Aisling Bea on Get Away, This Way Up, and What’s Ahead

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Aisling Bea’s joy is contagious. Having lived in New York once before, returning to one of her favorite cities feels like something worth celebrating. “The thing I loved about living in New York was the forced information that wasn’t tailored to me,” she says. “You really don’t know who you’re going to bump into.”

As an actor and stand-up comedian, Bea is internationally known and appreciated. This way upthe series about a woman recovering from a nervous breakdown that she created and stars in, was released on Hulu in 2019 to positive reviews and watched with great anxiety by many. “I’ve just had a baby, and everyone’s like, ‘Oh my God, it’s your first baby,'” Bea says. “It doesn’t feel like it’s my first time. I feel like it This way up It was my first child. I know it’s just comedy, but that’s my art form. “I feel like I have given birth to a second child.”

Now, settled into a comfortable chair in the lobby of the Ace Hotel, Bea is adept at shifting her tone from silly to serious. Although we may never get a third season This way upShe says she’s working hard on a new pilot. Even then, she lent her talents to new genres: Swedish Carolinea British mockumentary about the vegetable farming scandal; A sentimental PBS masterpiece series called Alice and Jack; And more recently, a horror-comedy about a family vacation gone wrong titled Stay away All came out this year. She shared her taste with pieces.

How old is your child now?
She is 4 months old. Everything fun happens at 4 months old, as their hair begins to fall out and their teeth begin to appear.

What attracted you to him? Stay away?
First of all, Nick Frost. We have a mutual friend, so we were at a wedding together and things like that. He sent me a message on Instagram saying: “Do you like herring? Can you come and film with me in Finland? “I quite like herring,” I said. I was already there, even before he sent me the script.

You haven’t done much horror, have you?
I didn’t do any horror, just the horror of looking in the mirror. The greatest horror of all is standing on stage knowing that people don’t like your jokes. This is really terrible. When this movie got too gory, I found it difficult to watch it, but not as hard as it was to find other things to watch – if only because I knew we were all actually in for a jam. poster for opinion Alone, I was gone.

Family in Stay away He’s going on a very special vacation. What would your dream vacation be?
I find it very difficult to relax. You’ll never feel like you’ve done enough to earn something. So my favorite type of vacation is when I get paid to go somewhere to work. When you’re self-employed, that’s the only time you can feel like you can have weekends – when you’re not looking for work or doing little things. Even when I’m doing stand-up, I always feel like I’m wasting the day, even if I’m at a party that night.

Imagine you are having a dinner party. You can invite five celebrities, dead or alive. Who is there?
I have a lot Of dinner parties. I’m a big fan of dinner parties, and I fire my horns, and I’m exceptional at throwing a good dinner party. I will put Kadif Kirwan. He always comes with hot tea to the table, which is great, and his actions will be very measured and kind. I’ll also throw Ben Whishaw in there. He drinks rosé very well and is very enjoyable when drunk. I’m going to put my friend Nish Kumar, who’s a comedian from the UK, and I know it’s weird to put my friends in his place, because I have to be like Tom Hanks. I’ll put Colin Hanks in there, because Colin came to dinner at my house and he has a lot of facts about absolutely everything. I’m going to assume my friend is there, making dinner, so he’s not one of the five.

I realize I haven’t invited any women yet, which is completely unfeminist of me. Who will be my girl? Michele Buteau is one of my favorite stand-ins in the world. I adore her. We first met while doing our own little shows on Netflix eight or nine years ago. Jessie Buckley is amazing. She is also very good friends with Ben and Cadiff as well. Ben was amazing with Michelle and Nish. Olivia Colman, if she comes; She’s friends with all these people too. Olivia and Jesse are so crazy. They’re not afraid to have a few drinks. We’ll all have a little gossip and a laugh.

What’s the worst thing you can do at a dinner party?
You can be a listener, and that actively brings something to the table. Not everyone has to be a big story person. If you sit at the dinner table like an audience member, you’ll never come back to my house again. And bring a box of biscuits. If you’re really quiet, just bring a really nice bottle and offer to help with the dishes. But if you just sit there, order a drink, and then sit down and don’t ask a question, and don’t laugh, and then leave without washing the plate, that’s very un-Irish behaviour. Won’t be coming back, even to my local area.

What is the last meal you prepared for dinner?
Potato gratin. It’s gluten free. It’s not dairy-free, salt-free, or fat-free, as you can imagine. Even though it’s a French dish, I think of it like Irish macaroni and cheese, and I make it well. My mother only knows how to cook seven fine French things, because when she got married, she couldn’t cook, and was sent to French cooking school. They’re all dishes from the 80s.

My friend Kadiff – I just heard a voice note from him, and he’s always at my house – it was traditional, before I started going out with my friend Jack, who cooks a lot, that he would make hot sauce for every dinner. Parties. He said when Jack came into my life, I no longer needed to bring extra spices into my house, which was both a huge compliment and also a huge diss at the same time.

