Meeting Aisling Bea is like catching up with an old friend – if your old friend quips five jokes a minute and is obsessed with both The Traitors and the cumbersome nature of her phone case. When GLAMOUR meets her, she's buzzing from appearing on BBC's The Traitors: Uncloaked podcast and the cloak-and dagger methods used to protect the show from spoilers. “I brought my baby and my boyfriend to sit down for two hours and watch it in the studio,” she tells me with glee and excitement at seeing advance screenings of the addictive reality TV show.
In her new film, Get Away, our old friend stars alongside comedy stalwart Nick Frost and Heartstopper star Sebastian Croft in a comedy horror, which sees a family's remote getaway interrupted by a serial killing spree. It's a wild ride, with Aisling and Nick playing the creepiest parenting team going.
Despite the film's comedic DNA, Aisling's dabbling in horror is a change in tone from her feminist stand-up shows and roles in various romantic TV series such as Smothered and Alice & Jack. Aisling also won a BAFTA in 2020 for penning and starring in This Way Up, a soft-but-hilarious series on mental health and sisterhood. Aisling and Bad Sisters star Sharon Horgan play dysfunctional and codependent sisters Aine and Shona, both reeling from Aine's recent nervous breakdown – and it's just note perfect.
Aisling's ability to translate complicated emotions and the humour behind them onto screen is incredible and has been relatable and comforting for so many. “It always touches me [that] the themes of This Way Up are universal to different types of souls or people,” she says. “I wrote it for the people who needed it, rather than the people who looked like the story.”
During a visit to GLAMOUR HQ, Aisling sat down for an Unfiltered interview – dressed in an enviable plum velvet suit – to talk motherhood lessons, what empowers her and the dark reason why Irish women are so damn funny.
What drew you to the role in Get Away?
What drew me to the role, really, was Nick [Frost]. Before I'd even read the script, he sent me a message on Instagram saying, ‘oh, do you like herring? Would you like to come to Finland?’ I was like, ‘hell yes’. And then [I discovered] afterwards, it was a job. I was very eager to be in his horror comedy, bloody weird little world.
What got me all the way through is that your characters call each other Mummy and Daddy…
That wasn't really in the script, but we just found it both quite disgusting and horrific that when people have children, they start calling each other Mummy and Daddy in the house. So we thought we would use that for the couple. And it's got the point now where we still call each other Mummy and Daddy, much to the sadness of his wife and my boyfriend.
Without giving too much away, there are some serious slasher, gory scenes – what was that like for you? Did you enjoy filming it?
I don't actually watch too much horror myself, because I find life too horrific to actually go and seek it out – that said, please do watch Get Away! But filming the actual horror scenes themselves was very good fun for like, an hour or two, and then slowly, the fake blood – which had a sugary syrup in it, like a jam – would congeal on your face. And we were filming in the woods, so quite a lot of flies turned out to be quite interested in me. So you'd have a layer of gentle, small, tiny flies all over you by the end of the day. But when I used a hot cloth at the end of the day to take it all off, my skin was glowing. Can recommend.
You’ve spoken during your stand up about double standards when it comes to ‘intimidating women’ as well as the issue of male violence against women when it comes to our safety walking home at night – why was it important for you to highlight these issues on stage?
So that sketch about women being 'intimidating' came about because I would go to all these meetings that I thought were really positive, one producer guy was so lovely. And then he sent an email after saying ‘so great to meet you, though I have to say you’re so intimidating, you made me laugh so much'. Intimidating is a negative word, it doesn't mean anything positive. So after this lovely interaction, something you would describe as being positive, whether it's in your relationships or your dating or in your interactions at work, is described as a negative and just bears down in your soul… I know a lot of other women who would have this lovely thing about themselves described as a negative.
Meeting a male comedian and saying ‘oh it was so intimidating, how funny he was’, that just does not happen… If you're describing a man as intimidating, you do feel it's going to be physically intimidating.
Do you feel like the comedy, film and TV world is becoming a better place for women to exist and thrive?
