By Maeve Quigley

Copyright evoke

When Tina Kellegher made the tough decision to leave Fair City in 2021, there was a lot going on. Her eldest was doing his Leaving Certificate, and her mother Bridget was elderly and needed a bit more minding.

She’d loved playing crime boss Ger Lynch but for Tina, who lives in Mullingar, family came first.

‘It’s probably easier psychologically for someone in our business who is used to jobs ending all the time or jobs not coming,’ says Tina of the decision. ‘But it was hard to walk away from something like Fair City. You never know with a character how long they’ll be in it so it was a hard decision to make.

‘I live down in the country too and balancing family and work life can be a bit trickier when you’re a couple of counties away from work.’

So when, at the end of last year, Fair City came knocking on Tina’s door again, there was a lot to discuss. Her boys were a little bit older but her mammy still needed care.

‘I had talked to Mammy and I decided I was going to go back,’ she says. ‘The logistics of that would have been complicated with her care and the support that she needed.’

It would have taken a lot of work – work that Tina felt privileged to be involved in as her mam Brigid was 90 – but they decided that Ger would return to Carrigstown.

Then, after the decision was made, things changed and Tina’s life was turned upside down. Bridget had a stroke and six weeks later she was gone.

‘We lost Mam in January,’ Tina says. ‘I started back in Fair City in March or April of this year and it’s been a great comfort helping to fill that void because I would have spent an awful lot of time with Mammy.

‘It’s been great to be back in the community of Fair City, which is a gorgeous community of people. You know just that old saying that keeping busy helps you to get over grief.

‘It’s a great consolation that I’m busy. That void just has to be filled, absolutely, because that was a big role for me, making sure Mammy was living as full a life as she could and just giving her companionship, doing the do with her.

‘So this has been hugely valuable for no other reason than even just to be back at work and meeting people and being busy and having to get on with life.

‘I think it helps you deal with grief when you have children as well as they need to be looked after but work really helps fill the gaps in my life.’

There was a bit of time before Tina went back to Fair City and she was glad to have it ‘to give myself the chance and the time to grieve, without having to be going to work and remembering lines’.

Brigid Kellegher, according to her daughter, was fun, bright and intelligent. ‘She was an amazing singer – gifted,’ says Tina. ‘I look very like her so it’s strange. Sometimes I can see her in me when I’m watching Fair City.’

Tina’s father had died years before and even though her mother was 90, it was still shocking when Brigid was taken away so suddenly.

‘With that generation gone above, it’s very different,’ says Tina. ‘As somebody said to me, you’re in sniper alley now too, the reality of your own mortality is more real when your parents are gone, you know?

‘Not that something can’t happen to anybody at any time, but in the normal set of circumstances.’

Reprising her role as Ger in Fair City has been a great comfort, particularly as she’s turned over a new leaf this year, realising that family is more important than anything else.

As Fair City celebrates its 36th year this coming week, Ger will be caught up in a huge storyline.

‘There’s a lot of drama around the birth of Hayley’s baby,’ says Tina. ‘Ger is very busy trying to keep James away from Hayley and protecting her from the stress that he’s causing her around the whole issue of the baby. Sometimes her intentions may be for the best but I don’t think it’s really helping things.

‘Her methods to try and keep James at arm’s length or keep him away altogether seem to exacerbate things and that causes more issues.’

There is also a dramatic climax to the week which Tina can’t yet reveal.

‘Ger is used to dealing in payback,’ Tina says. ‘She doesn’t let things go. James has been stressing Hayley out because he says the most horrendous things to her – just the most horrendous, disrespectful, horrible things.

‘But at the same time Ger feels that she will get payback and will make sure that James has to pay because of the world she comes from.

‘She’s trying to be a bit less of the gangster because family is very important to her now at this stage of life, her life with her sister Sharon and being reunited with her daughter Hayley. But I think she is even doubling down on her protectiveness.’

Tina is married to location manager Gordon Wycherley and they have two boys, who are now aged 21 and 17. Though she says she’s protective of her boys, it’s in a totally different parenting style from Ger’s recent ideas.

‘I’ve been at home an awful lot for them growing up, so I suppose

I feel that if you’re there at home and they can talk through things and all that, that’s you protecting them,’ Tina says.

