Leading actors grab the limelight, but there’s plenty of fun in the background too, as one Union Hall woman tells Emma Connolly
IT was her dad’s dairy cows that gave Union Hall woman Maura O’Callaghan her first taste of filmmaking as a teen in War of the Buttons and since then she’s worked on hit Hollywood movies, the award-winning series Bad Sisters and popular RTÉ soap Fair City.
Maura describes being an extra as ‘strictly a hobby’ which she combines with being a busy working mum of three – the graduate of UL and UCC has spent over 20 years working in strategic and commercial project planning and implementation in the agri-food and enterprise business sectors for Ornua, PwC, Unilever, P&G and now Ifac as a food and agribusiness advisor.
‘Hollywood came to West Cork and to Union Hall in the summer of 1993, for me and for most people from the area it was our first glimpse of film making and it was incredibly exciting,’ said Maura of her experience on War of the Buttons.
‘When the film crew rolled into our family farm looking for a herd of dairy cows, surprisingly enough, my dad obliged and allowed a very reduced herd to go onto the set under the strict conditions that the cows would be well looked after and they had to be home in time for milking that evening. I think the film crew, realising the enormity of the task of managing a herd of cows, also took me and my sister to manage them and before we knew it we were all making our debut appearance on the big screen!’ she said.
Maura O’Callaghan.
Before that Maura had been involved in a Skibbereen Community Arts Project in the former Arts Centre on North Street, where local teenagers got to write, produce, direct and edit a short film.
‘I remember really enjoying that but I suppose the film industry in Ireland would have been fledging at that stage and I probably didn’t give it any more consideration other than I enjoyed the experience.’
Most recently, she has done extra work on Fair City, playing a member of An Garda Síochána.
‘Fair City is always a good experience, RTÉ are lucky to have such a dedicated group of core actors. I was also a guard on a BBC production and thriller called Dead and Buried, currently available on the BBC iPlayer. I’m beginning to like putting on that uniform!’ said Maura who lives in Castleknock with her husband Paul O’Donovan (from Timoleague) and their children Hugh, Meabh and Tom.
She was also involved with the Netflix production Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega: ‘That was my first experience of doing an all-night shoot, not for the faint hearted. If the spooks don’t get you the cold certainly will!’
Maura also appeared in the popular series Bad Sisters.
Bad Sisters, she said ‘was a blast’ – she was involved in the on-pitch fracas scene in series two, playing a mother of one of the camogie players.
‘It was great to be involved in this wonderful dark comedy with such a superb cast of Irish actors. Then when you least expect it, Fiona Shaw walks across the set and adds another dimension of madness to the situation. I had very early morning starts on the set of Bad Sisters, arriving at Howth Castle in the early hours of the morning, in the dark. From there we travelled to a secret location for filming. I met four of the five ‘Bad Sisters’ on the set – I didn’t get to meet Anne-Marie Duff.
‘They came across as being extremely talented, very hard working and most importantly very pleasant to everyone that was supporting the production. Sharon Horgan, also the producer and screenwriter has a serious work ethic and this was very evident throughout the week of filming. It didn’t stop her from having a laugh with the extras on set either,’ said Maura.
Her favourite role to date was on Blue Moon. ‘This film was primarily filmed in a studio in Wicklow, is a biopic of songwriter Lorenz Hart and was directed by Richard Linklater. It stars some real-life film stars which in my case left me slightly star-struck: Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Andrew Scott and Bobby Cannavale. What is unusual is that it unfolds in real time on March 31st, 1943, in New York, the opening night of the landmark musical Oklahoma.
Maura has played a guard in Fair City as well.
‘I loved everything about this production from having breakfast served in the morning, to the amazing hands-on selection and styling of the costumes by Consolata Boyle, yes I’m name-dropping again (three Oscar nominations!) and her team who made sure that us mere background artists all looked like 1940s New York socialites.
‘The attention to detail was incredible, I didn’t recognise myself. I was shocked by how much older and more sophisticated I would look if I lived in the 1940s! It took a minimum of two to three hours a day to get hair, makeup and costumes ready. The set design and dialogue between the actors was also incredible, I felt like I was there on that night in 1943.’
There’s no typical day in the life of an extra and Maura always comes to set prepared with a good book.
‘But I actually never get to read it as I usually end up having a conversation with somebody on set. While most people are looking at the main actors on set, I am generally scanning the background for people I know.’
She’d encourage others to consider work as an extra: ‘Casting companies are always looking for people. If you are interested, check them out on the internet. I have met so many interesting people through this, retirees who want to try something different, young actors from the Lir Academy, people who just want to give it a go.’
