celebrity couple played by Donna Air and Ben Bailey Smith, Molony arrives as Tyler Donaghue, a no-nonsense consultant charged with weeding out the poor performers in the newly merged Noble Hale Defoe. Not even the Defoes are excluded from his scrutiny, which makes it a deliciously devilish role for Molony.

“Tyler’s fiancée is Zander, who’s the big boss of the company. Zander has to assure the staff there’s no witch-hunt, and no one’s breathing down their neck, but that’s exactly what my character is there to do,” he says. “He’s a threatening presence to have around the office. What’s so great about working with Paula van der Oest, the director, is that she would have me slightly hiding, and suddenly I would appear in the back of shots. It meant the other characters were constantly tense.”

As Donaghue digs into performance records and case histories, Molony lends a natural softness that gives the character an edge; he’s no caricature. It’s a plum role in a dream show for 35-year-old Molony; he enjoyed the first series so much that he wrote to the casting director on spec."

"deliciously devilish role" "Molony lends a natural softness that gives the character an edge; he’s no caricature"

OOOHHHHHH!!!! And... YES! Oh I am so excited for this!

Plus, see my previous comment...

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"Molony can make this acting game seem like a doddle. It helps that it was always his goal. His father and mother — a doctor and solicitor-turned-tour guide respectively — often recount the story of Damien as a three-year-old on holiday, watching the resort’s house entertainment show. “They tell me my eyes came alive. It seems performing was always in my head,” he says."

Very expressive eyes and an a magnetic ability to convey and compel without words, which seems to come from something more than the eyes...

"In 2016, he and Waller-Bridge appeared in the Channel 4 series Crashing, as long-time friends living in a disused hospital, whose chemistry isn’t much appreciated by his character’s fiancée. It was Waller-Bridge’s first TV series depicting complicated contemporary lives, and filmed soon before Fleabag became the phenomenon it is.

“I was looking at my texts to her the other day, and most recent ones are all ‘Congratulations, another award’ or ‘You’re a superstar’ or ‘Amazing news’,” he says. “She’s just brilliant. You got a sense of it when we were working on Crashing, particularly in the way she handled rewrites confidently.

“Fleabag was about to start shooting straight afterwards, so she was [also] working on that. She had a blank wall with big white sheets with matrices where the characters met, with everything plotted out almost mathematically. It was fascinating to see how the show developed.”"

Gawd I hope these two work together again some time...

"Molony’s most recent role was in Brassic, a poignant Sky sitcom about a group of Lancashire lads. We have a giggle over the tabloids describing him as “Michelle Keegan’s Brassic sex scene co-star Damien Molony”, due to a risqué scene in a portable loo. “Honestly, you do four or five months of filming and it’s reduced to one scene,” he says, good-humouredly. “With actors, and especially with Michelle, you both realise the complete ridiculousness of it, so you have a laugh, get it over with, and move on to the next scene."

Yeah, my thoughts exactly regarding the tabloids focussing solely on the sex scenes! Glad he can laugh. I'm afraid it just pisses me off!

Hmm.. not sure I'd describe Brassic as a sitcom...

"“But it was bizarre to shoot. I hadn’t done naked sex scenes before, so I didn’t know how they’re filmed. At the start of the day, the costume department told me they’d left equipment in my trailer, and when I went in I saw it was five pouches in ascending size order. I had to go back out and check if it was meant to include everything or . . . they confirmed it was everything.

“It was only afterwards that the director told me they weren’t filming below my waist, so I could wear a tracksuit. So all of that anxiety for nothing.”"

Where's Ita O'Brien when you need her... there would be no pre-scene pouch trauma ! (funny/not funny)

"Already parents to a three-year-old boy, during the filming of the second series he and his wife welcomed a baby girl to their family, “so if I look baggier under the eyes and absolutely exhausted after episode four, you know why”."

AW! How wonderful! Such beautiful news! So glad Damien felt comfortable to share. Huge congrats to Mr & Mrs M on the newest addition to their family!

Damien must have been totally knackered during the latter half of filming and now I feel really bad asking his help with the charity prize draw as well! 

"Is he confident the UK will remain a TV production epicentre after Brexit? He shrugs. “I can’t say for certain, but it’s such a golden age of television, and studios like Shepperton, Pinewood and Leavesden in London are booked up for years,” he says. “I suppose I’m just hopeful the work continues to get made here, and I continue to be chosen to play parts”."

As do we, and have no doubt that Damien's star will continue to shine for years to come!

What a brilliant interview! Damien's personality always comes through. I'm so excited to read about his character in The Split. I'm sure Damien will play the character with the subtlety and nuance we have come to expect. I'm not sure that many of Damien's characters have actually been straight forward good guys at all! Perhaps Jon is GameFace? 

What wonderful news about the new addition to the Molony family! 

Hear hear! Thanks for posting this domino....I was frustrated I couldn't read it because of the subscription thing too. What a great interview! Tho I'm rather inclined to agree about the nice guy thing.....