It's a funny thing about giving birth to a daughter because while I don't think these lightbulb moments wouldn't happen without, it just speeds up your intense look at your own life and asking, ‘Will things be different for her?’ I do think they will be, and I do think things have moved on, but change happens in a way that never feels like walking into a room one day that's been Claire Sweeney'd in 60 Minute Makeover. Change happens very incrementally. One of my problems was that there weren't enough women on panel shows, whereas the people who came 20 years before me couldn't even buy a house without a man as a signatory.
What’s the most surprising or funny thing you’ve learned from motherhood?
Motherhood is an interesting one for me. I think maybe because my life is so silly, a baby doesn't seem that crazy. I think for people with very straightforward lives, a baby must seem like a little sort of bomb being exploded in your house. But for me, it's just another silly person who cries in the house, and she cries way less than I cry.
And I have a lot of love for the sliding doors version of myself that didn't have a baby, that would have been a valid life too. I hold my other possible life that could be in the parallel universe – where I haven't met someone, I haven't had a baby – with so so much love. Because I want to tell that version of me ‘you are still so valid’… Also, if you're an asshole before you became a mother, you're probably going to be an asshole after you give birth.
What is empowering to you?
I think empowerment feels like acceptance rather than safety. It feels like you've been able to live truthfully and with connection. If you feel like every day you're putting on a mask, and that's the version of you that people like, that's not really empowering. That means that you've performed something. If you can get to a stage where you slowly surround yourself with people who really do know you and still, after it all, like you – I think that's very empowering.
And you can bring that feeling into your workplace, at a job interview, into parenting or not parenting, how you date or how you are with your partner, that feeling is very truthful. It's something you can hold on to, as opposed to the idea of success or likes… That's not really that empowering. That's fleeting.
You’ve also spoken openly about your experiences of grief and how you’ve managed your ADHD, is there a catharsis or empowerment in sharing such personal stories?
I don't regret it for a single second at all. It just doesn't mean that it's not difficult at times. It becomes so much easier when I can make stand up or use more creative ways of talking about issues, because then it feels like a character, or you able to put a joke on it, and you feel like you've talked about it. Maybe in interviews or in writing, more open things can feel a lot more like taking a few layers of your skin off.
Irish women are having a MOMENT, with Sharon Horgan’s Bad Sisters and Nicola Coughlan being nominated for a SAG Award… HOW are you guys so funny?
I think it's all of the pain and suffering that they've gone through traditionally, and that if we didn't laugh, we would cry. And there's loads of women in the crying market who have covered crying, especially singers and stuff like that. And so there isn't that much work left. We've had to diversify. Because of all the crime that's been done, most of the rivers in Ireland are salty with women's tears that have dropped into them. So I think that's maybe why.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
One year at Edinburgh [Fringe], I was doing a stand up show, and I had really good reviews, and then one or two bad reviews, and it affected me so deeply and personally, because I felt like I put in so much hard work, and I was so sad that for these two people it just hadn't worked. My mother was like, 'oh, actually, you know, f**k it, f**k it. And it was just exactly what I needed to hear then. Sometimes you have to say, oh, f**k it. F**k it. Not today. I can't do anymore, maybe tomorrow, but just for today, f**k it.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
Get Away is releasing on Sky Cinema from 10th January.
At first, I felt like a bad feminist for relishing the childlike role I took with my Daddy. But having a safe place to be needy is incredibly powerful.
Aisling Bea's 5 Feminist Commandments
- “Until all women are equal, we're not really equal… If you're not looking after all women, that's not really feminism. That's egotism.”
- “Hormones are the biggest thing that are probably affecting you, and no one's really putting any money into working out how we can help women. So look after yourself and invest in researching your own hormonal health.”
- “If you don't want a baby, that is totally fine and a totally valid life choice. People probably aren't going to totally understand that, and that's just something you have to accept. If you really want a baby and can't, then that is a true and real grief, and it's okay to be grieving again.”
- “Money. Talk about it. It is difficult to talk about, but it's the one thing that is holding women back so much. Money is empowering. Paying people and women in your workplace is empowering. Having 'Go get ‘em girls’ on a tote bag or a t shirt is not empowering.”
- “All you have to do to stop a woman getting employed or going on a date, or keeping her away from any sort of power is to say that she is difficult, that she is not easy, and that she is tricky. Films and books have not been read or made about women who were easy, and there is no access to healthcare or rights that we have now that were helped along by easy women. So just be careful about using those words about women.”
