Athlone woman stars in new BBC crime drama
An Athlone actress has perfected a Belfast accent for a starring role in BBC 1's latest high profile crime drama to air this weekend.
Coosan's Lisa Dwan, daughter of Liam and Ann, will play Tori Matthews in Bloodlands, a cat and mouse thriller set in Northern Ireland, featuring James Nesbitt as DCI Tom Brannick, who is quickly transported back to an infamous cold case with enormous personal significance in a dogged hunt for a legendary assassin.
The new four-part drama from the pen of a new writer, Chris Brandon, airs this Sunday, February 21 at 9pm on BBC1, and also features top Irish actors Charlene McKenna and Lorcan Cranitch in leading roles.
Asked about her character in the drama shot in Northern Ireland last year, Lisa Dwan told the BBC that Tori Matthews is a bright and friendly doctor who has returned to Belfast after living several years abroad to look after her ailing mother.
She is smart, inquisitive and resourceful with a painful past.
“I had to do a Belfast accent which I had very little experience of prior to my arrival. The production kindly set me up with a brilliant voice coach and from the moment I landed I began speaking in the accent as much as possible,” Lisa explained of her preparation for the role, adding that she adored filming scenes in Belfast, Strangford Lough and the Mourne Mountains, scenery which at times, would take your breath away.
On working with Cold Feet's James Nesbitt, Lisa said: “James is one of the most generous actors I’ve ever worked with and is so passionate on and off the screen about this project that it really set the tone for the rest of us”.
Asked if she had any scenes which were particularly challenging or memorable, the actress, writer and lecturer, who is is most well known internationally for her performances and adaptations of Samuel Beckett's works, recalled a particularly tough day in the mountains.
“Jimmy and I had a series of very intense filming days up the Mourne Mountains. And I remember one day filming in a snow blizzard, having to make our way to set by jeep as the cars couldn’t make it up the mountain. Once I sat back into the car after a take and Lola Petticrew burst into a fit of giggles as I looked like an extra from disaster movie 'Alive', there were little mounds of snow caked over my lashes and my lips were blue!”
In recent years, the Athlonian has been acclaimed for her production of three short, one-woman Beckett plays: Not I, Footfalls, and Rockaby; and co-directed her performance of Beckett’s Texts for Nothing, the first performance of that work by a woman.
Lisa Dwan was 2019–20 CAST Mellon Distinguished Visiting Artist in MIT in America, having also enjoyed residencies in the past at Columbia University and Princeton among others in between stage and TV/film work, as well as writing and teaching about theatre, gender and Beckett.
Bloodlands airs on Sunday, February 21 next at 9pm on BBC1.