Do you have a comfortable watch?
My friend likes to rewatch things, but for me, the novelty disappears from something once you watch it. But that doesn’t happen with music, which drives my friend crazy because he’s a musician. I will listen to the same song over and over again. I have the comfort of re-listening.

At the moment I love Fontaines DC, they are an Irish band. Their album Romance Amazing. Whether that makes me a basic bitch or not, I don’t really care. I love Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Spotify told me I was in the top 14 percent of Beyoncé listeners. “Countdown” is a song I love listening to; It reminds me of the time when I was young and hopeful, giving my first solo shows. There’s also a song by Sinéad O’Connor called “Take Me to Church” which I adore, adore, adore. It’s not the Hozier I adore either. I love that song and the message in it. This is a real convenience.

Best piece of gossip you’ve ever heard?
I mean I would never tell you honestly. There is a saying, “No one likes gossip,” and that is the biggest lie in society. What fun when someone comes along and pours the giant kettle of tea. Delicious. But this is old gossip and I think it is acceptable. I started watching Victoria on Netflix, and apparently Queen Victoria and her husband spread STDs throughout the royal family at the time. So they had sex parties, or something like that. I love historical gossip. I think this is why The crown It was really good at first, because it was all chatter.

Name a book you couldn’t put down?
I would love to recommend Rob Delaney’s book, The heart that works. It was based on the loss of his son Henry, who was also my little friend, and I couldn’t put it down when he gave me an early copy. I had to move past all of that, because I think at the time, I may not have fully processed my grief for our beautiful friend, and reading Rob’s book, I felt like I needed to get to the bottom of my grief by reading it personally. , and get into Rob’s heart a little bit about him. I needed to finish it in a very profound way. For something to do with such a tragic death as Rob’s witnessed, it has a lot to do with clinging to life so tightly.

How would you describe the ideal type of film for you?
Historical political conspiracy. It’s so far away from what I’m going to write, I find myself getting really lost. And I’ll be more specific: If Harrison Ford is involved in this, and he’s walking around and there’s some kind of conspiracy within the police that he’s going to get to the bottom of it, and there’s a police officer who has a good heart, but his first instinct isn’t quite right, and slowly but surely, he can figure out, inside… His arrogance, that there is something more to this case, would rather see justice done than just solve the case despite pressure from his ruler.

Your devil – Highly not recommended. This is the only Harrison Ford movie I can’t do. We can’t get past the depiction of Northern Ireland. Patriot GamesSimilar atmosphere. It is quite funny to look at Northern Ireland in the current context; It’s actually like a must-see comedy. but The fugitive It’s a perfect movie for all that kind of stuff. a witness It’s also a perfect movie.

For someone who is not familiar with Irish artistic production, what is the first thing you would recommend?
A piece of Irish art that I would love for Americans to discover is the new one Patella film. Kneecap are a pair of Northern Irish rappers who rap in the Irish language. Indeed, you’re like, What? no. They were sought out by someone to take the true story of their lives, in which the government was trying to stamp out Northern Irish rap in our Irish language, and they were a huge hit. It has translations, going in and out of English and Irish.

What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received?
“Just text” and “If you feel like it, text.” This is terrible advice. When you’re emotional, what I learned to do very late in life is to write it all down, but write down your notes and then come back to it hours later and read it with a fresh mind. And therein lies the problem with email. In the past, you had an idea, get your quill, write it on a piece of parchment, wait until the postman comes on his horse, and you can still run after the horse, like, “Whoa, give me that letter back!”

What do you listen to in your car?
I tend to listen to voice notes from my friends. This is my rule when it comes to voice notes: Don’t send them about something practical. Don’t send a voice note about directions, times, dates, or things people need to see on paper or in a text message. Or if you’re time sensitive – for me, voice notes are messages; You keep it in your envelope, and when you have time, you sit by the fire and open it. Voice notes are like personalized podcasts from my friends. Friendship music, I guess you could say.

I have to ask – will there be a third season of the series? This way up?
The problem was that we made the series during the pandemic, and it was very difficult to make. I loved making our first series, and making series two in the pandemic became very dangerous and kind of terrible. People got sick, people lost family members to coronavirus while we were filming. For a mental health topic, it became so harsh that it distorted my ability to get back out there to write it. For me, it wouldn’t be healthy to go back. I’m very proud of the work and everyone who worked on it, but my memories of it are very heavy, and the show was always supposed to be about lightness and helping people. I still want as many people to watch it as possible, but I can’t currently go back to it for that reason. Maybe at some point, I’ll do something about where Ein is now, that kind of thing. never say never.

I’m developing a new TV show, and I have to write the pilot script for it in January. It’s nerve-racking to go back and start writing again with full commitment to a new series, but I’m excited about it, and I hope I put healthy things in place for myself to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.