Fiachna O’Braonáin

Hothouse Flower Fiachna O’Braonáin has had a hectic pandemic. Between bouts of home-schooling two young children, he released a new EP, presented Radio 1’s Late Date at the weekends, and started acting for the small screen. Carissa Casey caught up with the gaeilgeoir in his home studio in Greystones.

It’s easy to imagine Fiachna O’Braonáin as the tall, dark, handsome stranger who pitches up in small town Ireland and sets pulses racing. At 55, his rugged good looks have only improved with age. He’s charming, interesting and interested in others. No wonder he’s been cast as Luke, the debonair newcomer that has hearts aflutter among mná na Ros na Rún.

He had never acted on the small screen before arriving on set at the highly lauded Irish language soap set in Spideál, Galway. “I was terribly nervous the first day I went down,” he admits. “I was worried about forgetting my lines and letting them all down.” But having finished filming, he’s keen to do it all over again - if he gets written into the next season. “It was great fun, especially given the year that’s in it.”

It helped that personality-wise, he had a lot in common with Luke. “There was no method acting going on. Luke is like me now because I’m playing him. It’s why they cast people in particular roles. I think you have to be yourself to some extent, otherwise you’re not going to be convincing.”

Unlike the fictional Luke, who is still single and something of an imreoir (that’s player as gaeilge) with the ladies, Fiachna is happily married with two young children, a little girl of six and a nine year old boy. Juggling family life in the lockdown with a busy work schedule has meant he’s barely had time to binge Netflix. “The kids dominate the TV. When they go to bed we usually have to catch up on things, tidying the house or work stuff. I had three days off over Christmas and I watched a few episodes of The Queen’s Gambit. That’s how behind I am on things.”

 Despite the pressure, he’s grateful for all the work he’s had. Before the pandemic hit, Hot House Flowers were due to play Glastonbury, the Irish festival in London, do a German tour and had a string of other commitments. Everything was cancelled. Fiachna fell back on his broadcasting gig on Radio 1, where he’s the weekend presenter for the much loved Late Date music programme and various other one-off musical programmes. 

“It really felt like a privileged thing to do during the first lockdown. People were really listening and at the time music was very meaningful. Many people are still listening at that level. Late Date is unusual in that it’s not high formatted, in the way other stations abroad are with set playlists. We get texts and tweets from people all over world - Japan, the US, France. And it’s not just Irish people who live abroad,” he says.

Then the opportunity to audition for the part in Ros naRún came up. Fiachna grew up in Dublin but speaking Irish, part of what he calls the “Dublin Gaeltacht”. His mother’s family came from Connemara, not far from where the Irish-language soap is set. His father’s family came from the Kerry Gaeltacht. Most family holidays were in one Gaeltacht or the other. The family now have a house near Spideál, which is where Fiachna stayed during filming. 

How on earth do people manage to socially distance when filming a scene together? 

“It was Incredibly efficient and one of things I found remarkable. I was concerned about this and my wife was certainly concerned. But they did everything using the guidelines. 

“For each scene you shoot there’s actually a two metre stick. The Floor Manager who is also the Covid Officer uses this stick to keep everyone at the right distance. At times you’re unnaturally far from someone when you’re doing a scene with dialogue. But they keep the camera angles tight so it doesn’t look too distant. 

Off screen everyone wore masks. “The only time you take the mask off is when you’re shooting a scene and, once it’s finished, the mask goes straight back on. They sanitise all the time too. There was one scene where I have to pick up a wine glass. The minute the scene was over someone was there, sanitising the wine glass.”  

The result is that there hasn’t been a single case of Covid 19 at Ros naRún.” It was very reassuring,” he says.

Only a limited number of people were allowed into the dressing rooms and, because of their size, that bought a little bit of normality to the experience. “People would make tea for each other but they’d stay apart. Or people would step outside if it wasn’t raining. Being Connemara there was quite a bit of rain!”

His acting experience was fairly limited prior to his debut on the soap. “I played myself in an episode of Lovejoy which was written around the Hothouse Flowers. The story was that we had a priceless antique harp stolen and Lovejoy helps us find it. That was it, three or four lines playing myself.”

He had also been in a musical drama called Bloody Irish, written by Barry Devlin of Horslips fame. It was a musical re-enactment of the 1916 Rising which ran in the Helix, Tallaght, and filmed by the US channel PBS. “There were lots of rehearsals and bits of dialogue. I had to learn about being in the right place at the right time. But that was on a big stage. On TV acting isn’t as sweeping,” he says.

But he adapted well and now he’s teased by friends about being the next James Bond. “It was just a great opportunity and not something I ever imagined myself doing. I’ve seen a few scenes back and let’s say, I’m not horrified by seeing myself.”

It’s all meant that he’s been “very, very busy”. He’s back home schooling again which is challenging for his nine year old son who is on the Autism Spectrum. “He’s high functioning. If you met him he’s grand. He’s charming and sociable. But he found going to school really challenging with the noise and the crowds. Learning – reading and writing, the academic stuff – he just couldn’t get his head around it.”

“We spent two years picking him up half an hour or an hour after school started. It was a deeply unsuccessful and unhappy experience for him.”

Help came by way of the Middletown Centre for Autism based in Armagh. “They worked with both us and the school for a year. They came into our home and made suggestions for how we did things. It was a highly focused level of support. We finally got to a place where he was starting to enjoy school and was accessing education.”

The closure of schools this month was hugely disappointing for his son, who did not want to go back to home schooling. That said, it’s been going well so far, says Fiachna.Despite his hectic schedule, Fiachna still can’t wait for normal life to begin again. “Once you’ve been a performer you really do miss it. The interaction with the crowd during the gig and after the gig – it’s a big relationship.”

“We’ve been lucky enough to play occasionally together. We did a live stream from Whelans (in Dublin) just before Christmas. We had a camera crew and sound engineering. We performed for two hours and we could see on the screen in front of us, comments from people around the world. I found it very emotional. The audience was in our imagination.”

Music is clearly his first love and he’s working on a new record. During the lockdown he released a four track EP Winter Sun which has proved a big hit with fans. The second thing he plans to do once we’re released from lockdown is call his agent and book a tour.

And the first thing? “Myself and my wife have barely manged to go out for dinner even before the pandemic. It’s been hard since the kids were born. So I’ll book a table somewhere nice or better yet, go way for a night.”