‘You give them the tools to go out and they’re good, thank God. I’ve been very lucky with the two lads – they’re wise, they’re their own men, they’re great, sound, solid lads.’

Tina was younger than her eldest boy when she landed the role of Sharon Curley in The Snapper at the age of 20. But by that stage she had already been working as an actress as being on stage and screen was all she wanted to do.

‘I grew up in Cavan and the first thing I started to do was mimicry and stand-up comedy,’ she says. ‘Then I started to do plays. I felt strongly from the age of 12 or 13 that this was for me, I was most happy doing any kind of acting.’

Neither her parents, nor her siblings – three brothers and two sisters – had any love for acting so Tina was out on her own.

‘We moved to Mullingar when I was 17 and that was pretty much me out every night,’ she says. ‘I did one musical theatre production of West Side Story but I did a lot of mostly straight theatre and I would also direct entertainment shows and one-act plays with the local Macra Na Feirme.’

Every night and weekend of her late teens was taken up with doing theatre ‘hoping to get a break’. Then she auditioned for an apprenticeship with Galway’s Druid Theatre and got it.

Tina was taught the ropes from the bottom up by doing stage management as well as beginning with a small part in a play directed by Jim Sheridan.

But it is as Sharon Curley that Tina’s younger self keeps reappearing on our TV screens. as every time The Snapper is shown, ratings rocket. But there is no doubt that were Sharon to face the same situation today, Georgie Burgess would be marched straight to the nearest Garda station and charged with rape.

‘It’s amazing how we see it now for what it really was so clearly, how different our whole perspective is now,’ Tina says. ‘I love it if I bang into a teenager that I don’t know and they bring it up. You just think that it is fabulous that new generations are discovering it and really enjoying it.’

Times have changed since The Snapper was made but Tina says she always knew that what happened to Sharon was rape.

‘I suppose now these things are articulated better,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t spoken about as much, but you were still very well aware of what happened to Sharon and how horrendous the situation she was in was. But it just wasn’t articulated the same way as it is now. But we now have the voice to be able to communicate these things and one hopes things are better.’

Sharon was a role that Tina really wanted and there was a lot of competition.

She was in Dublin working in theatre at the time and there was so little filming being done that practically every one of her peers was auditioning too.

‘I remember reading the novel and thinking, God, I understand how she ticks, even though I was from the country,’ she says of Roddy Doyle’s novel. ‘I felt strongly that I wanted to do it.

‘I said to the director, Stephen Frears: “I am about four years too old and I’m a culchie but I seem to understand how she ticks. I don’t seem to fit all the boxes but I think I can.”

‘He said to me: “You’ll have to do what Daniel Day Lewis did in My Beautiful Laundrette, it’s that big a jump.” So I swallowed hard and said yes. That was it, I got that great break.’

Acting is an integral part of Tina’s life. ‘It’s part of your self-expression,’ she says. ‘It’s all I can do anyway at this stage, it’s just a very big part of me, part of who I am. I wanted to act from when I was 12 or 13, so it’s always been a part of my identity.’

One of her most famous roles was as Niamh Quigley in Ballykissangel and she still remains pals with Peter Hanly who played her on-screen love Ambrose in the hit show that travelled all over the world.

He is about to take to the stage at the Dublin Theatre Festival with his play What Are You Afraid Of? detailing the actor’s struggle with stage fright. Although they might not be in regular contact, Tina knew of Peter’s issues.

‘Whenever we’d meet it would be that old-fashioned cliché but it’s true, we just pick up where we left off,’ she says.

‘I’m looking forward to seeing the play. I’m kind of nervous about it too because for other actors anything about stage fright is always a bit scary.

‘I did know what Peter was going through and it’s been such a shame for the rest of us that we don’t get to see him on stage any more. It will be great to see him because of that.’

As Ger is in the thick of the drama in Fair City, there won’t be time for theatre. ‘What I miss most in theatre is the rehearsal process,’ says Ger. ‘I love working on the scripts with your colleagues and making something of that work, the magic of that and then bringing it to an audience.

‘When I was younger I used to pine terribly for theatre but your priorities change when you have children. But if I wasn’t doing any acting at all I’d miss it terribly. I love the variety.’

Fair City’s 36th anniversary kicks off on Sunday on RTÉ One with episodes on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday and on the RTÉ Player.